How to manually add scenery/addons into P3D v4 the right way

[captain420 3,099]

I believe this should be stickied or pinned. There are several threads going on about people trying to copy over existing add on airports to P3D v4 with success. But there seems to be a fair amount of confusion on a few others, including me on how to properly do this.

Currently I am manually adding the scenery from P3D v4's World > Scenery Library manual and that for the most part has worked. But I also see people manually editing xml files such as add-on.xml, and addon.cfg and such. Is this really necessary? And then again, some add-ons include more than just a scenery and textures folder but also install files into Effects, Sound, and sometimes Scenery/World/Scenery folder as well. So my next question is how do we deal with those files when we want to install everything outside of P3D v4's default install folder, keeping it as clean as possible while having all our add-ons outside of that folder. How can this be accomplished?

For example, I have moved over my Aerosoft Dillingham's Airport folder from P3D v3, and put it in a location called E:\P3D Addons\ and inside there I have made a folder called Aerosoft Dillingham, and inside of that there are Effects, Scenery, Textures. Sound folder... but there's one file that requires me to copy it into my P3D v4/Scenery/World/Scenery folder. I'm not sure how to deal with this file because I don't want it to be inside my P3D v4's default folder, so where do I place this file?

It would be nice if someone can explain the process in detail or if someone can provide us with a video tutorial on how to manage these add-ons for P3D v4, it would benefit the community greatly.

[biloo 20]

27 minutes ago, captain420 said:

I believe this should be stickied or pinned. There are several threads going on about people trying to copy over existing add on airports to P3D v4 with success. But there seems to be a fair amount of confusion on a few others, including me on how to properly do this.

Currently I am manually adding the scenery from P3D v4's World > Scenery Library manual and that for the most part has worked. But I also see people manually editing xml files such as add-on.xml, and addon.cfg and such. Is this really necessary? And then again, some add-ons include more than just a scenery and textures folder but also install files into Effects, Sound, and sometimes Scenery/World/Scenery folder as well. So my next question is how do we deal with those files when we want to install everything outside of P3D v4's default install folder, keeping it as clean as possible while having all our add-ons outside of that folder. How can this be accomplished?

For example, I have moved over my Aerosoft Dillingham's Airport folder from P3D v3, and put it in a location called E:\P3D Addons\ and inside there I have made a folder called Aerosoft Dillingham, and inside of that there are Effects, Scenery, Textures. Sound folder... but there's one file that requires me to copy it into my P3D v4/Scenery/World/Scenery folder. I'm not sure how to deal with this file because I don't want it to be inside my P3D v4's default folder, so where do I place this file?

It would be nice if someone can explain the process in detail or if someone can provide us with a video tutorial on how to manage these add-ons for P3D v4, it would benefit the community greatly.

I was also adding sceneries manually into library early this morning but i realized used addon.xml is a better method. I will post my method using old installers how I am able to safely add sceneries without touching core structures.

I wish there was also a way to add freeware aircraft to p3d without touching simobjects folder.

[downscc 1,327]

The SDK allows add-on.xml to add scenery, textures, simobjects, etc. Why not?

[captain420 3,099]

Okay please share a guide or tutorial on how we can manage to get our old scenery and add-ons from P3D v3 and prior into P3D v4 the right way please. So that way we don't miss other files that gets copied into internal folders like Effects, Sound, and others that we're unaware of.

[Guest JustanotherPilot]

1 hour ago, captain420 said:

Okay please share a guide or tutorial on how we can manage to get our old scenery and add-ons from P3D v3 and prior into P3D v4 the right way please. So that way we don't miss other files that gets copied into internal folders like Effects, Sound, and others that we're unaware of.

+1

I confused with all the variations on the same theme with this add-on.xml, some posts say one thing others another, a concise guide with examples for aircraft and scenery installations, writing the xml code and folders to place the add-on.xml

[Lorby_SI 2,038]

You can always find the latest version in my Lorby-SI support forum here on AVSIM.

https://www.avsim.com/forums/forum/788-lorby-si-support-forum/

 

 

On 6/5/2017 at 3:06 PM, captain420 said:

For example, I have moved over my Aerosoft Dillingham's Airport folder from P3D v3, and put it in a location called E:\P3D Addons\ and inside there I have made a folder called Aerosoft Dillingham, and inside of that there are Effects, Scenery, Textures. Sound folder... but there's one file that requires me to copy it into my P3D v4/Scenery/World/Scenery folder. I'm not sure how to deal with this file because I don't want it to be inside my P3D v4's default folder, so where do I place this file?

The XML to reflect your installation would look like this:
C:\Users\...\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons\Aerosoft Dillingham\add-on.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="AddOnXml" version="4,0" id="add-on">
<AddOn.Name>Aerosoft Dillingham</AddOn.Name>
<AddOn.Description>Content for scenery</AddOn.Description>
<AddOn.Component>
  <Category>Scenery</Category>
  <Path>E:\P3D Addons\Aerosoft Dillingham</Path>
<Name>Aerosoft Dillingham</Name>
  </AddOn.Component>
<AddOn.Component>
  <Category>Effects</Category>
  <Path>E:\P3D Addons\Aerosoft Dillingham\Effects</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
<AddOn.Component>
  <Category>Sound</Category>
  <Path>E:\P3D Addons\Aerosoft Dillingham\Sound</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
</SimBase.Document>

The "<Category>Scenery" tag assumes that you have the folders organized like this:
E:\P3D Addons\Aerosoft Dillingham\Scenery
E:\P3D Addons\Aerosoft Dillingham\Texture

For organizing the layer numbers IMHO you need a tool. The "<Category>Scenery" tag in this example doesn't have a "<Layer>" tag, so it will just be placed on top of the library. If you want to control this manually, then this would put it right above the default scenery.cfg

...
<AddOn.Component>
  <Category>Scenery</Category>
  <Path>E:\P3D Addons\Aerosoft Dillingham</Path>
  <Name>Aerosoft Dillingham</Name>
  <Layer>127</Layer>
</AddOn.Component>
...

