36 minutes ago, WarpD said:

Uh... no.  Absolutely not.  Developers need to fix their flawed approach.

I agree, and I hope they do, but that will take time...and my concern was regarding the approach from many end users thinking that they can easily start placing .XML files all over the place without understanding the real implications, I wanted to show an example that could be easy for them to understand since as you are aware is not an easy topic to discuss.

I am glad you guys have also to stepped in and clarified it further so PD3V4 users and forum members become more careful and aware of what this does.

Many thanks to all for your further comments.

Best wishes,

Simbol

1 hour ago, WarpD said:

Uh... no.  Absolutely not.  Developers need to fix their flawed approach.

"Until such time" as they do so is what I wrote. In the meantime trying to install anywhere other than the "traditional path" will be a never-ending futile task.

It's simple... refuse to purchase from a developer that refuses to support the proper installation.  If a developer is too lazy or just doesn't care about doing the right thing... why should a customer support them?

I"m a developer and I expect that things I produce will adhere to the installation requirements of v4.

Ed, not to seem pedantic, but L-M "suggests", "recommends" and gently enjoins folks to use the new method(s). Nowhere in their documentation is it a "requirement...."

Actually... that is pedantic.  LOL  They're trying to be 'nice'... but they really do want compliance.  They have hinted that compliance could become mandatory in the future.  So... be punctilious all you want. LOL

They even have requested that developers not hack v4 but rather request access to items directly.  Were you aware of that?

1 hour ago, WarpD said:

They even have requested that developers not hack v4 but rather request access to items directly.  Were you aware of that?

Well, of course LM is going to say that. But if the official SDK does not support an "official" way to implement a particular feature, then what is a 3rd party developer supposed to do? Quit and move on to XP11?  Maybe if LM improved some of the default features, like for example, ATC and weather, there would be no need for those third party developers at all.

1 hour ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Well, of course LM is going to say that. But if the official SDK does not support an "official" way to implement a particular feature, then what is a 3rd party developer supposed to do? Quit and move on to XP11?  Maybe if LM improved some of the default features, like for example, ATC and weather, there would be no need for those third party developers at all.

No... they were asked to inform L-M what capabilities were needed to support addons that used hacks.  They don't want to eliminate third party developers, they want to work with them.  However, it is L-M's software and thus it is up to them on what they will and will not support.

I know everyone wants to paint L-M has the "bad guy" here... but the truth is, they really aren't.

FWIW, I am in complete agreement with Ed. The problem is that each dev has their own priority. If the ATC mod isn't soon enough - they hack it, etc. With millions of lines of code changes will not be instantaneous and that seems to disturb some people. I cannot say when but I'd be willing to be that down the road, perhaps sooner than some think, the methodology for adding content to P3D will be mandatory.

Vic

2 hours ago, WarpD said:

I know everyone wants to paint L-M has the "bad guy" here... but the truth is, they really aren't.

Who is painting LM as a bad guy? IMO, they have the most capable and responsive flight sim development team. The rest are not much more than cottage industry operations, not that there's anything wrong with that, as long as their products are good. But it's disingenuous to say that LM is overly concerned about 3rd party developers who don't follow the SDK, 100% of the time. A statement about "hacking" is to discourage anyone from requesting official support from LM when and if a "hacking" type add-on causes P3d4 to go belly up. But my experience with LM's official technical support is their first response to any consumer support request is to ask about 3rd party add-ons, whether they follow the SDK or not.  I will give them some credit though, since recently they have been responding to CTD complaints by directing users to follow the Visual Studio debugging approach. In the past, problems caused by the interaction between P3d and a 3rd party add-on were left  in software purgatory, since basically, it was up to the 3rd party developer to provide a solution. Look how long the NTDLL.DLL CTD persisted with My Traffic 6. And that add-on didn't use any "hacking"