These past 3 times when "patching", I copied off my Community folder so the sim would be default, after reading that was important.  The issue is, as I add to the folder courtesy of our incredible freeware and commercial developers, it will become huge, disorganized and ungainly.  Already, I have hosed my FSDT KEYW and KORD (my fault) requiring a uninstall/reinstall because of this willy-nilly moving.  Is there a way to organize the folder, i,e, \Scenery, \Aircraft, \Utilities etc.?  I want to patch correctly, however, I would like to preserve all my files and mods, without the aforementioned issues.

Hopefully Asobo has a long-term plan, and some of our brighter users have a short term solution.

Much obliged (really, the amount of altruistic content is astounding and faith-restorative)- C

I wish there was but anything nested in a folder becomes invisible to the sim. One thing I have found is I can rename things (Except like the Orbx stuff which I got through their external system) so I just started putting labels in front of the names and giving them names I would know so something that I get for fixing water tables may be like blargsnarfs_superduper_waterfixes_anything and I change them to scenery_fix_statewater_heightfix

That at least at a glance lets me know what's what.

 

Hopefully down the line we'll stop seeing major patches in the sim.

Honestly, the best bet is keeping things as vanilla as possible, especially modifying game files.  If their last development roadmap, they mentioned 2 patches in October.  Our modding community is great, but you can't expect a mod from a previous patch to work perfectly after a major patch release (and these patches seem to have a lot of undocumented changes in them).  

I keep a spreadsheet of every mod I install, and I try to avoid most of them.  I move everything except aircraft repaints out of the folder before applying a patch.  I wait for the mod community to update their mod for the new patch (which many of them do very quickly, they are amazing).  

Obviously people are going to modify their Flightsim, but at this very, very early stage, maybe take a step back?  With the sim getting major patches every 2 weeks it seems, you're going to have to keep going through the same process frequently.  

To be clear ... one of the issues with the community folder is that mods often overwrite the base code with a nearly identical copy with a few tweaks.  The problem is if a patch then modifies the base code that mod will overwrite it with an older version which may not be compatible with changes elsewhere in the game.

So yes, emptying the community folder is good BUT you should then only put back mods and addons that are known to be compatible with the current patch.

Aye Glenn, but problematic for some other folders (FSDT).  Hence, my continued quest for Asobo to allow for folder tree recognition.

C

I only move the "mods" out of the Community folder, any addon airport stay. Then after patch, I reboot PC. Open sim, close it, then add back "mods".

I would just like the answer to one question.

 

Haven't bought game yet.  If I purchase it tomorrow, will I be downloading the original mid-August 90+ Gb game and THEN have to also patch it with the 3-4 updates so far to get up to speed?

 

Or do current new game buyers get the latest code in the main download (with all patches already implemented)?

 

37 minutes ago, macbrowne said:

Or do current new game buyers get the latest code in the main download (with all patches already implemented)?

This.

I just completed a complete re-install of Windows 10, everything else that goes with it, and Flight Simulator. The FS installation was with current, already patched, code.

...jim

 

I did not do anything with my Community folder other than to check and see what the status of the various mods were post-patch before trying to use any of them.  The Community folder itself should not be affected by base game updates.

I really like this little freeware tool to manage the Community folder. You can store your addons in a separate path with nested folders etc. and this tool makes a dynamic link within the Community folder to your addon path. You can delete the dynamic links prior to an update and then select the addons you want to include in the community folder once you determine they are compatible. This tool doesn't check compatibility but it is a nice way to manage the addons in your community folder

 

On 10/2/2020 at 7:37 AM, cavaricooper said:

These past 3 times when "patching", I copied off my Community folder so the sim would be default, after reading that was important.  The issue is, as I add to the folder courtesy of our incredible freeware and commercial developers, it will become huge, disorganized and ungainly.  Already, I have hosed my FSDT KEYW and KORD (my fault) requiring a uninstall/reinstall because of this willy-nilly moving.  Is there a way to organize the folder, i,e, \Scenery, \Aircraft, \Utilities etc.?  I want to patch correctly, however, I would like to preserve all my files and mods, without the aforementioned issues.

Hopefully Asobo has a long-term plan, and some of our brighter users have a short term solution.

Much obliged (really, the amount of altruistic content is astounding and faith-restorative)- C

When you move everything out delete your 'contents.xml' file and upon restart FS2020 will build a new one.  When you place the files back in the 'Common' folder and do the same again.  The 'Contents.xml' will build a new one.  FS2020 does the best job in organizing MOD's itself.  This is how we got FSDT's Key West to work properly.

On another note, so far any updates have not touched the community folder.

Contents.xml Location:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache 

Edited October 11, 20205 yr by Dillon

5 hours ago, macbrowne said:

I would just like the answer to one question.

 

Haven't bought game yet.  If I purchase it tomorrow, will I be downloading the original mid-August 90+ Gb game and THEN have to also patch it with the 3-4 updates so far to get up to speed?

 

Or do current new game buyers get the latest code in the main download (with all patches already implemented)?

 

You'll get the latest code.

3 patches applied w/o doing anything special and all's well.  I have to wonder if all of the background tweaking and modding isn't already part of the problem.  I went to the MS forum to add a simple request to re-ad the ability to change directions when pushback is triggered w/ a button press.  A kind soul offered up an add-on to do this complete w/ an OSD.  I'd much rather have the wishlist request acted on rather than depend on background mods to change things.  I have to think anything made for the console world can be screwed up by background mods, so I'll patiently wait and see how things improve over time, stock.

Oh, and deleting then rebuilding the rolling cache did restore some LOD degradation that happened after patch 3, but that again is an in-sim action versus a mod to fix something.

Edited October 11, 20205 yr by Noel

I have exactly the opposite experience. All 3 times I have had to uninstall and reinstall 100+g of data. I get notification of ujpdate, go to store and download stub but when back in sim - nothing happens - no auto update.

Very frustrating.

59 minutes ago, Noel said:

3 patches applied w/o doing anything special and all's well.  I have to wonder if all of the background tweaking and modding isn't already part of the problem.  I went to the MS forum to add a simple request to re-ad the ability to change directions when pushback is triggered w/ a button press.  A kind soul offered up an add-on to do this complete w/ an OSD.  I'd much rather have the wishlist request acted on rather than depend on background mods to change things.  I have to think anything made for the console world can be screwed up by background mods, so I'll patiently wait and see how things improve over time, stock.

Oh, and deleting then rebuilding the rolling cache did restore some LOD degradation that happened after patch 3, but that again is an in-sim action versus a mod to fix something.

This is a good way to look at it.  Our modding community is amazing, but with major patches hitting regularly, you can't possibly expect those mods to work after a big update.  The patches do introduce bugs without the mods, but throwing mods on top of it just makes it hard to diagnose.  

The thing people don't always get is that a mod is a modified default file.  Asobo might update that same file with a new patch.  So, how's that mod going to work?  It might undo the fix Asobo put in, or worse.  Give our great modding community a day or two and most of the popular mods get tested and updated if needed (which is great).  

For every mod out there I just move them out before the patch and put them back in once they are tested and updated as needed.  Our modding community is amazing and I know at least for the mods I use, there were updates within a day or much less in many cases.