I just purchased P3d V4.4 a couple of days ago.  I'm wondering where I put library objects, AFCADS/ sceneries and Mess.  In FSX there was Addon scenery.  I know that like Flightbeam, FSDT create their own folders.  I have the latest ADE, but don't know where to put them.  And I have all of my library objects I use for FSX there.  I didn't see any kind of manual.  How do those who has been using p3d for a long time have theirs setup?

2 hours ago, johnk51 said:

I just purchased P3d V4.4 a couple of days ago.  I'm wondering where I put library objects, AFCADS/ sceneries and Mess.  In FSX there was Addon scenery.  I know that like Flightbeam, FSDT create their own folders.  I have the latest ADE, but don't know where to put them.  And I have all of my library objects I use for FSX there.  I didn't see any kind of manual.  How do those who has been using p3d for a long time have theirs setup?

How I do it...I install all scenery to D:\SCENERY

I do not install anything inside the P3D folder structure if I can help it.

There are a few exceptions to this (right now).  One of them is Orbx stuff, which at the time I installed it (a year ago) it could only be installed inside the P3D folders.  Now I hear rumblings that an xml based install will be possible soon, which would allow placing Orbx outside of P3D.

As for other legacy scenery, I still put it in D:\SCENERY, and then I use Lorby's Addon Organizer to make sure the sim knows where the files are.  Works fer me.

I just created an addon scenery folder in the root p3d folder since that was what I was used to.  Either way you’d need to add that manually to the scenery.cfg file so you’re better off doing something outside the p3d directory as described above.

This is the PROPER way to do it in P3D4, in the easiest way:

- Create an empty folder named "Addon Scenery" under Documents\Prepar3d v4 Add-ons

- Create the two empty "Scenery" and "Texture" folders inside this new folder so, in the end, it will look like this:

Documents\Prepar3d v4 Add-ons\Addon Scenery
Documents\Prepar3d v4 Add-ons\Addon Scenery\Scenery
Documents\Prepar3d v4 Add-ons\Addon Scenery\Texture

Now enter the "Addon Scenery" folder, right-click on the blank area, select "New Text Document", and choose this as the name:

add-on.xml

so you'll have to change the suggested .txt extension to .xml and accept the change. Edit the add-on.xml file with Notepad, and type this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="AddOnXml" version="4,0" id="add-on">
  <AddOn.Name>Addon Sceneries</AddOn.Name>
  <AddOn.Description>Addon sceneries are placed here</AddOn.Description>
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Category>Scenery</Category>
    <Name>Addon Scenery</Name>
    <Path>.</Path>
  </AddOn.Component>
</SimBase.Document>

 

Start the sim, and if you did everything correctly, you should see a request to activate the "Addon Scenery" addon. Reply YES, and you are done.

Now, you'll have a Addon Scenery folder under your Documents\Prepar3d v4 Add-ons that behaves as it did in FSX, a place were you can just dump all your freeware sceneries and their textures, with the following advantages:

- You haven't touched the simulator folder

- You haven't touched the scenery.cfg

- This installation can survive a simulator reinstall, even after removing the whole sim folder entirely AND its preferences (a totally clean reinstall) because, on the next reinstall, the simple presence of the Documents\Prepar3d v4 Add-ons\Addon Scenery\add-on.xml file, will trigger again the question to activate it so, you only do this once.

A variation of the above, if you don't like having to put the scenery files themselves in the same drive as the Documents folder, is to add a path to the <Path> line of the add-on.xml file, for example:

<Path>D:\Addon Scenery</Path>

Will tell the sim to read the sceneries from D:\Addon Scenery, which of course will have to contain its own "scenery" and "texture" folders, which are no longer required to be in the Documents\Prepar3d v4 Add-ons\Addon Scenery folder.

Edited January 10, 20197 yr by virtuali