Ground Environment X Europe represents our new approach in texture design, incorporating high level detail graphics in the default Flight Simulator X 1-meter texture resolution format. Our design allows a simulation pilot to enjoy clearly defined visuals from nearly ground level up to higher altitudes. Flight1.com and Flight One Software develop, publish, and resell flight simulation and aviation software, as well as provide E-Commerce services. Welcome to Flight1.com! We have many great aviation products for FSX/FS9 and P3D. Most of our products are available.
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Note: Images will appear in the official release document that will assist the user and guide the process. There may be changes to the final release documentation. What is provided below is to allow users to get a head start with GEX Europe and prepare for installation. Please be sure to read the document that comes with the GEX Europe package. I will edit this document as changes are made.
- PLEASE READ - THIS DOCUMENT PROVIDES IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO INSTALL AND USE GROUND ENVIRONMENT EUROPE CORRECTLY. WE HAVE INCLUDED DIRECTIONS FOR ALL USERS AND TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT CUSTOM SETUPS Welcome to Europe! We sincerely hope you enjoy your flight over Europe with Ground Environment X Ground Environment X Europe represents our new approach in texture design incorporating high level detail graphics in the default Flight Simulator X 1 meter texture resolution format which delivers a hi fidelity image without excessive disk space or processor power required for higher resolution graphics. Our design allows a simulation pilot to enjoy clearly defined visuals from nearly ground level! GEX Europe not only provides a high impact day and night texture and autogen replacement along with complete seasonal variations but also upgrades autogen textures, increases autogen night lighting impact, and, exclusively offers Ultimate Terrain X Europe users the option to install a GEX Europe upgrade for Europe city landclass and includes new 2D night road lighting for UTX. Ground Environment X is very simple to install and use. Please review the information provided below as it will answer typically asked questions and ensures you are ready to fly with confidence your installation is correct and complete. Please follow the 1-2-3 step process outlined below INITIAL INSTALLATION â GEX (all versions) is a database of textures and autogen files. GEX does not install any files into Flight Simulator X until the user instructs the interface to install selected options. GEX (all versions) can install on your system to any location you wish and does not require installation to the FSX directory where it takes up space for no reason. The default installation path is: 32bit Operating Systems: Program FilesGround Environment X Europe 64bit Operating Systems: Program Files (x86) Ground Environment X Europe Should you wish to change the install path you may do so during the install process. Simply BROWSE the installer to the location of your choice, or, you can opt to make a folder on your drive first and then browse to that location from the GEX installer. BEFORE THE FIRST RUN OF THE INTERFACE - BE AWARE THAT MANY OF THE GEX TEXTURES ARE NOT ONLY USED IN EUROPE BUT ALSO NORTH AMERICAAND OTHER LOCATIONS AROUND THE GLOBE. GEX uses the FSX default texture/autogen database to replace the ground environment. In doing so it ensures that any scenery or airport package that works with the default FSX layout and respects the FSX SDK for design will work with GEX automatically. Default FSX textures that are shared between areas will show in more than one location with GEX. There are no FSX Scenery Library entries with GEX. Once installed, the files will act just as the defaults with no other user input required. We have taken into account different user situations. Please follow the directions below based on the statement(s) presented; A. GEX EUROPE IS THE ONLY TEXTURE PRODUCT I USE AND I USE THE DEFAULT EUROPE GROUND TEXTURES Please verify C below first, then Proceed to Step 3, you are ready to go. IMPORTANT â If you intend to install Ground Environment X USA-Canada Edition and the USA product installer version is 1.08 or less, please do so first before running the GEX Europe interface. See item D below. The GEX USA-Canada v1.09 installer, which will be released shortly, will not require that step and can be installed at anytime. B.I HAVE INSTALLED OTHER GROUND (and/or) AUTOGEN TEXTURES (freeware or payware) THAT COVER EUROPE Before installing GEX Europe please decide if you wish GEX to keep a backup of the textures you currently have installed, or, prefer a backup of the default FSX ground/autogen textures. If you prefer GEX maintain a backup of the default FSX textures please restore