General Install guidance for aerosoft products in P3Dv4

[mherzog 1]

Hello - I tried to find a forum post that might have provided this in both the airports and mega airports forums, but wasn't able to find it, so my apologies if this has been addressed.

 

There is a lot of talk about the "new" locations to install add-ons, and I am trying to do this as best I can.  Specifically, I am trying to install products outside of the Program Files/Lockheed Martin/Prepar3d v4/ folder and in a separate p3d v4 addons folder located elsewhere.  I did this in v3.4 as well with varying levels of success, and usually for the larger products (mega airports, Orbx, etc.) where the installers were pretty intent on still going into the Prepar3d folder, I let them go there, as I wanted to avoid any weird hiccups.

 

With v4 there seems to be an even greater push from LM and the community to build this outside structure and manage it with the xml documents (add-on.xml). 

 

I just downloaded all my aerosoft updates (oslo, tromso, vaernes, twin otter, etc.) but as I am starting the first one (Oslo v2), I don't see any options to put the scenery outside the standard Prepar3d application folder.  It's possible I could "trick" the installer by adding a dummy prepar3d.exe file, but I am guessing that will just end up giving me headaches after the install.

 

So, for now, I am just looking for guidance from the various developers on what they recommend.  It it's "put it in the prepar3d folder" that's fine, I just want to know I am doing that, because that's my only option, not that I just don't know the correct way to install elsewhere.

 

It appears FSDT did a full migration to another location, but I have not tested any of my other scenery yet to see if others are trying to be compliant, or preferring to keep things as they did in 3.4.

 

Thanks for any help/guidance on this topic. 

Mark

[masterhawk 799]

vor 2 Stunden , mherzog sagte:

Hello - I tried to find a forum post that might have provided this in both the airports and mega airports forums, but wasn't able to find it, so my apologies if this has been addressed.

 

There is a lot of talk about the "new" locations to install add-ons, and I am trying to do this as best I can.  Specifically, I am trying to install products outside of the Program Files/Lockheed Martin/Prepar3d v4/ folder and in a separate p3d v4 addons folder located elsewhere.  I did this in v3.4 as well with varying levels of success, and usually for the larger products (mega airports, Orbx, etc.) where the installers were pretty intent on still going into the Prepar3d folder, I let them go there, as I wanted to avoid any weird hiccups.

 

With v4 there seems to be an even greater push from LM and the community to build this outside structure and manage it with the xml documents (add-on.xml). 

 

I just downloaded all my aerosoft updates (oslo, tromso, vaernes, twin otter, etc.) but as I am starting the first one (Oslo v2), I don't see any options to put the scenery outside the standard Prepar3d application folder.  It's possible I could "trick" the installer by adding a dummy prepar3d.exe file, but I am guessing that will just end up giving me headaches after the install.

 

So, for now, I am just looking for guidance from the various developers on what they recommend.  It it's "put it in the prepar3d folder" that's fine, I just want to know I am doing that, because that's my only option, not that I just don't know the correct way to install elsewhere.

 

It appears FSDT did a full migration to another location, but I have not tested any of my other scenery yet to see if others are trying to be compliant, or preferring to keep things as they did in 3.4.

 

Thanks for any help/guidance on this topic. 

Mark

Hi, aerosoft install the addons in the ecosystem subfolder inside P3D. It is not completely separated. You can install it manually like you described somewhere else. Then you also have an overview of the files that go to the texture, effects, sound and scenery/world/scenery folders.

but then the installer will not be able to deactivate other files inside P3D, like it is required for Madeira for example.

you can register the addons with two methods:

1. using scenery, texture, effects, sound, simobjects cfg-files

2. using add-on.cfg and add-on.xml files

 

the first version can be managed via scenery library.

the second version can only be managed via options and then addons menu. But if you want to change the order of the entries you can only do it inside the add-on.cfg. It is not as comfortable as with the scenery library.

 

entries in the add-on.cfg are always on top ob the entries of the scenery.cfg

 

At the moment I have no idea how to handle the alt-fix files that belong to scenery/world/scenery. Maybe an separate external folder, that is registered via scenery.cfg and placed above the world entry at layer 2.

[mherzog 1]

ok.. so it sounds to me like the easiest approach is just let everything just install in their default locations rather than fight it  Otherwise, I may be in for more work than I want to try to maintain things.  My selfish reason for trying to isolate everything was I in fact am building a new sim up in mid July, and thought I might be able to just transfer my add-on to the new computer by adding that hard drive with all the sceneries  to the new computer.  Instead, I'll just plan on a full resinstall of scenery, etc in July.  It might be a smart move regardless, since many new changes/updates will have happened by then, and I may also have time to develop a new strategy for managing add-ons long term.

 

BTW - as far as how to handle the world/scenery files that are brought in... how you describe it is exactly how I believe others have been talking about doing it.

Thanks for the reply.

Mark