This entire process was designed to actually protect an installation.  By moving addon intallations outside the core sim's folders it protects both the sim and the addon.  No sim files get overwritten and addons can be disabled easily (no lengthy, painful uninstall/reinstall).

Sooner or later they're going to lock this down... what's the point of not complying?

Indeed, it seems to me that it's not LM's fault.  It appears that it is all on the side of developers and to, some degree, end users, who keep force-fitting addons into the sim.

4 hours ago, AviatorMan said:

So far the responses here just re-enforce the point I am trying to make - this is all a mess. Whether it began in v3 or v4, LM created the problem and they need to do something about it.

You have completely missed the point. LM *HAS* done something about it. They have protocols in place. The only thing they haven't done (YET) is to make them mandatory, but I assure you that WILL occur. P3D needs to have a locked down installation for LM to grow it in the future. They could have locked it in in V3 but the dev's were no where near ready for that. V4 is a stronger push and if any dev doesn't see the writing on the wall - they won't have P3D as a market.

Vic

I am leaning to agree with the OP.

There are the currently the two methods to install scenery.

Not all scenery is by a commercial vendor, there are amazing freeware sceneries to think about as well. Do we expect the freeware folks to develop coded installers to make them follow the new install procedure?

Whether one thinks that the xml approach is "easy" once you get the hang of it, this still requires a user to learn and understand the workings of the sim, SDK and a bunch of monkeying around to get it right. Further how the heck are we supposed to know if the scenery.cfg entries stuff is in the right code or not to not end up screwing it up.

And it has taken a third party to offer up a utility (currently free) to help sort out installs in the new format. And I don't know if its all working easily or not.

LM have some obviously superior technical staff (heck they make real fighter jets in their spare time) who could easily develop a small accompanying utility that would carry out the install using the new method, we should not be relying on a third party to provide the utility. I would have paid a small extra fee for this if offered to avoid me monkeying around with code to make it so.

Bryan

Ok... I have an airport scenery... custom done by myself.

To add this to Prepar3D v4 I did the following:

The airport scenery has one folder titled KJYO, inside that folder are a Scenery and a Texture folder.  I have this set of folders in a location of "G:\Addon Scenery\".  To install this scenery I created a folder in "Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons" named "Mindstar KJYO".  In that folder I placed an add-on.xml file that contains the following:

Quote

<SimBase.Document Type="AddOnXml" version="4,0" id="add-on">
    <AddOn.Name>KJYO Scenery</AddOn.Name>
    <AddOn.Description>Mindstar KJYO</AddOn.Description>
    <AddOn.Component>
        <Category>Scenery</Category>
        <Path>G:\Addon Scenery\KJYO</Path>
        <Name>KJYO</Name>
    </AddOn.Component>
</SimBase.Document>

That's all it took.  Any developer of scenery can accomplish this rather easily.  There are a great deal of freeware installers available to be used to create an installer that places files correctly.  There is no longer any valid excuse to not utilize this new method.  None.

54 minutes ago, WarpD said:

That's all it took.  Any developer of scenery can accomplish this rather easily.  There are a great deal of freeware installers available to be used to create an installer that places files correctly.  There is no longer any valid excuse to not utilize this new method.  None.

Okay, so why doesn't LM develop such a utility and make it the "LM approved" utility for installing addons into their product, the one that they are selling for $200?  Why leave this up to the many developers, with their varying degrees of expertise and resources? True, this standard may be an improvement, and LM may wish to enforce all addon developers to abide by it. But until we get to the point where most developers are prepared to abide by the standard, why leave the customers in the middle of figuring all of this out? I mean, even Orbx, with their expertise and resources, are not abiding by the standard.

Well, in a way they have - look in the sdk for the Command Line method of installing. You create the files as Ed did above and then just run P3D with the proper options and it will happily install the product for you. At some point the user has to accept SOME responsibility for managing products on their system. And, IMHO, why should LM spend valuable man hours developing a tool that someone else has already provided? Next people will be asking for them to cut out the 3PD's completely and provide their own scenery and aircraft.

Vic

 

6 hours ago, newtie said:

How do you install an airport with PAO that uses an .exe?

