Scenery Pack Organiser - XP10/11/12 v3.1r1

Are you tired of sifting through all the packs in the Custom Scenery folder and reordering them manually?
Do you hate having to start and quit X-Plane just to add new scenery packs to the file so you can organise it?
This utility is for you!

It will read and sort all scenery packs, carry over DISABLED tags, check for airport conflicts, and even warn you of faulty packages!

Installation

1. You need to have Python3 installed. You can get it here for all platforms
   • For macOS, you may use Homebrew instead
   • For Linux, you should use your distro's package manager instead
   • NOTE: I've had some people inform me of issues installing libraries with Python 3.12.0. If you run into issues there, please update to the latest version of Python3
2. You need to have PIP installed
   • On Windows, PIP is automatically installed with Python3
   • On Linux, you may need to install a separate package (like python3-pip on Ubuntu/Debian based distributions)
3. Make sure both Python3 and PIP are added to PATH
   • On Windows, this is done by ticking the option in the installer
   • On Linux, this should happen automatically when installing the respective packages through your package manager
4. Check by opening Command Prompt or Terminal and doing pip --version and python3 --version or python --version

There is sometimes confusion between python and python3. Doing the above will help you decide how to invoke python when running the script. If both commands give you an output, use the one that displays the highest version number.

Required non-standard Python3 libraries: py7zr, and pyyaml. If you're on Windows, you'll also need pywin32. Otherwise, if you're on macOS, you'll also need pyobjc. You can install them yourself using pip install <library name>.

Usage

How to run (2 methods)

• On Windows, you can run it simply by double-clicking. If this doesn't work, try the next method

• On Linux and macOS, set the executable bit, and double-click. If prompted, choose "Run in Terminal"

• On any platform, first open Command Prompt or Terminal and change the active directory to where the program is located
  Then do python3 organiser.py or python organiser.py
  To decide which one to use, refer the installation instructions

• NOTE: If the program crashes, try running with --verbose 1 or --verbose 2 added at the end of the command shown above to see where it crashes
  Higher numbers correspond to greater verbosity, ie. level 2 will show even more than level 1 would
  Of course, you can also use this if you just want to feel cool - there's no performance hit!

How to use

At various stages, the program might ask you for input. Here, I'll go through them in order and explain each one:

1. The program will try to automatically locate X-Plane. It will list out all locations it finds. To use one of those, enter the number as displayed in the list
   If this doesn't work, or if you want to use a different location, simply paste the path from your file explorer
   NOTE: Do not format it as a shell path (eg. wrapping it in quotes, escaping whitespaces and backslashes, etc)

2. If you select a deleted or broken install which the organiser had located, the program will offer to clean it up to remove future confusion

3. If you had disabled some packs in your old scenery_packs.ini, the program will offer to retain those preferences

4. If the program was unable to sort some scenery packs, it will display them and offer a choice to write them into the ini. If you choose not to, they will be written as disabled packs

5. If the program sees multiple airport packs for the same ICAOs, it will list them out with a number, the folder path, and the overlapping ICAOs

   • It will then ask if you want to define their priorities yourself
   • If you do, you'll only need to give one input: the numbers displayed in the above list separated by commas
   • The packs will be written in the order you give it - first one highest, last one lowest

6. If an existing scenery_packs.ini is found, it will be renamed to scenery_packs.ini.bak. Old backup files will be removed upon completion of the script If you want to roll back to the old ini, delete the existing one and then remove the .bak extension

7. Upon exiting, if the program can find X-Plane, it will offer to launch X-Plane
   NOTE: Do not close the console window, otherwise X-Plane might also abruptly close

Features

• Sorts scenery packs according to the hierarchy specified below:
  • Custom Airports
  • Default Airports
  • Prefab Airports
  • Global Airports
  • Scenery Plugins
  • Scenery Libraries
  • SimHeaven Overlays
  • Custom Overlays
  • Default Overlays
  • AutoOrtho Overlays
  • Orthophotos
  • AutoOrtho Regions
  • Terrain Meshes
• Supports Windows shortcuts (.LNK files, eg. for SAM Library)
• Supports Prefab Airports and AutoOrtho
• Attempts to locate X-Plane installs automatically, letting you choose between the results or manually inputting an X-Plane install path
• Offers to carry over SCENERY_PACK_DISABLED tags from existing scenery_packs.ini
• Checks for Custom Airport overlaps and resolves them with user input
• Will warn you of folders-in-folder (It's more common than you'd think)
• Supports XP10/11's and XP12's Global Airports entry simultaneously

