[Resolved] FSDT & Flight Beam PD3V4 install

[gregmorin 199]

I have been actively simming since FS98. There is still a lot to learn when a new simulator is released. My objective was to get my FSDT and Flight Beam airports up and working in PD3V4 and remain working in PD3V3. I retrospect think the new system is fantastic. It allows you to have the airports working in both simulators with only one install on your hard drive. It sure saves space and it works well. However, I fumbled around for a long time and at least 4 install uninstall cycles before I hit on a few key points.

1. The new installer wants to install in a predetermined place on your "C" drive. A have a small 250 GB ssd for the operating system, a 1TB ssd for my flight simulator files and a 2TB hhd for storage and back up. No way I want scenery files on the "C" drive. The good news is that you browse to a location of your choosing. Please be careful in your selection because after you install the first airport ALL future installs will got the same place. The only way to change the location is to uninstall everything! Yes I experienced this. The installer will automatically move every FSDT and Flight Beam airport to this location as part of the first install process. For 20 years I have been installing everything inside the sim root folder, so I had to try that first no matter what the directions said. Not a good idea. The add on Manager in now installed F/Add on Manager.

2. The new installers installs to both simulators at the same time! My experience has been that you needed to run the installer for each simulator you had. You should leave both sims checked if you are going to continue using PD3V3 along side PD3V4, as I am. Again, I ran the installer twice for both sims at least once. It is not necessary.

3. You must unistall SODE first not matter how recent your version is. It is listed as SimObject Display Engine in the program section of the control manager in Windows 7.

4. You must download and install the new GSX installer. This is how the compatible SODE  will be installed. Failure to do so will cause everything to work fine in PD3V3 but nothing in PD3V4. You will see the trial mode started message and no buildings in PD3V4 if you do not install the GSX. You will be unable to successfully register your code for the airport in PD3V4. I know I tried numerous times. You can enter the code and press register but nothing happens. The reality is that if you have registered in one of the sims that is good for both. 

5. I recommend that you uninstall all your FSDT and Flight Beam airports from PD3V3 first. You are going to download the installers to get everything in PD3V4 working and I think it is cleaner to just have one install entry. The first time I tried and let the installed airports in PD3V3 be moved, I had to run two uninstall operations for each airport.

I hope this long post will help save somebody some time and frustration. I really think this is a better system, once you get it working.

Greg

 

 

Edited June 2, 2017 by Poppet
[Resolved]

[jeansy 338]

Cheers for this, I noticed this lastnight after 30mins playing around I called it night

I will have another go today

[downscc 1,327]

16 minutes ago, gregmorin said:

I hope this long post will help save somebody some time and frustration. I really think this is a better system, once you get it working.

Perfect timing in my case.  I've just finished the Orbx FTX Central 3.2 install into P3Dv4 and was contemplating my addon scenery strategy for FSDT/Flightbeam. Many thanks Greg.

[sfgiants13 83]

Crap I only left V4 selected even though I will likely run V3 for a bit longer.  Will the installer have done anything to mess with my original installation in V3?  Or does it just mean that I will have each scenery installed twice.

[331BK 96]

57 minutes ago, gregmorin said:

I have been actively simming since FS98. There is still a lot to learn when a new simulator is released. My objective was to get my FSDT and Flight Beam airports up and working in PD3V4 and remain working in PD3V3. I retrospect think the new system is fantastic. It allows you to have the airports working in both simulators with only one install on your hard drive. It sure saves space and it works well. However, I fumbled around for a long time and at least 4 install uninstall cycles before I hit on a few key points.

1. The new installer wants to install in a predetermined place on your "C" drive. A have a small 250 GB ssd for the operating system, a 1TB ssd for my flight simulator files and a 2TB hhd for storage and back up. No way I want scenery files on the "C" drive. The good news is that you browse to a location of your choosing. Please be careful in your selection because after you install the first airport ALL future installs will got the same place. The only way to change the location is to uninstall everything! Yes I experienced this. The installer will automatically move every FSDT and Flight Beam airport to this location as part of the first install process. For 20 years I have been installing everything inside the sim root folder, so I had to try that first no matter what the directions said. Not a good idea. The add on Manager in now installed F/Add on Manager.

2. The new installers installs to both simulators at the same time! My experience has been that you needed to run the installer for each simulator you had. You should leave both sims checked if you are going to continue using PD3V3 along side PD3V4, as I am. Again, I ran the installer twice for both sims at least once. It is not necessary.

3. You must unistall SODE first not matter how recent your version is. It is listed as SimObject Display Engine in the program section of the control manager in Windows 7.

4. You must download and install the new GSX installer. This is how the compatible SODE  will be installed. Failure to do so will cause everything to work fine in PD3V3 but nothing in PD3V4. You will see the trial mode started message and no buildings in PD3V4 if you do not install the GSX. You will be unable to successfully register your code for the airport in PD3V4. I know I tried numerous times. You can enter the code and press register but nothing happens. The reality is that if you have registered in one of the sims that is good for both. 

5. I recommend that you uninstall all your FSDT and Flight Beam airports from PD3V3 first. You are going to download the installers to get everything in PD3V4 working and I think it is cleaner to just have one install entry. The first time I tried and let the installed airports in PD3V3 be moved, I had to run two uninstall operations for each airport.

