Flightbeam's KMSP not showing up in addon organizer (v4), but does show up in (v3.4)

[mherzog 0]

Last night I installed KMSP (using Flightbeam's new add-on manager) as well as udpdated all my FSDT airports (including the other Flightbeam airports still managed by virtuali's add-on manager.  Everything seems to have worked as expected and I have opened both v3.4 and v4 to confirm KMSP is working.

Now opening up this addon organizer (v0.96, I believe), I can see all the FSDT scenery in the add-on manager as well as the KMSP scenery when I view the 3.4 add-ons.  However when I toggle to viewing the v4 add-on in the addon organizer everything is there EXCEPT KMSP.  I noticed virtuali's add-on manager moved all the scenery outside P3D  and from what I can tell follows recommended approach provided by LM in the SDK.  I am pretty sure KMSP is not (currently) doing this quite the same.  Is that the reason it was not picked up via the add-on manager?  I do notice that Flightbeam has installed an entry in the addon.cfg file (the only entry [xxxx.0] at this point) in ../appdata/roaming/Lockheed Martin/Prepar3d v4/  I thought addon organizer also looked in there when building the xml tree, but maybe not.

So ultimately my question is --- should I manually add this scenery into my v4 part of the addon organizer, or will that cause some hiccups (since it appears to be working now in P3D,and I don't want to create some sort of conflict, where there are 2 KMSP entries that P3D is trying to handle)?  If I don't add it, it seems then it will not be included when I export the scenery.cfg using addon organizer to then run MakeRwys.exe or the like (I have not tested this, though).

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

25 minutes ago, mherzog said:

I do notice that Flightbeam has installed an entry in the addon.cfg file (the only entry [xxxx.0] at this point) in ../appdata/roaming/Lockheed Martin/Prepar3d v4/  I thought addon organizer also looked in there when building the xml tree, but maybe not.

It does. The question is, why there is nothing to see.

The file in question is "\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3d V4\add-ons.cfg", right? That one is used by P3D itself too, to remember auto-discovered addons. What encoding does this file have?

If you follow the Path designated by the package entry that you describe - is there an add-on.xml present at the other end? If there is, can you please post the contents of that file and check the encoding?

Best regards

 

[Piotr007 164]

Another issue with a developer proclaiming P3D V4 compatibility. I am getting sceptic about all of the advertisements. They are for the money!!

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

1 minute ago, Piotr007 said:

Another issue with a developer proclaiming P3D V4 compatibility. I am getting sceptic about all of the advertisements. They are for the money!!

Please don't.  The new addon system in P3D confuses a lot of us.  Mir works really hard on these airports.  They're truly done extremely well and he's only done a few over the years.  Yes, he wants to get paid for all of that work but that's not all it's about.  Try to have some trust.

[Piotr007 164]

2 minutes ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

Please don't.  The new addon system in P3D confuses a lot of us.  Mir works really hard on these airports.  They're truly done extremely well and he's only done a few over the years.  Yes, he wants to get paid for all of that work but that's not all it's about.  Try to have some trust.

Then there is an option to test before selling. But that is only my opinion. I just bought juststim's ELLX and I have issues with textures (blurry) and runway lights (weak/dark). The installer says it can install in P3D V4, but there it ends. 

Sorry, but I will have to wait before buying new scenery. It simply costs a lot of money and it has to be high quality.

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

4 minutes ago, Piotr007 said:

Sorry, but I will have to wait before buying new scenery. It simply costs a lot of money and it has to be high quality.

That's wise.  Yeah, they do cost a lot and add up.  Myself, I hardly ever buy an airport or any add-on on day one.  Still haven't bought P3D4 (probably won't until the first patch) so things get ironed out and settle down.  In the case of this airport, I suspect he'll have it fixed quickly (if it's reported on his forum). 

[garrett_frank 150]

2 hours ago, Piotr007 said:

Sorry, but I will have to wait before buying new scenery. It simply costs a lot of money and it has to be high quality.

