8 hours ago, dbw1 said:

Anyone tried this with x-plane 11.35?

Does this mean that I can have my ORBX files in a different drive? Will it move them to this different drive? I’m running out of space on my X-P11 drive with TE files and this would nicely solve things. Thanks.

Works like a charm for me with Xplane last Version! I selected an other drive than the one my Xplane is installed.

The only problem I encountered so far with P3D4, is with "AI Traffic North America General Aviation P3Dv4". After transfer to my new ORBX library, I add to remove all the "FTX NA planes" from the P3D4/SimObjects/ Airplanes folder to avoid double planes registrations.

There are many critics here, but if a noob like can do it without too much troubles, everybody can do it. Yes the transfer is a little bit tedious if you have a lot of ORBX stuff(A box to tick in front of the sceneries you want to transfer would have been very welcome)

Regards

Pat

Edited August 6, 20196 yr by Pat Mussotte

To my mind this is very much Beta and should not be promoted as a Release Candidate

In addition to the problems listed above, it also seems that Orbx Central is overwriting the HD Buildings textures;

https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/177107-hd-buildings-wall-textures-not-applying-in-places/

I tried it, it has potiential, but for the moment I have reverted back to FTX3.

30 minutes ago, Wolkenschreck said:

But it would be indeed interesting to know whether the new Cenral is saving add-on.xml files in X:\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons or not.

Hi Chris,

They put an addon.xml in each individual folder:

 

And here's a couple from my Scenery config:

For the most part it's honoring my insertion points of Airports and Regions below Addon Scenery and Global OLC below ORBX Products and Regions. But since there is always some ORBX drama there's a few at the top that make no sense to me, particularly having all of Pacific Fjords near the top.

FYI, hope this adds to the discussion...

 

1 hour ago, Wolkenschreck said:

But it would be indeed interesting to know whether the new Cenral is saving add-on.xml files in X:\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons or not.

This is not necessary, those XML files can be anywhere. I have yet to try the new FTX Central, but if what the other write about it is true, then it is adding a new Discovery Path for each "Library", in addition to "\Documents\Prepar3D V4 Add-ons". That folder and name convention is in no way mandatory, it is just the default. You can add additional paths that work the same way to P3D (called "Discovery Paths"), they are simply added to the add-ons.cfg in \PogramData\. Any add-on.xml in a subfolder of those paths will be discovered automatically by P3D and listed as a "Package" in one of the two add-ons.cfg files.

Best regards

Edited August 6, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

14 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

This is not necessary, those XML files can be anywhere. I have yet to try the new FTX Central, but if what the other write about it is true, then it is adding a new Discovery Path for each "Library", in addition to "\Documents\Prepar3D V4 Add-ons". That folder and name convention is in no way mandatory, it is just the default. You can add additional paths that work the same way to P3D (called "Discovery Paths"), they are simply added to the add-ons.cfg in \PogramData\. Any add-on.xml in a subfolder of those paths will be discovered automatically by P3D and listed as a "Package" in one of the two add-ons.cfg files.

Best regards

Ok, thanks for this info. BUT: does this result in increased loading times or not? There, I do not see the link...

I'm no expert, but everything ORBX should go in it's own folder with the label ORBX and all ORBX sceneries should be controlled by FTXC v4.

Any other method will be redundant and maybe even problematic.

16 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Ok, thanks for this info. BUT: does this result in increased loading times or not? There, I do not see the link...

Under normal circumstances - no. Unless the XML files are in some way wrong or ineffective. I would have to see one to have an optinion about that (I have an opinion about what is "wrong" WRT the XMLs, but not everybody shares it). Or maybe the scenery is linked twice (=artifacts still left in scenery.cfg) which could also happen.

In a way ORBX is opening a new chapter here, since there are so many packages popping up at the same time. Effects that we have deemed minor in the past may be exacerbated now. For example, if there really is a small performance penalty when you arrange the addon components in a certain way, you won't notice with a couple of addon sceneries. But with 100, you will.