I hope this long post will help save somebody some time and frustration. I really think this is a better system, once you get it working.

Greg

 

 

Thanks now i know what i did wrong

[gregmorin 199]

13 minutes ago, sfgiants13 said:

Crap I only left V4 selected even though I will likely run V3 for a bit longer.  Will the installer have done anything to mess with my original installation in V3?  Or does it just mean that I will have each scenery installed twice.

I do not think it hurts anything to have the original file in PD3V3. If you notice issues just uninstall and re-install.

Greg

[gregmorin 199]

9 minutes ago, 331BK said:

Thanks now i know what i did wrong

You are welcome.

Greg

[gregmorin 199]

49 minutes ago, downscc said:

Perfect timing in my case.  I've just finished the Orbx FTX Central 3.2 install into P3Dv4 and was contemplating my addon scenery strategy for FSDT/Flightbeam. Many thanks Greg.

You are welcome Dan. thanks for all you do for our hobby.

Greg

[gregmorin 199]

52 minutes ago, jeansy said:

Cheers for this, I noticed this lastnight after 30mins playing around I called it night

I will have another go today

Good luck Matt! I love your repaints!

Thanks for all you do.

Greg

[edpatino 1,960]

2 hours ago, gregmorin said:

I have been actively simming since FS98. There is still a lot to learn when a new simulator is released. My objective was to get my FSDT and Flight Beam airports up and working in PD3V4 and remain working in PD3V3.

Just one question: based on your experience, could I leave my P3Dv3.4 installation as it is, in the same drive and within the sim (old method), and proceed to install the FSDT and FB airports in P3Dv4 with the new installers and new method outside the main sim folder?. I'm not bothering too much about leaving P3Dv3 files untouched and duplicated, just because I'll uninstall P3Dv3 some time soon.

Thanks for your clarification.

Cheers, Ed

 

[gregmorin 199]

3 hours ago, edpatino said:

Just one question: based on your experience, could I leave my P3Dv3.4 installation as it is, in the same drive and within the sim (old method), and proceed to install the FSDT and FB airports in P3Dv4 with the new installers and new method outside the main sim folder?. I'm not bothering too much about leaving P3Dv3 files untouched and duplicated, just because I'll uninstall P3Dv3 some time soon.

Thanks for your clarification.

Cheers, Ed

 

Ed

No this would not work. FSDT will move all your PD3V3.4 to the new location when you install the first airport to PD3V4. You have no choice in this. However the PD3V3.4 airports will work just as well when they are moved.

Greg

[edpatino 1,960]

1 hour ago, gregmorin said:

Ed

No this would not work. FSDT will move all your PD3V3.4 to the new location when you install the first airport to PD3V4. You have no choice in this. However the PD3V3.4 airports will work just as well when they are moved.

Greg

Ok, Greg, thanks. I see this as quite restrictive. You know that the ordering of the layers in your scenery.cfg is quite important when you have priorities of one layer vs other, and I see this has not been taken into consideration and to me difficult to understand that it was detected during the tests (if FSDT made any). Were you succesful in moving your layers up/down as well after installing the sceneries or you're Ok with this?.

As per other threads here at Avsim, seems that there is no way (up to now) to reorder your layers after you move your FSDT sceneries. To me, FSDT makes always difficult even the most easy stuff. Now FSDT says that this is a LM problem!.

Thanks again, Ed

[gregmorin 199]

9 hours ago, edpatino said:

Were you succesful in moving your layers up/down as well after installing the sceneries or you're Ok with this?.

Ed,

The FSDT & Flight Beam airports do not show in the scenery cfg. You can not move the layers. Am I ok with this? I want the airports in PD3V4 so there is no choice.

Greg

Edited June 3, 2017 by gregmorin
typo

[edpatino 1,960]

2 hours ago, gregmorin said:

Ed,

The FSDT & Flight Beam airports do not show in the scenery cfg. You can not move the layers. Am I ok with this? I want the airports in PD3V4 so there is no choice.

Greg

Hi Greg, clear enough. Thanks for sharing your experience. I'll probably phase out the installation of FSDT airports into P3Dv4 until I uninstall P3Dv3.4 in several weeks, after several addons get updated to be compatible with P3Dv4.

Cheers, Ed

[downscc 1,327]

Before I started the FSDT/Flightbeam adventure, I had installed all my Orbx products (I have most of the regions, airports aren't ready yet) and I noted they went to the top of the scenery library. Fair enough, I hadn't set an insertion point yet so i added one airport from the P3Dv3\Addons directoy (my home base KCRP available in AVSIM) and set that to the top of the library.  Then I followed Greg's method to install all the FSDT/Flightbeam airports with the new installers.  I have all but KCLT.  All went as planned with entries made by the installer to the addon document folders and the scenery/texture files in my SSD D: drive.  I notice that although addons are not in the scenery.cfg file, they do appear when you open the World > Scenery Library menu item and they appear above my manually added KCRP and all the Orbx. So it appears as there is a proper order to things.

Now am I contemplating how to best install Pilot's FS Global NG mesh and I believe that this will be manual entries to the scenery.cfg to ensure proper placement.  I cannot find anything yet in the SDK that provides an ability to force a layer number with the add-on.xml.