Another tool to organize your MSFS addons easily

[flya150 8]

After updating MSFS to v1.9.5.0 today, I have lost all my content in the "Content Manager". If I take all my addons out of the addons folder and place them back in the community folder all is good. So It seems their is an issue with this program and the v1.9.5.0.

[Ixoye 1,812]

6 minutes ago, flya150 said:

After updating MSFS to v1.9.5.0 today, I have lost all my content in the "Content Manager". If I take all my addons out of the addons folder and place them back in the community folder all is good. So It seems their is an issue with this program and the v1.9.5.0.

So you mean you can not link to community folder anymore?

[JimBrown 596]

4 minutes ago, Ixoye said:

So you mean you can not link to community folder anymore?

It is working just fine over here...

I did make sure to turn off all the add-ons before doing the update (no links in the community folder). After the update was able to turn on/off add-ons as usual.

...jim

[Bad_T 581]

i don't think it's due to the program, there are some reports about that issue that some mods are causing problems with the content manager after the update

See here if for example : https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/cant-access-content-manager-1-9-5/300602/26

it seems that some mods will now require to have an updated manifest.json file even if they working fine before, i haven't read much more than that for now so i'm not sure how pertinent my info are 🙂

the c152 mod for example causes problem, even in my tool it was always showing 'invalid json' because a comma was missing, it seems that this now also causes some issue with the content manager.

** edit i just did a test, my content manager was not working, i removed the c152 mod which was the only one showing 'invalid json' in my tool, all the others are still linked via the tool and now the content manager works again, hopefully it's just that and not something more serious, creators will update their files and it will work again ... or if you understand json files you can probably fix them yourself with the help of an online json validator **

 

** edit 2 for the c152 you can see the missing comma in red below .. i've just tested if you add it your content manager will work, if it's not there the content manager will hang .. now obviously other addons might have the same kind of problem with their json files, looking for 'invalid json' in my tool is maybe the first step to try to identify them **

{
  "dependencies": [          
        {
      "name": "asobo-aircraft-c152",
      "package_version": "0.1.46"
    },   <<-- it's missing here in the v16 download
        {
            "name": "fs-base-aircraft-common",
            "package_version": "0.1.61"
    }        
  ],
  "content_type": "AIRCRAFT",
  "title": "Cessna 152X",
  "manufacturer": "Textron Aviation",
  "creator": "DRF30q",
  "package_version": "0.0.11",
  "minimum_game_version": "1.7.12",
  "release_notes": {
    "neutral": {
      "LastUpdate": "",
      "OlderHistory": ""
    }
  },
  "total_package_size": "00000000000533490847"
}

 

 

Edited October 13, 2020 by Bad_T

[patrice_bambou 85]

1 hour ago, Bad_T said:

yes the one from flightsim.to is the latest, 1d does not have have the save column feature. You need to use the option shown in the screenshot below to save the columns, did you do that ?

i can certainly add those checks when starting the application, thank you.

 

Yes, I used this menu item. And no, does not save anything.

 

[Bad_T 581]

oky i'll send you a little message to try to find out why, thank you.

[Alvega 2,119]

48 minutes ago, JimBrown said:

It is working just fine over here...

I did make sure to turn off all the add-ons before doing the update (no links in the community folder). After the update was able to turn on/off add-ons as usual.

...jim

No problem here also, and I didn't even turn off the addon links before the update.

[flya150 8]

57 minutes ago, Bad_T said:

the c152 mod for example causes problem, even in my tool it was always showing 'invalid json' because a comma was missing, it seems that this now also causes some issue with the content manager.

 

 

That was the issue. After following your instructions all is good again. Thank you for your help and for this fantastic program.