the default FSX ground and autogen textures before proceeding. C. I HAVE OTHER ADDONS INSTALLED THAT USE A MODE SWITCH SUCH AS FTX GEX is completely safe to use with such addons however please SET THE MODE SWITCH for the product to OFF before installing the GEX textures from the interface. After GEX textures are installed you may turn the mode switch ON and use other addons of that nature in their areas without any issues from GEX . It is suggested you set their mode switch to OFF when flying a GEX covered area to ensure no interference with GEX from such products. D. I HAVE (OR I INTEND TO INSTALL) GEX USACANADA (AKA: USCAN) When you install the textures from the GEX Europe interface those textures will automatically provide a shared texture/autogen upgrade for the USACanada and Alaska in FSX assuming the 1.08 version of the USZA-Canada product is installed. Please be aware that if you have Ground Environement USA-Canada v1.08 installed, once the GEX Europe textures have been installed into Flight Simulator avoid reinstalling thev1.08 USCAN textures from the USA-Canada interface. To do so will overwrite the upgrade.Should you by mistake install the USA-Canada textures over the new versions, simply rerun the GEX Europe texture install from the Europe interface to repair. We will provide a patch (v1.09) for the USA-Canada product shortly. Once v1.09 is installed you may use the USA-Canada interface at any time without issue. Before installing GEX Europe with GEX USACANADA, please check/verify the following: Make sure you are running USCAN version 1.08 before proceeding. Open the USCAN interface and check the version number located at the top of the interface. - If you are running version 1.08 you may stop here and proceed to STEP 3. - If you are not running GEX USCAN v1.08, please follow these instructions⦠With a connection to the internet open the GEX USCAN interface, click the UPDATES button. The interface will automatically present you with the correct patch link to download. Download the v1.08 patch, close the interface and run the patch. Once complete open the interface and confirm you are on v1.08 (see the header at the top of the interface) and then make the selections and click âInstall Selected Optionsâ Once the process is complete, you are ready for GEX Europe USING THE INTERFACE The GEX interface is very simple to use. Past configuration it provides 3 primary services to the user.
Configuration After youâve run the setup installer successfully, youâll be presented with the Ground Environment X settings configuration screen. It will require that you verify your FSX program path, as well as the folder path where you will want backups to be copied to. Click the Save option to continue. Backing Up Your Existing FSX Ground Textures Before configuring your new Ground Environment X options, the program will make a backup of the files in Flight Simulator that Ground Environment X will replace. The first time the interface is run it will auto detect that the process is not complete and will launch the backup tool. If you have UTX Europe installed the interface will launch the UTX backup tool. You will need 2 Gigabytes of free disk space for a single GEX version backup, more for additional packages. You will have the option to cancel the backup process, but if you do cancel, you would have to reinstall FSX to get the original textures back. So it is recommended that you create backups if you have the disk space. NOTE: Users of more than one version of GEX â The Europe interface will automatically locate your previous GEX/FSX backup and share that directory with GEX Europe in order to save disk space. You can opt to make a separate backup however that will take up more disk space since there are shared textures between regions. Without the shared backup it will require 2GB of disk space per backup. Backing Up Your Default UTX Landclass and Textures The GEX Europe interface will automatically detect if you have UTX installed and will back up the UTX landclass files and textures GEX Europe will upgrade. NOTE: You can at any time rerun the backup process or make alternate backups by clicking the BACKUP button. See the section: Rerun the Backup Process or Make Alternate Backup Sets posted below. Once the backup is complete, youâll see the main interface window. This is where you set your desired texture options, configure your backups and check for updates. Installing the Ground Environment X Textures - Follow this two-step process for installing your new ground textures: 1. In the list of the available texture set(s), verify the set(s) that you want to install. 2. Click âInstall Selected Options.