Another tool to organize your MSFS addons easily

[Noooch 1,084]

40 minutes ago, cavaricooper said:

The Community Folder move to a slower drive may cause minimal performance issues- but certainly not this addon with its Symbolic Links.

C

Sorry I was talking about the addons folder, I just edited it.

So no performance hit?

[Noooch 1,084]

Also, is there a way to keep a folder always selected at startup?

[sauviat 137]

48 minutes ago, Noooch said:

Also, is there a way to keep a folder always selected at startup?

@Noooch Whatever you've ticked or not ticked will remain like that until you change it.

Martin

[Bad_T 581]

@Noooch if you move all your addons on a HD instead of a SSD your computer will take a bit more time to read the files, HD are mechanical drivers so they are by definition a lot slower. Will you see a big difference, hard to tell. Probably depends on the number of addons and also the number of files that the addons contain.

Probably it won't be that big but it's really dependend on your HD speed and general computer performance. It should not hurt your FPS once the scenery is loaded though, just a bit longer loading time i guess .. some addons contain thousands of texture files, those are probably the ones that will impact more on the loading time. If you ever do that, let us know please if you see a big difference. If you have 10GB of addons, it will take a bit more time to load, but it's also not very clear to me when the simulator will load them (at the start / when you approach your addon location / ...? )

for you second question, i think @sauviat replied already. When you start the application your currently enabled folders will already be checked, so your last selections will always remain and be restored next time you start the tool. If you want to have a folder always selected when you start the application even if it was disabled in the previous session then that would have to be added as a new option. In the current version it's not possible to do that.

Let me know if it's not clear enough or if you have further questions.

Edited November 5, 2020 by Bad_T

[Noooch 1,084]

@Bad_T @sauviat thanks!

[kaosfere 3,115]

On 11/3/2020 at 3:08 PM, Bad_T said:

@rwilsonlj some people with several GB of addons noticed huge difference in loading time when all addons are enabled so in that case it makes sense to select which addons to select before a session. if you don't suffer from that, you can obviously leave everything enabled and just use the tool to organise your folder.

Beyond that, you could (knowingly or unknowingly) have mods installed that conflict with each other.   I had a bizarre problem where my sim would crash when I loaded at a particular airport in Australia any time I had another particular airport on North America active.   It turned out they were trying to change the same file due to a misunderstanding in how the SDK and VFS function;  one or the other would work fine, but the two together did not.

Since then I've started disabling airports by region and only have where I'm flying at any particular time active; it's really easy with this tool.

[Noooch 1,084]

I would like to make a suggestion:

Could you please add an option to deactivate the 2 confirmation windows which pop-up when you click on the arrow to launch the sim?

It would be great to launch the sim in 1 click if we want to 😉

[Noooch 1,084]

Also, you could add to close Addon Linker at MSFS start or MSFS closing 🙂

[Bad_T 581]

2 hours ago, Noooch said:

Could you please add an option to deactivate the 2 confirmation windows which pop-up when you click on the arrow to launch the sim?

Also, you could add to close Addon Linker at MSFS start or MSFS closing

hello,

I added 2 new options in the options screen.

The info-msg when launching the sim was there to avoid people clicking 20 times in a row on the button (this simulator may take a while to start so a user could think that the button did nothing a few seconds after clicking it 🙃). An option to automatically close the tool after launching the sim was also added. I wasn't a big fan of that option at first, but you're not the first to ask for that so it's time to add it as an option 🤪👍.

-----

for the guys interested who helped me with some tests and feedback.

i added a little quick option to show 'galleries' of addons, after seeing some comments, i thought maybe it could be useful for liveries (really not sure if it can be useful or not)
- there is a new button in the toolbar -> will show galleries for all addons
- 'show gallery' in the right click menu on a folder will allow you to see the gallery for that folder only (for example your liveries folder).

in the gallery you can enable/disable an addon with the right click mouse button.

let me know if you test it (no obligation of course). If you have the 'mega pack' i would be curious to know if it works just fine or if too many images are just well .. too many 😜

the version below contains the new 'gallery feature' and the 2 requests by noooch. (it's only the EXE, you still need all other files)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/rugo3pqjsnka64b/MSFS_AddonsLinker_TEST_20201108.zip/file

Edited November 8, 2020 by Bad_T

[hvw 415]

Working fine so far, Bad_T.

 

[andy1252 3,952]

On 11/4/2020 at 11:22 PM, pmb said:

Still pondering if I should go the Addons Organizer route. I watched the video and basic usage is quite straightforward, even more as I am used to profiles from SimStarter.  However, I'm a bit worried on a few special cases.

