I am anticipating the leap in the very near future so I am trying to prepare for the event.  I have ORBX, FSDT, Flightbeam, Flytampa, LatinVFR and many other 3rd party airports.  Most have been installed on my C drive wherever they chose to locate while some I installed on my E: drive.  Should I uninstall and delete all the V4 airport sceneries before installing V5?  

Will the uninstall of P3D v4 remove all scenery files that do not get deleted or uninstalled?  

I have many BGL scenery files that I created via SimDirector.  Will they work in the V5 sceneries?  

I would really appreciate advice on the way you all did the big change to V5.

Thanks in advance.

I didn't change to v5, I added v5 as an additional simulator on a different SSD.  There are still some add-on planes and airports that aren't p3dv5 ready, so I keep v4 to fly them, and as a backup in case a v5 update renders something broken as it continues to evolve.

In general, if you are going to remove v4 and replace it with v5, it's best to uninstall all the old stuff, then uninstall v4, and then rebuild v5 from the ground up.  And better still to start with a new fresh OS install so that the old registry entries are completely gone.  Remember to first uninstall any add-ons that have to be deregistered within P3D (e.g. the PMDG airplanes) before uninstalling P3Dv4.

Most v4 scenery also works in v5...some of those that aren't actually updated by the dev (or have separate v5 versions) may require some ADE work to add exclusions for the v5 default scenery.  In places the v5 default scenery has changed from the previous versions, so any exclusions built into v4 sceneries may not keep v5 default building and signs from peeking through.

Scenery already installed for v4 will not be visible in v5 unless you add it to the v5 scenery library manually (the Lorby-SI P3D Addon Organizer is an invaluable tool for this).  You also have to look for elements of existing sceneries in places like the effects folder, for example. It can get messy and tedious if you have a lot of add-ons installed.

 

2 hours ago, w6kd said:

I didn't change to v5, I added v5 as an additional simulator on a different SSD.  There are still some add-on planes and airports that aren't p3dv5 ready, so I keep v4 to fly them, and as a backup in case a v5 update renders something broken as it continues to evolve.

In general, if you are going to remove v4 and replace it with v5, it's best to uninstall all the old stuff, then uninstall v4, and then rebuild v5 from the ground up.  And better still to start with a new fresh OS install so that the old registry entries are completely gone.  Remember to first uninstall any add-ons that have to be deregistered within P3D (e.g. the PMDG airplanes) before uninstalling P3Dv4.

Most v4 scenery also works in v5...some of those that aren't actually updated by the dev (or have separate v5 versions) may require some ADE work to add exclusions for the v5 default scenery.  In places the v5 default scenery has changed from the previous versions, so any exclusions built into v4 sceneries may not keep v5 default building and signs from peeking through.

Scenery already installed for v4 will not be visible in v5 unless you add it to the v5 scenery library manually (the Lorby-SI P3D Addon Organizer is an invaluable tool for this).  You also have to look for elements of existing sceneries in places like the effects folder, for example. It can get messy and tedious if you have a lot of add-ons installed.

 

I am curious regarding the first paragraph.  At the point you decide to uninstall v4 how will you move v5 to your main drive?  I could possibly do what you have done.

My boot drive is a 1TB Samsung Pro NVME SSD, and my two P3D drives are 2TB Samsung EVO+ NVME drives.  If the day comes that I want/need to remove v4, I'll have to transfer the stuff that v5 shares with v4 over to the v5 drive and change the path in the add-ons.cfg reference to it with P3D Addon Organizer.

V4 BGL`s can sometimes be a problem in V5 changes where made to V5 airports. Sloped runways.

Edited November 26, 20205 yr by G-RFRY

For the jump to v5 , I left P3Dv4 installed. I just purchased a bigger SSD to have v5 installed in its own folder.

 

I did go ahead and create separate v4 and v5 Orbx Libraries outside the main sim folder. This can be done in Orbx Central.

Note, for sceneries that are officially not v5 compatible yet, I was able to point P3Dv5 to the already installed v4 scenery via Lorby's Addon Manager. A good example was the Geneva scenery from Aerosoft which in v5 has a lot of issues, so I decided to "map" P3Dv5 to Geneva v4 scenery. This was a good solution.

 

In terms of deleting P3Dv4 sceneries, I would look closely as to which are installed in the sim's main folder. Those that you have elected to be installed outside the main P3Dv4 folder are probably OK but its not a 100% guarantee.

Re sceneries, if they worked in v4 they have a good chance of being functional in v5 too, however the lighting did change in v5 so some scenery textures may not display perfectly. Some tweaks may be required.

I thought I had seen somewhere a scenery tool that did a "conversion" of v4 to v5. Cant remember where though!

 

Sorry for intruding on the thread ... not trying to hijack it but I have a similar question regarding OPs but in reverse .... a while back I lost 100% of my data and when reinstalling I decided to only reinstall P3Dv5 and I purchased many sceneries for it over the following months. However due to lack of updated aircraft I fly and tired of waiting, I’m considering reinstalling v4 but the question is, are the sceneries I bought for v5 compatible with v4? And what of the GSX configuration files I did for those airports, would I be able to use them in v4 also even though they were edited to a v5 scenery?

2 hours ago, samisahusky said:

Sorry for intruding on the thread ... not trying to hijack it but I have a similar question regarding OPs but in reverse .... a while back I lost 100% of my data and when reinstalling I decided to only reinstall P3Dv5 and I purchased many sceneries for it over the following months. However due to lack of updated aircraft I fly and tired of waiting, I’m considering reinstalling v4 but the question is, are the sceneries I bought for v5 compatible with v4? And what of the GSX configuration files I did for those airports, would I be able to use them in v4 also even though they were edited to a v5 scenery?

Hi Steven,

Regarding v5 sceneries working in v4.x ,they should most likely be OK although for some sceneries you may see some small texture/lighting issues since v5 brought about PBR changes. 

Any scenery that is typically supported in v5 would normally have a v4 installer but it depends on the developer and whether they started development with a v4 scenery (most did) that was updated to be compatible for v5.

 

As for GSX, I would not expect any issues by using the airport .ini files in v4 that you have already customized in v5.

 

Good luck with your v4.5 install.