Credits and Licensing

This project is licensed under the GNU GPL v2.
Any contributions (features or bugfixes) are very welcome 😁. Here's the project GitHub.
Feel free to message me on Discord - my username is iy4vet. I'm also present in the X-Plane Community and Official servers.

A huge thank-you to these awesome people:

• @supercoder186
• @Brady
• @carlos maida
• @Birdy.dma
• @cyl8
• @DHF

Changelog

• 3.1r1 - Added support for macOS alias parsing and restored the option to import disabled packs.
• 3.0r1 - Resolved issues related to shutil's new behaviour.
• 3.0a3 - Implemented handling for SimHeaven quirks, improved UI spacing, and added delays between stages. Minor bug fixes.
• 3.0a2 - Transitioned to argparser and made minor adjustments to programme flow.
• 3.0a1 - Conducted a major code refactor to enhance flexibility and readability.
• 2.2r1 - Added a shebang to enable double-click execution on Unix systems.
• 2.2b2 - Optimised performance by saving DSF parse results for faster future runs.
• 2.2b1 - Completely rewrote the airport overlap system and fixed minor bugs.
• 2.1r6 - Released a hotfix for Windows .lnk shortcut parsing.
• 2.1r5 - Removed pkg_resources following its deprecation in Python 3.12 and added debugging CLI options.
• 2.1r4 - Fixed a bug in DSF selection, restored the option to install missing Python3 libraries, improved performance by eliminating the need to scan the Custom Scenery folder, and enhanced UI prompts.
• 2.1r3 - Addressed issues with unreadable DSFs, reverted to the old method of installing missing libraries, and silenced DSF errors for AutoOrtho.
• 2.1r2 - Fixed issues with launching X-Plane from within the programme.
• 2.1r1 - Added support for AutoOrtho, patched breakage points, offered to launch X-Plane post-completion, and improved UI with better prompts and error descriptions.
• 2.0r1 - Corrected the treatment of meshes as overlays, added cleanup options for nonexistent X-Plane installs, and improved UI with retry prompts for invalid inputs.
• 2.0b6 - Released a hotfix for multi-codec attempts.
• 2.0b5 - Added options to write unsorted packs and resolve airport conflicts, fixed issues with reading apt.dat files, and improved UI with better list displays and pack sorting.
• 2.0b4 - Added the option to carry over DISABLED tags from existing INI files and fixed Windows shortcut support.
• 2.0b3 - Treated Prefab Airports as a separate category to avoid clashes with Default or Custom Airports.
• 2.0b2 - Implemented checks for Custom Airport conflicts, removed X-Plane 9 support, and improved UI with stage differentiation and timers.
• 2.0b1 - Added apt.dat parsing to verify airport packs, sorted Default below Custom Overlays, alphabetically sorted each layer, and supported non-conventional capitalisations within packs.
• 1.4b1 - Attempted to locate X-Plane installs (only for direct downloads).
• 1.3.2 - Released a hotfix for a syntax error.
• 1.3.1 - Fixed issues with jumbled packs.
• 1.3.0 - Added support for XP12 and sorted Default below Custom Airports.
• 1.2 - Added support for Windows shortcuts (.LNK) and included code comments.
• 1.1 - Improved UI by waiting for user confirmation before exiting.
• 1.0 - Initial release.

Known Issues

• Automatic location of X-Plane installs may not work for Steam users

What's planned...

Naturally, fixing the above 😁.
There's also saving preferences of custom airport overlaps, so you can simply reuse what you did last time. I'm also considering potential options to let you decide how you want your packs sorted. Perhaps little text files you can copy-paste to your scenery pack would be a good option...

If there's anything else you'd like to see added, send me a message or create a pull request on GitHub!