[Bad_T 581]

Thanks for the feedback Scott 👍

kaosfere (or anyone else maybe interested to do a little test, no rush 🙃) i've reuploaded a little exe (replace your existing one and still keep all the other files) that should be pretty close to the final implementation of the images integration. No image will be loaded at the start and they will just be loaded on demand if you hover the mouse over the little icon. With this, you should not get any OOM and the loading of the application should not be slowed down by images even if you have 1000+ mods ...

http://www.mediafire.com/file/uv268869e76frud/MSFS_AddonsLinker_Test_Image_v2.zip/file

thank you

[cobalt 798]

Just to report following the v1.9.5.0 update. I have had no problems using version 1b -- since 1b suits my needs perfectly I have not updated to any later version. The Content folder contains all of my addons,

[kaosfere 3,115]

On 10/13/2020 at 5:45 PM, Bad_T said:

With this, you should not get any OOM and the loading of the application should not be slowed down by images even if you have 1000+ mods

Yep, works great!

Two minor suggetions

1. perhaps not show the image icon if there isn't one available?
2. more importantly, it might be good to limit the size of the image shown... for some reason someone thought it would be a good idea to include a "thumbnail" that's 2989x1951 in one of the megapack liveries; I have a 3440x1440 moniter and when I hover over it it takes up most of the screen and hides the application window until I move my mouse way over

Other than that I like it. 😄

 

[Bad_T 581]

thanks for the feedback cobalt 👍, new versions will improve a few things but if the older one does the job for you you can certainly keep it, it will not expire 😁

thanks kaosfere for the feedback.

- About the  size, yeah not very good idea to have a thumbnail of 3000px, i just did a test and i can easily limit the size, i will set a limit at 500px width (defaut thumbnail is around 410px), if bigger it will be resized (with aspect ratio kept).

- not showing the icon if no image is there would be nice but it would require a scan of all the folders at the first load (otherwise the program can't know if there is an image or not for a specific addon), For now i prefered to show it always so that nothing is read at the start, the image is only loaded when the mouse is placed on the icon and at that moment only the program will know if it can show an image or not, but yeah maybe this will evolve with time if i see that  a quick scan of the folders doesn't slow down things too much.

- another thing that would maybe be nice is to not show the default 'placeholder' images ... not sure how to do that (maybe comparing the binary data with a reference one) .. i need to test that too

for the first version including images i think i'll go with the current version (including image resize) but things may change ..

 

Edited October 15, 2020 by Bad_T

[kaosfere 3,115]

1 hour ago, Bad_T said:

i will set a limit at 500px width (defaut thumbnail is around 410px), if bigger it will be resized (with aspect ratio kept).

Perfect, thanks 🙂

1 hour ago, Bad_T said:

not showing the icon if no image is there would be nice but it would require a scan of all the folders at the first load

Ah, yeah, that's a fair point.  Perhaps a compromise would be to only do that deep inspection when the user manually refreshes the mod list?  Either way it's not a huge deal.

1 hour ago, Bad_T said:

another thing that would maybe be nice is to not show the default 'placeholder' images ... not sure how to do that (maybe comparing the binary data with a reference one)

I like that idea.  Since it appears to be a common image you should be able to store an md5 sum of it;  when loading an image, see if the size is the same size as the reference image and, if so, validate the hash.   It wouldn't be a big performance drain if you don't do it unless the byte size of the image matches the reference image exactly.  That alone would probably filter out 99.9% of possible hits.

[patrice_bambou 85]

All these suggestions are ok for me.

 

[andy1252 3,766]

On 10/4/2020 at 4:54 PM, Bad_T said:

i could not find a way to manage my MSFS addons in the way i liked so i came out with this little idea  . . .

anyways now that it's done, here it is if you want to try  latest version can be found here

Lovely job, and thank you for doing this. I was just getting round to moving my increasing amounts of freeware out of the community folder when I found this. Your utility is just about perfect for me, and has allowed me to control my setup with a lot more ease than I was anticipating. It makes a huge difference to my startup times not having everything in place all the time,

Now if Asobo can just introduce live adding/removing scenery from the community folder all will be perfect for my ever expanding scenery world.

(if you add a donation button somewhere I'd certainly be happy to contribute, and I'd imagine so would a lot of other folk)