I am still deciding whether or not I should reinstall a clean copy of P3D. I am currently on v4.1 and just ran into some issues that I can't resolve. I am considering reinstalling from scratch as a last resort but I have some questions and concerns that I hope some of you here could help me with.

1. I currently have a lot of third party scenery, planes (PMDG, Carenado, QW787), AI, weather (Active Sky+ASCA), textures packages (Rex Skyforce 3d,, ENVTEX), FS2Crew, ORBX Global, Vector, OpenLC, Regions, Airports, etc. Will all of these have to be reinstalled again? I hope not. Isn't that one of the reasons why Lockheed Martin introduced the new method of installing add-ons by having developers install outside of the main P3D install folder via the add-on.xml method? But I still see some developers defaulting their installs inside of the P3D install folder still such as ORBX, Aerosoft, Flytampa, etc.
2. My biggest add-ons and the ones taking the most amount of install time would have to be from ORBX. That is the one I worry about the most. Since all of those files are contained inside my P3D's install folder, I'm afraid I have no choice but to reinstall these all over again. You would hope to see such a big company as ORBX to comply with and follow the new best practices by installing outside of the P3D environment. Sigh. Why don't they change this? It would make reinstalling P3D less of a hassle should things go wrong.
3. Is there a way to install ORBX addons the proper way? If I am going to reinstall P3D all over again, I want to make sure that all my 3rd party add-ons gets installed properly and nothing remains inside my main P3D's install folder except for the vanilla P3D files only! I don't want any 3rd party addons touching or modifying any files inside that folder. Should I have problems again, I can simply reinstall P3D and not have to worry about reinstalling all my add-ons all over again. This is the type of install/setup I would like to have.

Edited June 20, 20187 yr by captain420

I installed v4 and did not have to re-install any add-ons including Orbx. You should be ok!

How did you manage to do a clean install and still have ORBX working? When you installed ORBX it installs into your P3D folder. When I mean clean install I mean, completely uninstalling P3D, even folders that don't automatically get removed such as the ones inside %APPDATA% and C:\ProgramData.

Edited June 20, 20187 yr by captain420

Unless LM forces Orbx and few other major developers to install outside the sim.  Almost majority of them will not follow.  I have repeatedly requested Orbx to install outside the sim, and asked LM to enforce it.  Once Orbx moves out of the sim directory, just watch almost everyone will move outside too.

But for now, you should be able to do client update only when 4.3 and it should leave all your addons as is.  Please see the tips and tricks section of the P3D forum.  The guide by Poppet is well written and should help you ou.

 

 

5 hours ago, Skywolf said:

Unless LM forces Orbx and few other major developers to install outside the sim.  Almost majority of them will not follow.  I have repeatedly requested Orbx to install outside the sim, and asked LM to enforce it.  Once Orbx moves out of the sim directory, just watch almost everyone will move outside too.

But for now, you should be able to do client update only when 4.3 and it should leave all your addons as is.  Please see the tips and tricks section of the P3D forum.  The guide by Poppet is well written and should help you ou.

 

 

The OP speaks about a fresh install, from scratch, of P3D, which is a totally different case of a client or another module update.

Cheers, Ed

If you do go down the road of re-installing P3D. Next time install Orbx files outside the main folder and use a symbolic link. This will avoid the problem in future and also help with managing your drives. My Orbx file is huge and getting bigger so it is on a separate drive with plenty of room available.

35 minutes ago, edpatino said:

The OP speaks about a fresh install, from scratch, of P3D, which is a totally different case of a client or another module update.

Cheers, Ed

You are right, my bad.  I spent a lot of free time today on the forums.  Mixing threads and what not

2 minutes ago, Skywolf said:

You are right, my bad.  I spent a lot of free time today on the forums.  Mixing threads and what not

No problem. Anyway, the post is an interesting one, for sure. I was wondering the same days ago, now that everybody can install a lot of things outside the P3D root.

Cheers, Ed

 

I also want to know if its possible to install ORBX outside of P3D properly. Not using symbolic links but using the add-on.xml method. If so, would it be too much work? I know ORBX Global replaces the default textures, would be nice if it can install its own textures in its own self contained folder outside of P3D, so nothing gets overwritten. Thats what I want to avoid. I don't like when 3rd party add-ons make any sort of replacing or removing files in my main P3D install.

2 hours ago, captain420 said:

I also want to know if its possible to install ORBX outside of P3D properly. Not using symbolic links but using the add-on.xml method. If so, would it be too much work? I know ORBX Global replaces the default textures, would be nice if it can install its own textures in its own self contained folder outside of P3D, so nothing gets overwritten. Thats what I want to avoid. I don't like when 3rd party add-ons make any sort of replacing or removing files in my main P3D install.

What's the difference? Both methods allow storage space to be optimised and minimise the time needed to do a full re-install of P3D.