Peter: comparing Mir and his team's difficulty at understanding the [somewhat] new yet arcane addon facility to a disingenuous turn-em-and-burn-em scenery developer isn't quite right.

[mherzog 0]

3 hours ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

Please don't.  The new addon system in P3D confuses a lot of us.  Mir works really hard on these airports.  They're truly done extremely well and he's only done a few over the years.

agreed! on all points.  Only flew around a little bit last night in v4 in the default Mooney, but it was a lot of fun... great airport, great performance even at "ultra" setting...100% happy with the purchase.  .

 

3 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

What encoding does this file have?

If you follow the Path designated by the package entry that you describe - is there an add-on.xml present at the other end? If there is, can you please post the contents of that file and check the encoding?

Thanks for quick reply, and apologies that I can't offer the same in return.  This is what I get for asking a question away from the sim.  I will investigate this in a few hours and post.

[Piotr007 164]

1 hour ago, garrett_frank said:

Peter: comparing Mir and his team's difficulty at understanding the [somewhat] new yet arcane addon facility to a disingenuous turn-em-and-burn-em scenery developer isn't quite right.

Hm okay, fair enough. I was not aware of this. I learned a lesson and never buy that stuff again. Oh well, ELLX isn't such a drama after all. Just leave at it.

[mherzog 0]

7 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

The file in question is "\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3d V4\add-ons.cfg", right? That one is used by P3D itself too, to remember auto-discovered addons. What encoding does this file have?

Yes.  it is encoded as UTF-8 and has the following text:

[Package.0]
PATH=E:\users\mherzog\My Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons\Flightbeam - KMSP
ACTIVE=true
REQUIRED=false

 

7 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

If you follow the Path designated by the package entry that you describe - is there an add-on.xml present at the other end? If there is, can you please post the contents of that file and check the encoding?

Yes. it is encoded as UTF-8 BOM and has the following text:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="AddOnXml" version="4,0" id="add-on">
  <AddOn.Name>Flightbeam - KMSP</AddOn.Name>
  <AddOn.Description>Flightbeam - Minneapolis St. Paul Intl. Airport for Prepar3D</AddOn.Description>
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Name>Flightbeam - KMSP scenery</Name>
    <Category>Scenery</Category>
    <Path>E:\Program Files\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Flightbeam\Flightbeam - KMSP\scenery</Path>
  </AddOn.Component>
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Category>Texture</Category>
    <Path>E:\Program Files\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Flightbeam\Flightbeam - KMSP\texture</Path>
  </AddOn.Component>
</SimBase.Document>

 

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

6 hours ago, mherzog said:

Yes.  it is encoded as UTF-8 and has the following text:

And that would be the root of the problem, I think.

P4AO expects all "*.cfg" files of the simulator to be in Unicode - UCS-2 Little Endian.

Best regards

[mherzog 0]

Hmmm --- I assume Flightbeam add on manager did that during install?  Is that something I should let them know about (i.e. will that affect them in other ways other than your software)?  As I had never touched those files except to review them for you.  I will resave them as UCS-2 Little Endian and see if that resolves the issue.

 

Thanks

[mherzog 0]

actually all the other add-on.xmls are utf-8 as well... but those do get read by your software.  But perhaps you are specifically saying the *.cfg files must be UCS-2 ?

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

2 minutes ago, mherzog said:

actually all the other add-on.xmls are utf-8 as well... but those do get read by your software.  But perhaps you are specifically saying the *.cfg files must be UCS-2 ?

Exactly. It is only the "*.cfg" files of the simulator that are in Unicode now.

XML is by definition UTF-8 or -16, and ideally it has the text declaration line at the top, confirming that.

[mherzog 0]

... and to confirm... I converted add-on.cfg in the /AppData/Roaming/Lockheed Martin/Prepar3d v4/ directory and it is now detected in your addon organizer software. I wonder if it was just an issue because it was the FIRST piece of text added to that file, or if Flightbeam ends up converting it to utf-8 regardless.  Perhaps minor... but I'll give them the heads up just in case.

 

Thanks for your help.