For those bgl files that need to go into the base layer, I suggest creating an additional folder:
E:\P3D Addons\BaseLayer\Scenery

and the corresponding XML:
C:\Users\...\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons\Base Layer\add-on.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="AddOnXml" version="4,0" id="add-on">
  <AddOn.Name>My Base Layer</AddOn.Name>
  <AddOn.Description>BGL files for the base scenery layer</AddOn.Description>
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Category>Scenery</Category>
    <Path>E:\P3D Addons\BaseLayer</Path>
    <Name>BaseLayerBGLs</Name>
    <Layer>1</Layer>
  </AddOn.Component>
</SimBase.Document>

Example for aircraft:

To collect my fire fighting aircraft in one place, I created a folder in Documents:
C:\Users\...\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons\FireFightingAircraft\Content
(that was my choice, it is not necessary to do it like that - you can put that folder anywhere)
When installing the aircraft I point the installer at this folder. So I end up having "SimObjects", "Gauges", "Effects", "Sound" in there.
The XML looks like this:
C:\Users\...\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons\FireFightingAircraft\add-on.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="AddOnXml" version="4,0" id="add-on">
<AddOn.Name>FireFighting Aircraft</AddOn.Name>
<AddOn.Description>Content for FF addons</AddOn.Description>
<AddOn.Component>
  <Category>SimObjects</Category>
  <Path>Content\SimObjects\Airplanes</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
<AddOn.Component>
  <Category>SimObjects</Category>
  <Path>Content\SimObjects\Rotorcraft</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
<AddOn.Component>
  <Category>Effects</Category>
  <Path>Content\Effects</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
<AddOn.Component>
  <Category>Gauges</Category>
  <Path>Content\Gauges</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
<AddOn.Component>
  <Category>Sound</Category>
  <Path>Content\Sound</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
</SimBase.Document>

I suggest using Notepad++ for editing XML files.

[captain420 3,099]

Oliver outstanding! Thanks for the informative and well detailed explanation. Hopefully this should help others as well. I will give this a try and see how it goes.

I use Sublime Text for my text editor btw, so I think I'll be okay.

[Lorby_SI 2,038]

11 minutes ago, captain420 said:

Oliver outstanding! Thanks for the informative and well detailed explanation. Hopefully this should help others as well. I will give this a try and see how it goes.

I use Sublime Text for my text editor btw, so I think I'll be okay.

Yes, well. The scenery and aircraft developers of old used many tricks to make their products work, and so far I haven't been too lucky in finding products that work without causing a massive amount of content errors (which lead to stutters in my sim). Some addons rely on the folder structure of the base simulator, and these cannot work with the XML based method.

Textures seem to have changed. I have quite a lot of scenery and aircraft where parts are invisible.

YMMV

Best regards and good luck!
Oliver

[Lorby_SI 2,038]

Q: Can I have more than one AddOn.Component of the same type in an add-on.xml? For example multiple Scenery entries?

A: Yes. You could reference all your addon sceneries in a single xml. But when in the sim, you can only disable the whole xml, not individual parts of it.

Best regards

[keithb77 308]

4 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

Q: Can I have more than one AddOn.Component of the same type in an add-on.xml? For example multiple Scenery entries?

A: Yes. You could reference all your addon sceneries in a single xml. But when in the sim, you can only disable the whole xml, not individual parts of it.

Best regards

So for instance this could be a good way to have a set of photo-real sceneries that can be disabled with one click, or group sceneries by global area (USA, Europe etc) and only have the appropriate ones active :)

Cheers

Keith

[Boeing or not going 578]

texturemaxload=12 could fix it too. 30 is really high and might be a drag on your system.

You can try texture bandwidth multiplayer higher than 30 I changed mine to fsx steam's setting of 160 and that got rid of the slow texture loading and I did not need to add texturemaxload

[gboz 157]

40 minutes ago, 777200lrf said:

texturemaxload=12 could fix it too. 30 is really high and might be a drag on your system.

You can try texture bandwidth multiplayer higher than 30 I changed mine to fsx steam's setting of 160 and that got rid of the slow texture loading and I did not need to add texturemaxload

?

Think you might  have the wrong  thread here.

gb.

[aeronauta 67]

For all to read is the section of the Learning Centre H:\Prepar3d V4\Learning Centre.chm  SDK> ADD-ons>Add-on Packages  this contains very clear info about add ons..

Jorge

[Boeing or not going 578]

2 minutes ago, gboz said:

?

Think you might  have the wrong  thread here.

gb.

I did thank you in the OP's other topic right below

[Cargostorm 151]

7 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

Q: Can I have more than one AddOn.Component of the same type in an add-on.xml? For example multiple Scenery entries?

A: Yes. You could reference all your addon sceneries in a single xml. But when in the sim, you can only disable the whole xml, not individual parts of it.

Best regards

I do not understand what the advantage of using add-on.xml is over using scenery.cfg and simobjects.cfg files as in V3?

If you have to import > 100 sceneries into add-on.xml this is going to be a mess....