â This will copy the selected textures to your FSX. It will take a moment for all the textures to be copied over. NOTE: Ultimate Terrain X Europe users should select both the GEX and the UTX options. If you do not use Ultimate Terrain X Europe, please leave the UTX Europe Upgrade option unchecked. Thatâs it!You are finished installing GEX Europe! MAINTENANCE IT IS VERY IMPORTANT to understand you have just finished installing a very large amount of data into FSX. Although GEX overwrites the FSX default files and not add to them, the process will significantly fragment the hard drive. We highly recommend a DISK DEFRAGMENT be run on the hard drive where FSX is installed using a good professional 3rd party disk defragmenter program. The Windows defrag tool can be used but does not do as complete a job as professional defrag solutions to clean up those fragments and allow much faster/smoother disk access. Doing so helps with stutters, blurry textures and scenery loading. You can also review this thread at the Ground Environment forums about installing and setting up Flight Simulator X. It will also help with performance and provides information about installing and setting up UTX as well as provide links to information about system tuning. We will update that thread with new information shortly after GEX Europe is released. Check For Updates â All users should periodically check for updates using the GEX Europe interface. We will also make announcements in the GEX support forum when patches/updates become available. To check for updates and/or patches follow these 4 simple steps: 1. Click on the âUpdatesâ button. 2. You will be presented with a new window which displays information about your current GEX version. You will also be presented with any announcements and patches available for your version of GEX Europe. 3. Click the link presented for a patch. Download the patch to a location of your choice. 4. Close the Interface and run the patch installer. Once complete, open the interface and verify the new version listed at the top. Backup/Install the update to FSX by following STEP 3: USING THE INTERFACE. The backup will skip files already in your backup folder. Rerun the Backup Process or Make Alternate Backup Sets CAUTION: In addition to making an alternate backup set, you can also re-initialize the main backup procedure. However, if you do this after you have installed the Ground Environment X textures into FSX, your original backup set will be overwritten with the Ground Environment X versions. Use this feature with caution! In addition to the texture backup that has been made the first time you run the configuration utility, Ground Environment X also allows you to make an alternate backup set any time you like. This facility means that you can try other texture sets after installing GEX and switch between them with ease. For instance, if you installed another texture set and wanted to be able to switch between it and GEX, you would open the configuration utility and do the following: 1. Click on the Backup button 2. Select the Action to back up 3. Click âCreate Alternate Backup Setâ The configuration utility will create a second set of texture backups based on the ground textures that are currently installed into your version of FSX. If, after installing this new texture set, you want to switch back to GEX textures, simply open the configuration utility again and choose the texture options you want to use and click the âInstall Selected Optionsâ button. Uninstalling Ground Environment X Europe - NOTE: If you reinstall Flight Simulator X you do not need to uninstall GEX. GEX is only a database of files that can be reinstalled from the interface at any time. Simply rerun the interface after reinstalling FSX and select the options you require to restore your GEX area. If you move the location of FSX you will need to reset the path in the GEX configuration tool under SETTINGS. If you wish to uninstall Ground Environment X Europe, make sure you restore your original backup files before the uninstall process. You will also have to manually delete any backup files created in your backup folder. ![]() NOTE FOR USER OF OTHER GEX VERSIONS: BECAUSE FSX SHARES TEXTURES BETWEEN REGIONS AFTER A RESTORE FROM THE BACKUP AND GEX EUROPEHAS BEEN UNINSTALLED, YOU WILL NEED TO RUN THE INTERFACE FROM OTHER GEX VERSIONS YOU HAVE INSTALLED AND INSTALL THE TEXTURES AGAIN. THIS PROCESS IS UNAVOIDABLE DUE TO THE DESIGN OF FSX. Go to CONTROL PANEL - Add and Remove Programs â Find Ground Environment Europe in the list, click to uninstall. SUPPORT Please note the following Internet sites for support and other program information. For support, go to the Ground Environment X forums at http://www.simforums.com For Ground Environment X specific information, go to http://gex.flight1.net To reach Flight One Software, please visithttp://www.flight1.com CREDITS: Developers:Anthony Vos, Nick NeedhamInterface design by Steve Halpern Comments are closed.
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December 2022
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