But anything could be wrong here. What most often leads to long loading time are missing assets. Maybe on some systems a package or component doesn't get linked properly. Might be worth it turning on the content error log in P3D, see what it says.

Best regards

Edited August 6, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

Thank you for the clarification, Oliver.

Judging by Geralds shots, ORBX is already registering their products in ProgramData. I own KSUN and this was registered by Central 3 (the old one) in ProgramData and it would make sense that ORBX has stuck to this method. So ORBX seems to use the most loading time efficient way already.

But what I do not fully understand is the correlation between each method and the loading time? For my totally nonempirical experiment, I moved the registrations of my add-ons from the "AppData\Roaming" add-on.cfg to the the add-on.cfg in "ProgramData". Loading times for my 131 packages (all non-ORBX) are now considerably lower with the add-on.cfg in "ProgramData". The add-on.xmls itself were not changed. I just moved the add-on.xmls from "X:\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons" to each separate scenery folder and changed the folder paths in the add-on.cfg.

Edited August 6, 20196 yr by Wolkenschreck
Disregard the loading time info. Both are the same.

I was considering purchasing Barcelona City Scene. However, I'm not planning on updating from FTX Central 3 to 4 with all this mess. Can I still use V3 to download and install a new scenery or will that force an update or screw things up somehow?

I understand that you need the new Central only to buy new sceneries or to better squeeze in the  210 Gb TE sceneries made for XP.  So I have no need for it presently. I will let the dust settle down.

 

Edited August 6, 20196 yr by domkle

39 minutes ago, Wolkenschreck said:

But what I do not fully understand is the correlation between each method and the loading time? For my totally nonempirical experiment, I moved the registrations of my add-ons from the "AppData\Roaming" add-on.cfg to the the add-on.cfg in "ProgramData". Loading times for my 131 packages (all non-ORBX) are now considerably lower with the add-on.cfg in "ProgramData". The add-on.xmls itself were not changed. I just moved the add-on.xmls from "X:\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons" to each separate scenery folder and changed the folder paths in the add-on.cfg.

Isn't it also true that the sim takes longer to load the first time you start it than any subsequent try? Did you start P3D at least three times in each configuration?

The only real difference is, that the add-ons.cfg in AppData\Roaming is synchronized automatically with C:\Users\...\Documents\Prepar3D V4 Add-ons every time you start P3D, while the one in ProgramData is just sitting there. I imagine that several things can go wrong here when it is edited manually or by an installer (neither of the two should ever happen!). For example, if you put packages in there that exist, but aren't on the discovery paths, P3D has to deal with that situation. Or if the local folder is on a very slow drive with a symlink to a fast one. Or... 

Then again, things work differently in P3D 4.4 and all other versions of the sim, due to the bug mentioned above. So simulator version is important too.

Btw. neither of the two add-ons.cfg files should be edited. They are managed by the sim, and there is no telling what might happen if the files are tampered with. To add "static" packages to the sim, use the CLI (Learning Center -> SDK -> Add-ons -> Add-on Configuration Files)

Best regards

Oliver, 

As I have my scenery now organized with AO ( scenery.cfg entries + xml entries mixed ) is how I want to keep it.

Is it correct that when I make a backup with AO and put it back afterwards everthing is ok again ?

Then I only need to add new Orbx entries manually I guess.

regards, Gerard

 

6 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Is it correct that when I make a backup with AO and put it back afterwards everthing is ok again ?

Restoring a P4AO backup means, that all(!) your simulator config files are replaced with the state that they had when you created the backup file.

Best regards

Edited August 6, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

7 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

Restoring a P4AO backup means, that all(!) your simulator config files are replaced with the state that they had when you created the backup file.

Best regards

That is working great for my second left view pc that imports the AO backup from the main view pc ...

Or what would you advise icw Central 4 ?