Another tool to organize your MSFS addons easily

[John Fields]

The tool is absolutely fantastic. 

I'm waiting for the next version improvements!

 

[Bad_T]

thanks guys for the comments 🤩

 

5 hours ago, patrice_bambou said:

Hi Bad_T,

Where is version 1c?

Thanks.

woops was a typo .. 1b is the latest ... but 1c should be coming later today if i find a little hour to finish it (or at latest tomorrow morning). I have included your 3 suggestions ('tri-state' depiction of the checkboxes on folders / presets / collapse and expand).

🙃

[sal9000]

I tried this tool, but it works not for me.

It is strange, I got my FS in a different drive-not C , it´s N:\

So I took the Add-Ons in a Folder of N:\

Now come the weird part, I got all the sym-links, I can open it and I see the content-start the Sim-it is so quick, that I think that isn´t right, but so far everything is ok.

In the Sim I can see in the contentmanager all the add-ons, BUT no add-on will be seen in the sim himself, no one 😞

I tried to take them in the simfolder, but then your tool wodn´t start, it tell the folderstructur is to long.

Sad story.

[Bad_T]

Hello Stephan, sorry to hear that.

Unfortunately, I don't exactly understand where the problem is only by reading your message, i need a little bit more info.

Folder structure too long is something that can happen it seems due to the way MS created those long folders if you bought it from the MS Store, someone posted some information about it on this thread (page 3 near the bottom), i haven't tried because i don't have that problem myself.

The program uses only 2 folders :

- your addon folder that you can choose freely anywhere on your disk (you place your addons in there)

- you community folder that is pretty much fixed once the simulator is installed

So when you open the program do you see those 2 folders correctly, then you get an error when you try to create the link or even before that, can you maybe post some screenshot that would help me determine what's happening. Thank you.

 

[sal9000]

Hi,

ok then I will show you what I mean:

Here you can see "frankfurt" (my hometown) is loaded in your linker

http://www.vulcanier-germany.net/hal9000/Flusi/Merger1.JPG

Here is the filstructure

http://www.vulcanier-germany.net/hal9000/Flusi/Merger2.JPG

Symlink can also be opened in the filestructure

http://www.vulcanier-germany.net/hal9000/Flusi/Merger3.JPG

I can see it in the content-but I see no versionnumber

http://www.vulcanier-germany.net/hal9000/Flusi/Merger4.JPG

and in the SIM no Frankfurt - only generated Buildings

http://www.vulcanier-germany.net/hal9000/Flusi/Merger5.JPG

Next I put the content directly in the community folder

http://www.vulcanier-germany.net/hal9000/Flusi/Merger6.JPG

Now I can see a versionnumber

http://www.vulcanier-germany.net/hal9000/Flusi/Merger7.JPG

and for shure Frankfurt itself in the SIM

http://www.vulcanier-germany.net/hal9000/Flusi/Merger8.JPG

 

Now it´s your turn 😉

[Bad_T]

very detailed thank you, now i see everything. 👍

My tools shows 'error reading manifest file' on your screenshot. The version number is stored in there so, if you get an error reading the manifest file, the version will not show up.

Probably the simulator can't read it either when it's in the fs-addon folder and that would explain that the addon is not properly activated even if it shows up in the content manager (probably the Content Manager shows the folder even if it can't read the manifest file just like my tool).

I just tried this mod (i guess it's Frankfurt by KSDesignStudio) and it seems to work fine on my end (see pic below), the manifest.json file is read correctly by the tool, the link is created correctly and i get all the bulidings in the sim. But the big difference is that on my end there is no 'error reading the manifest file' msg.

i also notice an 'e' in the last column in your screenshot showing your file explorer program, are those folders encrypted ? I don't have that feature installed on my pc so i can't try to see if that can cause a problem.

I guess yes, but have you tried with a second addon to see if you get the exact same result ? (certainly yes, but i had to ask 🤪).

i will send you a link to a little replacement EXE by private message in a few minutes, that EXE should hopefully show the exact problem that my program is facing when trying to read the manifest.json file, hopefully it will give us some hints.

thanks again for taking the time doing all those screenshots.

[cobalt]

There is no question that loading time increases substantially with large Community folders. I know this from personal experience. When I reduce the number of files to a handful, the loading time reduces from around 6 minutes to about a minute and a half. And it would be rare indeed that I would need more than a fraction of my addon files in any one session. My guess is that few people fly in, say, Norway, Hawaii, Africa, and Japan on the same flight, so why load all those files? Bottom line, for me this is a terrific tool that greatly enhances my MSFS experience.