- FSDT: These are links already. This was discusssed at the beginning of the thread, they should be left in the Community folder as is - right?

- ORBX: These are NOT links in my case, so I could shift them to my personal addon folder. However, I guess I'll be punished by ORBX Central one days. Yes, I can activate the links before running ORBX Central, but does this work properly in the case of updates? And what happens if I forget to activate them before calling ORBX Central?

- ORBX 3rd parties: like Gaya which may not spring into my eye for separate treatment as their folder names are not starting with "ORBX". 

 - The Simaddons Airports: come with Uninstallers which are in the base of the Community folder. I guess I should leave them alone there.

- Aerosoft: is similar to ORBX. It's real folders, but what happens when the AS Updater meets the links? The same applies to more addons with maintenance programs like Flightbeam.

Maybe there are even more loopholes I don't see yet. I just want to avoid screwing up my perfectly working setup. (Well, perfectly working except that loading gets longer and longer.😉)

What are your experiences? Thanks for any hints on these points.

Kind regards, Michael

Hi Michael,

I've gone for this totally. I previously had a setup with SCE (and then P3AO) for P3D where I had spilt my world into 26 areas, with around 600 scenery layers spread across them. It made a significant difference to my load times, and although I've got some way to go to equal that much scenery in MSFS (but I'm working on it!) I'm already seeing load time benefits using this tool. I originally found it was the large photogrammetry freeware addons that killed the load times, but I've got enough payware airports on there now to notice them slowing me down as well.

What I do is to move EVERYTHING out of my community folder into my own addons folder, which contains subfolders to match my regions and subregions. That includes all the symlinks and junctions that ORBX, FSDT or whover might use as well. I have my Orbx stuff setup to use their library mechanism, so when I get a new Orbx scenery it puts a symlink in the community folder. I just delete that link and make my own link to the orbx library folder in the appropriate addon folder.

I've bought a couple of addons via the MSFS Marketplace, and they get installed in the Official folder, but I just move them out in the same way.

Basically, I let all installers work as they want, and then move anything (actual folders or links) out of the Community or Official folders to my own addon folders. The only thing in my community folders are the symlkinks that the Addon Organizer places there.

One little gotcha. Stuff in the community/official folders is encrypted, so I turn that flag off for all files once I've moved them to my own folders. I seem to recall the AO tool had a problem with some of the manifest files before I did that.

All in all, it took me a couple of days to set eveything up the way I want it, but I'm very happy now. I had got up to around 25 minutes of load time before this came along and although you could do all this manually, the tool makes it easy-peasy.

(Oh, and you can link to a link, if need be)

enjoy!

cheers, Andy

Edited November 8, 2020 by andy1252
edit text

[pmb 5,138]

Thanks Andy. I tried the Linker, installed it and shifted all Freeware to the addon folder (more precisely: sub-folders) and left only Payware in the Community folder. This way I got a reduction of load time from, very roughly, 8 min to 6 min, if only the Freeware NZ addons were enabled.

I identified the reason quickly. I have mostly Payware installed with the Payware weighing ~90 GB but the freeware ~30 GB, or so. I didn't find the trouble of having to restrict my flying area (and to reset if every time) in advance worth the 2 mins difference, thus I took everything back to the Community folder, for now.

I might give it a second thought, but then would include Payware addons as well, as you suggest. but I'm not prepared yet to do it right now.

At a point Asobo will find a strategy anyway. With the massive Freeware and Pawyare addons being added daily, I'm afraid we'll soon reach a point where even activating a single country will lead to loading times of > 10 mins, which would require a micro-granular approach then.

Kind regards, Michael

[Car147 2,284]

Just downloaded and set up this app for all my freeware.. excellent addon, thanks

[Noooch 1,084]

@Bad_T Another Idea, this is a hard one :

since this is an Addon manager, it would be awesome to see when updates are available for the addons we already have, with the possibility to update one addon, or all of them in one click!

This would be the ultimate feature!😄 Do you think it is technically possible? I think the flightsim.to website has an anto-robot download security...

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by Noooch

[cavaricooper 2,615]

@andy1252

Andy-

How does MSFSMP updating work with this system? Once you move the official sub-folders out, can they still “signal” an update is available/needed? I broke my FSDT by moving it.., can you please provide a little more info on how (think 1d1oT’s guide)?

Ta- C

PS- @Bad_T this is good stuff, Ta mate!

PPS- @Noooch being enormously lazy myself, I’m curious about this as well... great thinking, especially as in auto, nothing gets missed for updating. There would have to be capacity for several different sites though...

Edited November 10, 2020 by cavaricooper