 

Mark

I created a folder on my HDD called "Addons"  place Prepare3D.exe in that folder and point your installer to that folder.

Looks like LM has made the cleaner process available for third party developer, however, at this point it is optional. It might be good for those who purchase third party products to ask the third party developers to align their process to the recommended LM method. I can see this being transitional for v4, but required for v5. This is reasonable to give third parties time to change their process during the next two years. 

When, in pretty much every other flight sim, and in fact with pretty much every other bit of software made in the past 20 years, it is simply a case of double-clicking on an installation file and occasionally pointing it to the main program's path to install things, it is a ridiculous step backwards in terms of user friendliness to have people start learning how to use extensible markup language to achieve that. It shouldn't be called Prepar3D because you have to be prepared start learning about background files and coding, even if it is really basic coding.

I have to teach that stuff when I present many of my more in-depth courses, but we never hit on it on intro courses, and rarely do so on intermediate courses either. And there is a reason for that; it isn't bloody necessary if a base program has a decent GUI which makes doing that stuff user-friendly: I know from experience of teaching for literally years, that lots of people do not want to get into that kind of thing and some people are even anxious about it as they are not inclined to be into that kind of thing. So it's all very well for us computer nerds to say 'it's not that hard' to learn, because that's not the point. It shouldn't be necessary fro and end-user to learn it and it doesn't need to be either if  developers could be arsed to create a more user-friendly method. In a world where people can literally completely reset everything on an iPad by tapping on a couple of options on screen, without even knowing how to type a single character of code, getting end users to start creating xml files just to have something point to a couple of folders, is preposterous. That's the developer's job, it's what they are being paid for when people buy a sim or an add-on.

No one is saying it's up to the end user... at least I'm not seeing any posts that say that, except those who are railing against the new addon installation process.

I stated it's up to the developers.  I stated it's up to the freeware developers as well.  It is totally, absolutely and completely up to the developers to do the right thing and comply with the new standards for installation.

If an end user doesn't like the new method because they want to use legacy addons that are not v4 compliant... that's on the end user and no one else.

I am not as tech savvy as many folks on these and other forums so sometimes, flight simulators and their add-ons can seem like a chore. And now with P3Dv4, and the install confusion with many add-ons I can see potential new comers turn away just because they are scared away by what appears to be complexity. 

Developers should be working to make the hobby and their products simple and easy to use. Simplicity may help grow the user base of flight simulation. I hate having to go look for this file or folder, delete this or add that, unzip this here or turn this on or disable that. It is all so annoying at times. I can't imagine what it looks like for a beginner (young or old) looking to get started in flight simulation.

How do you set priority for these addon xml sceneries?

 

I understand for airport scenery, you put it on top most layer and the order of the airport sceneries does not matter. They are peers and don't step on each other usually.

But now think of Megascenery or (DD's Miami city scenery but I want Latin VFR Miami above it DD's Miami city)   , if its installed within this addon xml within  document folder.. How do I say,  I want this above the P3D standard stuff but below all the airport sceneries? 

In the xml file you put in <layer> ###</layer> to specify the layer. Otherwise it defaults to top.

 

IMHO, there is no reason the USER should have to worry about installing addons unless the developer won't do it. How is that LM's fault? If you have scenery, ask the dev for an installer. If you're trying jam an old FSX product into P3D, again, that's YOUR problem not LM's.

 

Vic

5 hours ago, WarpD said:

No one is saying it's up to the end user... at least I'm not seeing any posts that say that, except those who are railing against the new addon installation process.

I stated it's up to the developers.  I stated it's up to the freeware developers as well.  It is totally, absolutely and completely up to the developers to do the right thing and comply with the new standards for installation.

If an end user doesn't like the new method because they want to use legacy addons that are not v4 compliant... that's on the end user and no one else.

It is absolutely up to the developers, where they still exist!

For example, Earth Simulations is not longer around, but their sceneries are great, and I'd like to use them in v4.  Those of us that are willing to dabble in xml can help out others who don't want to, to get things working for them.

I love the new methodology, makes much more sense :)