[sal9000]

Thanks for help, I think I got 👍

What was wrong?

I told, that I installed my SIM on another drive as C - in my case N:\

But when you do so, there is also a symlink on C to the community-folder - with the adress:

c:\Users\a\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community\

and there you have to put your new symlink. it will be in N:\ but you have it to copy in C.

Weird, but thats the way Windows work 🤪

here is a screenshot to compare with the other pictures.

Hope it helps someone stupid like me 😉

[vgbaron]

Well FWIW, I have MSFS on the F; drive with the appropriate links in C; When I run the program it finds the proper Community folder , I created a MSFS ADDON folder on my 😧 drive and I point the program to it. All works exactly as expected.

 

Vic

[Bad_T]

Cool Stephan if you could get it to work, i have the Steam version so not really sure how the Store install works, but like Vic said, it should work pretty much out of the box .. anyway if it's fixed all is fine 👍

here is a little update 1c with the following changes based on some suggestions i had :

- 1: Improvements to the check box depiction (folders checkbox will be set on first load and will show when only some of the addons below are selected)
- 2: New options to collapse all folders + expand all)
- 3:New options to save/restore presets
     - Creating : use the context menu 'Save new preset' on the list, this will save a preset with the nodes currently selected
     - Applying : use the context menu 'Restore existing preset' (also available in the main menu) and you will get the list of your saved presets. You can then apply them by double-clicking on one of them or selecting one and clicking ok
     - Deleting : just select the one you want to delete in the screens that shows all your saved preset and press the DEL key
     - Updating : select a preset, then use the contextual menu 'Update preset' to update the saved preset with the changes you have made to the selection.
- 4: New option to rename an addon directly from the tool. The advantage of this is that the tool will recreate a correct link to the addon after it has been renamed (if you rename the addon in windows explorer the link won't be valid anymore and you would need recreate a new link and delete the old one). For now, the renaming is only available for addons and not for folders. If it turns out to be useful and works well, it's certainly possible to add that features to folders too in a future version. You can rename via the contextual menu or by pressing F2 when you have selected an addon in the list (you need to have the focus on the 'Name' column).

It's still very simple but i had too make quite a few 'under the hood' changes, so hopefully its all still fine. 🤪

Wish you all a nice weekend 😎

http://www.mediafire.com/file/clu3di29ciys2q3/AddonLinker_Test_v1c.zip/file

http://www.filedropper.com/addonlinkertestv1c

[vgbaron]

Just had something unusual with the new version - two scenery items that have worked fine before suddenly showed manifest.json error. There were two links in community but they showed as empty. Tried several things but ultimately what worked

went into Community folder and manually deleted both "empty" links.

back into linker, ticked both items and links were created as expected.

Vic

[John Fields]

Thank you, Bad_T, for the new version!

 

[Bad_T]

ohoh oky thanks for the report Vic, the new version should not have changed anything on already working links, let me know if you see more weird things 🙃.

Just for info, if the link does not work (column Invalid checked in the community list) you will then always get a manifest error in the community list (because if the link does not work, the manifest file can't be read from the community folder).

There should not be any 'manifest.error' in the 'addons list' though unless there is a real error with the file. In my tests, i came across a real invalid manifest.json file, the C152x Realism Mod v16 has a syntax error in the manifest.json file (a comma is missing),

If anyone gets a 'can't read manifest.json file' in the 'addons list' please let me know which mod it is so i can check that file out and maybe adapt the code if there's nothing wrong with the file.

Thank you.

[TheJAG]

Really nice work on this one - very straightforward UI. Thanks for sharing your work mate!

I'm not sure how easy this request will be but I've been renaming my downloads to a consistent format in the Community folder so they are ordered for traceability. The issue now lies with updates to the mods downloaded. Because of having renamed directories it takes a bit longer to figure out which folder needs its files updated. Therefore - would it be possible to add another column to your manager (even if it's optional through the settings) that displays the folder name of the mod. Then the existing "Name" column would by default have the name of the directory of the mod (as it is now), but can be renamed by the user (as to have more meaningful descriptions whilst retaining the original folder name). I suppose the main challenge for you would be where to store the user generated labels?

[Boomer]

Pray tell, what addons?  Theres Jack I know of.