When installing A2A 172, I find that it installs everything into my Documents folder? Is there a way to prevent this from happening, because I have a 128GB SSD drive for my main C: drive and that's primarily for my OS only. 

Hi Aaron,

That's according to Prepar3D's strategy to install addons outside of the simulator installation folder. It's described here in the SDK.
You can move your documents folder to another drive however. Here's a description.

Maarten

This is going to be a nightmare going forward. We will have addons all over the place without a conscious effort on our part to keep things organized, barring we don't screw things up in the process. And when we do reorganize to our liking, how will that impact future addons, or programs that interface with other addons? 

What is the point in having an SDK outline procedures and processes, if one developer does one thing, and another does the polar opposite.

As of right now, I installed A2A, Aerosoft, and FSDT. And they all follow different rules on SimObjects/Scenery folder locations, add-on.cfg (ProgramData or Docs folder), etc etc etc....total mess. 

 

 

 

Yes I agree, all of this is going to become a mess... I really wish everyone can follow the same rules and have a centralized area for ALL add-ons... so far, things are all over the place... this is one thing I can't stand about FSX/P3D. At least in X-Plane the file structure is so much easier and much more organized. With P3D/FSX we seem to have files all over the place. I really hope they do something about this.

Just now, captain420 said:

I really wish everyone can follow the same rules and have a centralized area for ALL add-ons... so far, things are all over the place... t

This and yes...+1 Duhhhh

Hmm I am glad I saw this topic before installing addons. Where do addon Scenery files go?

I don't want to redirect my entire User folder to my S:SIM drive.

This may be very messy indeed.

My A2A 172 installed to the doc. folder. FSDT only installed add-on.eml files there. I installed my Fly Tampa sceneries to the usual place; the sim root folder and it runs just fine.

Its probably ok for me right now as I have more free space on my windows drive than I do on my sim drive.

Does anyone know the reason LM decided this method?

Plus there are other issues, such as, those who use Precipitfx or Chaseplane, since those require access to simobject.cfg  aircraft.cfg in each aircraft folder. If those addons are now installed anywhere other than the P3D\Simobjects\Airplanes folder, those programs will not work correctly. All I know is that VFXCentral among others have the work cut out for them.

15 minutes ago, bills511 said:

 

Does anyone know the reason LM decided this method?

The idea is that you could do a complete reinstall the sim and not have to reinstall any of your addons.  FSDT seems to have the right idea in that you install the bulk of the addon to another location of the users choice and only the xml file goes into the document folder.  From what you are saying A2A have not chosen to do things this way.

Way too much MISinformation here!  *IF* an add-on installs the whole package in the Documents folder, the dev did it wrong. All that goes in the docs folder is the Add-on.xml file which tells P3D where to find the add-on. The add-on itself should NOT be installed in the docs folder.

It's just like the simobjects.cfg file - it tells P3D where the a/c files are located.

I've seen a LOT of posts saying that all the add-ons are in the docs folder. That is not LM's fault.

Frankly, IMHO, I wish LM would have forced any dev to adhere to their file structure but, for now, they still allow the old antiquated format to persist.

@SolRayz - that should have no effect on Chaseplane or Precipitfx as far as simobjects.cfg goes - that remains the same - simobjects.cfg contains the location of the a/c and those programs make their adjustments accordingly.

Vic

Hi Aaron,

For sceneries it's the same thing: the scenery.cfg file in the '%ProgramData%\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4' folder still works (and scenery folders can be placed anywhere on your machine by setting the local= key for the scenery layer in question; the local= key is relative to the simulator installation folder, but can also be an absolute path), but scenery publishers can also choose to install in the '%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons' folder where an add-on.xml file points to the scenery folder (which can be anywhere by setting the <Path> element to either a path relative to the simulator installation folder or to an absolute path).

@Marc: finding the aircraft.cfg or sim.cfg (not simobject.cfg btw) files is no issue: you can just search through the '[sim installation folder]\SimObjects' folder for aircraft.cfg and sim.cfg files and process all the add-on.xml files in the '%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons' folder, look for <Category>SimObjects</Category> addon components and search through the folders pointed to by the <Path> elements. No big deal, and that's what I do in SimLauncherX.

The reason LM wants all addons outside of the simulator folder, is to make the update process easier.

Maarten

Then I guess A2A is at fault then for not adhering to LM's standards. Because the entire plane and all of its associated files are installed into the user's documents folder... FSDT did things correct. Sigh.

10 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

@SolRayz - that should have no effect on Chaseplane or Precipitfx as far as simobjects.cfg goes - that remains the same - simobjects.cfg contains the location of the a/c and those programs make their adjustments accordingly.

Vic,

That's not completely true. Processing the simobjects.cfg file is not enough. You will not find aircraft installed in the documents folder if you do it that way. That's what the add-on.xml files are for. A2A does follow the guidelines set out by LM in my opinion (see this page in the SDK).

Maarten

Thank you Maarten - I stand corrected. I'm still wrapping my head around the add-on.xml concept! 

 

Vic

1 hour ago, SolRayz said:

This is going to be a nightmare going forward. We will have addons all over the place without a conscious effort on our part to keep things organized, barring we don't screw things up in the process. And when we do reorganize to our liking, how will that impact future addons, or programs that interface with other addons? 

What is the point in having an SDK outline procedures and processes, if one developer does one thing, and another does the polar opposite.

As of right now, I installed A2A, Aerosoft, and FSDT. And they all follow different rules on SimObjects/Scenery folder locations, add-on.cfg (ProgramData or Docs folder), etc etc etc....total mess. 

 

 

 

Please see the post on Virtuali on prepar3d.com forums.

 

All FSDT P3Dv4 installations are outside and it is amazing.  All we need is the biggest addon player to follow suit - which is Orbx now.

 

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6312&t=124701#p158461

 

We need all the addons to go outside that way we can all isolate problems easily.  Besides reinstall will never suck and not waste time.  By the document folder is super easy to move, it literally is one click.

 

If Developers do not follow simple guidelines, it is easy to reference location for Prepar3d v4 then <insert profanity here>.