FS20 installation location

[atlflyer 138]

48 minutes ago, trainplane3 said:

N4 is correct. Base .exe is locked but not the content. Things that need access to the .exe will be able to get it.

yes, isnt the exe in the locked windowsapps folder? 

[trainplane3 97]

Just now, atlflyer said:

yes, isnt the exe in the locked windowsapps folder? 

Yes.

[Age_27 20]

Hey guys,

So I mistakenly took the package directly (ie. the location for the 91GB download) as a temporary folder so I selected a low performance drive not my SSD.

Anyone tried or know of a way to move the whole package to a new location and re-direct the Xbox Game Pass App / MSFS2020 installer to this place ? 

 

[Gabe777 132]

Excellent news. 80 GB down so far.

[Gabe777 132]

18 hours ago, atlflyer said:

my nvidia control panel was able to locate the exe so I could set my refresh settings to adaptive half refresh and I put it on a different drive than everything else. 

Does half refresh rate work with Direct 11 or am I getting confused in my old age ? It didn't work with P3D I believe.

[W2DR 1,860]

On 8/12/2020 at 4:17 PM, McPlane said:

Has anyone purchased a fresh little plastic bottle of Aspirin? I did!

No, but I have a bottle of Jack Daniels sitting here...................

[Jester82 1]

Hi all

I watched the video with the developers and in it they mentioned that some older FSX aircraft could potentially work in FS2020 but I cannot even find the folder where FS2020 is installed. This thread is the closest I can find to what I am looking for.

I installed it on my C drive without changing any file locations. Can anyone point me to where the install location is?

I have found some other Xbox Gamepass games installed in C/Program Files/WindowsApps and there is a folder in there called Microsioft.FlightSimulator but when I go there it does not seem to have any structure or any files where "SimObjects" might be installed. So I dont see how it could be drag and drop like how they Asobo state it will be in the interview video. 

Im really keen to test a glider in the sim to see how the weather dynamics work. Any help will be really appreciated. Thanks

Brett

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

After reading every post on this topic I'm still confused about install locations. Can I, without taking permissions, moving stuff and doing who knows what, install MSFS2020 on a "D:\" drive out of the box if I get it from MS Store?

[Jude Bradley 659]

In the Alpha/Beta version, I created a folder called FS2020 on my D drive and was able to point to this location on install time - not very obvious though, as it did not prompt to a location in the first-place. 

 

[BlueFalcon8560 0]

I used the manage download menu and was able to select my ssd. When it came to the larger assets download it also allowed me to change the target to the ssd.  I do note that I used the manage menu from the M’s store and found it a bit confusing.  I am used the Premium Delux and there were a number of downloads.  

[Bob_Z 30]

Confusion still reigns.  I installed to my M-drive (M.2 internal).  There are three folders there: Program Files, WindowsApps and WpSystem.  When I open the content manager it wants to install the 91.36GB file to my C:\Users\owener\AppData\Local\Packages.... Is that just the installer? Or should I point it to my M drive and, if so, to what folder in there?

Not a neophyte at all, but this installation is from somewhere west of Alpha Centauri.

[Age_27 20]

OK so I answered my own question and I think I can answer a few of the questions here. 

The small ~1G core install goes into the protected / locked WindowApps folder that you select at very start of install appears to be fixed and cannot be changed post install, probably nothing short of a full uninstall would remove it. 

The good news is that the huge 91GB 'Package' folder can be easily and freely copied, backed up and moved around to your desired location with largest storage and/or best HDD performance post installation.

I mistakenly installed this on an old low performance drive (thinking that 'Package' mean a temporary location for the big download). So I simply did the following:

- Let the installation complete, loaded up and played the game to check everything is OK.

- Quit game and copied the big Package folder to a new drive. Renamed the current package folder to *_old

- Re-start the game, it will 'Check for Updates' and find no package folder where it expects so it will prompt to select a package folder (similiar to the first time installing). Click 'Browse' and select the new copied location, it will automatically re-check the folder and all being well will let you then start the game and carry on !!!

Also good news also is any settings you've selected eg. controls, graphics etc are all stored in the protected WindowsApp folder, the package folder remains unchanged so you can back it up in case you need to re-install from scratch, and only need to re-backup is when future patches are released.

If you want to backup your actual in-game settings then I'm not sure about that yet - might be a way in-game to export them or maybe stored with your Xbox Game Pass account ? 

Hope this helps ! 

[RGS 1]

Could someone please let me know the directory structure when installing FS to a drive other than C:, via the MS Store?

With Steam, I assume it'd be something along the lines of: F:\steamapps\common\microsoft flight simulator and then you'd choose another directory for the content during the actual installation, thus you could have:

Flight Simulator (F:) > Installation (F:\Installation\steamapps\common\microsoft flight simulator)

Flight Simulator (F:) > Content (F:\Content)

Which seems relatively neat and tidy to me as I can have the installation and content in the same place and have control over the folder names etc.

I tend not to like the way MS does things, case in point not being about to rename the user folder in Windows 10...

Thanks!