Help Organizing with Addons Linker

[Adamski_NZ 950]

Is there some text to go with this pic?

Just looking at it, you'll need to delete those two [red] invalid links before you do anything else! 😉

[Ixoye 1,821]

I have subfolders for Aircraft, Avionics, Scenery and Utilities, it's very easy to manage.

[fppilot 4,360]

8 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

Do you mean I just make folders in Windows Explorer where this app reads my community addons?

Yes. Very easy.  Just give some thought ahead of time.  Here is a look at my Windows folder structure for addons and mods.  Individual mods are in subfolders to what you see here.  Windows on the left .  Then how those appear in Addons Linker on the right.  I have quite a number of "enhanced" airports, landmarks, etc under Scenery so I have regionalized them so they are more convenient to select when flying in, into, or through a region.  The mods can be selected individually by expanding the respective folder in the linker.  Or an entire category can be selected as a group by just selecting the checkbox for its group folder.

                               

Edited June 4, 2021 by fppilot

[ryanbatc 12,835]

Alright thanks I should be able to figure it out now haha. 

[CFIJose 5,485]

9 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

Alright thanks I should be able to figure it out now haha. 

I love the mod. One I created all the folders and dropped all airports where they belonged all I do now is enable what I need or disable everything for a new update. Takes a little time, but once it's done, the mod is invaluable. 😀

Edited June 4, 2021 by DJJose

[ryanbatc 12,835]

Alright...took about an hour...but I think I've got it all sorted out.

organzed by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

[JimBrown 596]

36 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

Alright...took about an hour...but I think I've got it all sorted out.

organzed by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

You have a wee little bit more work to do (if you have not already done it.) See all those red highlighted entries in the right pane? I'm guessing you did not "unlink" everything before you did your reorganization, and those are left over links from when everything was in that one folder.

There is a simple fix. Right click on any one of the links in the right pane and select "Delete all invalid links". That should clean things up nicely.

BTW, your folder organization in the left pane is almost the same as mine. Great minds and all that stuff. 😉

...jim

 

[Bad_T 581]

@ryanbatcund it seems you have move the folder why the mods were activated (link was created in the community folder). That's why you are getting 268 invalid links showin in red. When moving folders, Windows does not maitain the link validity so the items in red are links to an invalid folder.

On the right panel, just use the right click menu option 'delete all invalid links', it will delete all invalid links, then you can recreate them when needed.

Oh well, maybe you had figured all that out by yourself 😜

 

** edit sorry for repeating @JimBrown post, was posted at the same time, did not see **

Edited June 4, 2021 by Bad_T

[cavaricooper 2,614]

I use this utility like A&O on EVERY MSFS Flight- just brilliant.  Put your addons where you like in groups that make sense to you.  Then make presets that work for you.  For example USA EAST, USA WEST, UK etc.  Then decide where you want to fly- load that preset (combination of payware and freeware), load the a/c you want to fly with avionics and have a ball.

ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT BIT OF KIT @Bad_T

Ta- C

[ryanbatc 12,835]

Hopefully it will also speed up my loading time...440+ addons takes time.

[ThrottleUp 617]

Could someone tell me if I understood correct?

This mod management tool "fools" MSFS into thinking that mods are in the Community folder when actually they could be anywhere? Even on another drive? 🙂 

I was using another manager called ModMan but unfortunately it didn't work well so now I just dumped my addons into Community and was looking out for another manager when I saw this thread.

Out of curiosity - I see people saying you can enable/disable groups of folders in Addon Linker. So for example if you're flying in Brazil you can turn off all your 3rd party USA and Europe scenery. But what is the benefit of doing this? It means that after you get bored of Brazil you have to exit the sim, enable those other areas and then start over again....?

Thanks to the creator of Addon Linker, just by seeing the screenshot I can tell its well designed and useful.

Edited June 4, 2021 by ThrottleUp

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

1 hour ago, ThrottleUp said:

This mod management tool "fools" MSFS into thinking that mods are in the Community folder when actually they could be anywhere? Even on another drive? 🙂 

Correct.

[Bad_T 581]

1 hour ago, ThrottleUp said:

Out of curiosity - I see people saying you can enable/disable groups of folders in Addon Linker. So for example if you're flying in Brazil you can turn off all your 3rd party USA and Europe scenery. But what is the benefit of doing this? It means that after you get bored of Brazil you have to exit the sim, enable those other areas and then start over again....?

That can be useful if some addons take a lot of time to load, you just load the ones that you need without having to move files around an outside of your community folder (creation or deletion of a 'link' is instantaneous and does not move any files). For some people it makes a huge difference (some had like to wait 10+ minutes with all their addons activated and sometimes even a lot more than that). It's not even the number of addons that matter the most i think, some are very taxing like 'unoptimized big photogrametry' regions that contains 1000's of small files. It's important to understand that if you activate everything you will get the exact same load-time than if you put everything in the community folder (if both disks have the same speed).

Unfortunately it's not possible to activate/deactivate addons while the sim is running, that's a sim limitation, not much we can do.

Edited June 4, 2021 by Bad_T

[in2tech 588]

1 hour ago, ThrottleUp said:

Could someone tell me if I understood correct?

This mod management tool "fools" MSFS into thinking that mods are in the Community folder when actually they could be anywhere? Even on another drive? 🙂 

I was using another manager called ModMan but unfortunately it didn't work well so now I just dumped my addons into Community and was looking out for another manager when I saw this thread.

Out of curiosity - I see people saying you can enable/disable groups of folders in Addon Linker. So for example if you're flying in Brazil you can turn off all your 3rd party USA and Europe scenery. But what is the benefit of doing this? It means that after you get bored of Brazil you have to exit the sim, enable those other areas and then start over again....?

Thanks to the creator of Addon Linker, just by seeing the screenshot I can tell its well designed and useful.

I don't have the Mod yet, only have about 20 Mods at any time for me. Pretty sure it's loading times, instead of loading every single Mod it only loads what you are using for that flight? So @ryanbatcund has 440 mods that load every single time before Linker. Now he might just load 3, or 10, or 20, whatever . Load times and less conflict? Is that right @Bad_T ?

 

Great minds think alike. We were both typing the reply at the same time. You da developer and boss, your counts, mine does not 🙂

 

Edited June 4, 2021 by in2tech

[Bad_T 581]

yes correct @in2tech it's about the loading time and it can also sometimes help with finding out conflicts after an update (by quickly activating / deactivaing addons for example to try to find out the culprit), we posted at the same time

oh again 🍻

Edited June 4, 2021 by Bad_T