Bizarre... After the Asobo 500 Mb Aviator's Livery update that I had to download this morning, my extra DC-6 liveries are wasted  : the Olympic Airways for the passenger version has disappeared and the AA for the cargo has lost all its textures in and out .

What about yours ? 

This clearly proves the superiority of the PTP files over normal MSFS liveries 😉

Edited June 25, 20214 yr by Matchstick

All my DC-6B liveries had disappeared. In the Orphaned Textures section in the Livery Utilities I hit scan now and that repaired them all somehow and they were all visible again - including those that I'd downloaded from flightsim.to

Only a couple of liveries installed here. Noticed that it took AGES to load in the flight set up menu the first time. After this first hiccup there were no further issues.

There was this: https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/pmdg-dc-6-cloudmaster-forum/134424-25jn21-pmdg-dc-6-msfs-what-happened-to-my-liveries-in-the-update

Quote

Captains,

One items we still have on our "hot fix" list is a problem with Operations Center that causes it not to preserve your liveries information during a product update, thus requiring that you reinstall them via the OC (or manually if you have installed non OC liveries)

This is an ungraceful problem and we thought we would get it squared away before starting micro-updates, but the amount of time that got absorbed this week chasing down a CTD issue that was obviously higher priority prevented us from doing so.

For Now, Do this:
Once you have updated the DC-6, simply run the Operations Center, and reinstall the liveries you like. If you have non OC liveries, follow whatever instructions were given to you by the livery's artist.

In the Future, You Will Do This:
Once we have a chance to refine this logic with the Operations Center, when we update the configuration file that stores all of your livery information, we will run a process that will allow you to then have a "one click" return for your liveries similar to other PMDG products.

I apologize for the nuisance work that may take place until we get this loose end tied down.

 

This is not a post against or about PMDG in particular, but this information is making me wondering something about FS2020 design:

- they've have implemented a great system with the virtual file system (VFS) which automatically loads up whatever is found in a root folder (Community for example), and it does this live as well at runtime whenever you change files

- aircraft configuration is still requiring to add liveries entries in a .cfg file and to also manually index these entries in the .cfg file.

Wouldn't be great FS2020 abandons these FSX legacy SDK practices and extends the VFS principle to aircraft liveries, so that you just have to copy your individual livery folders into say a root Liveries folder for them to be automatically picked up? *

Just a thought that crossed my mind reading this topic, not a rant. There are so many legacy FSX SDK mentality stuff which doesn't match the other great and novel things FS2020 is offering but they aren't communicating much about their plans. Maybe they are already considering this.

 

*these individual liveries folder could be just including the textures, but also any other .cfg file if these are necessary for overriding the main .cfg file.

Edited June 25, 20214 yr by RXP

1 hour ago, Tektolnes said:

All my DC-6B liveries had disappeared. In the Orphaned Textures section in the Livery Utilities I hit scan now and that repaired them all somehow and they were all visible again - including those that I'd downloaded from flightsim.to

Repair didn’t work here but remove/install did and that was very fast

40 minutes ago, RXP said:

This is not a post against or about PMDG in particular, but this information is making me wondering something about FS2020 design:

- they've have implemented a great system with the virtual file system (VFS) which automatically loads up whatever is found in a root folder (Community for example), and it does this live as well at runtime whenever you change files

- aircraft configuration is still requiring to add liveries entries in a .cfg file and to also manually index these entries in the .cfg file.

Wouldn't be great FS2020 abandons these FSX legacy SDK practices and extends the VFS principle to aircraft liveries, so that you just have to copy your individual livery folders into say a root Liveries folder for them to be automatically picked up? *

Just a thought that crossed my mind reading this topic, not a rant. There are so many legacy FSX SDK mentality stuff which doesn't match the other great and novel things FS2020 is offering but they aren't communicating much about their plans. Maybe they are already considering this.

 

*these individual liveries folder could be just including the textures, but also any other .cfg file if these are necessary for overriding the main .cfg file.

that would make things a bit easier

 

44 minutes ago, RXP said:

making me wondering something about FS2020 design

.I don’t know. They have been working on the game for almost five years. Time to consolidate rather than innovate. When I see the onslaught of lightnings (an unrelated example but I mean there are priorities), I’d rather have them polish the product of its asperities than making it more technically elegant. 

Edited June 25, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

I don't disagree with this @Dominique_K, unless these asperities are precisely due to the encumbrance of the legacy constructs. And my experience in this industry and the inner working of the FSX code tells me a non negligible number of what I (but just me) find to be "asperities" are often due to legacy FSX constructs imposing themselves onto FS2020 design. The above is one such user facing example among others more deeply rooted and influential to aircraft, gauges and system development for example.

Edited June 25, 20214 yr by RXP

I am of the school that if it's not broken and it still works, why change it ?  It's obvious they took some legacy approach because they were afraid that people wouldn't switch over to MSFS. I am sure that drove a lot of the decision making. See how MSFS is friendly to older simmers, you can import/convert your FSX aircraft. I believe that decision was a mistake but hey. What do I know.

52 minutes ago, RXP said:

This is not a post against or about PMDG in particular, but this information is making me wondering something about FS2020 design:

- they've have implemented a great system with the virtual file system (VFS) which automatically loads up whatever is found in a root folder (Community for example), and it does this live as well at runtime whenever you change files

- aircraft configuration is still requiring to add liveries entries in a .cfg file and to also manually index these entries in the .cfg file.

Wouldn't be great FS2020 abandons these FSX legacy SDK practices and extends the VFS principle to aircraft liveries, so that you just have to copy your individual livery folders into say a root Liveries folder for them to be automatically picked up? *

Just a thought that crossed my mind reading this topic, not a rant. There are so many legacy FSX SDK mentality stuff which doesn't match the other great and novel things FS2020 is offering but they aren't communicating much about their plans. Maybe they are already considering this.

 

*these individual liveries folder could be just including the textures, but also any other .cfg file if these are necessary for overriding the main .cfg file.

This happens now. Many liveries don't require any aircraft.cfg editing, they are self contained and simply dropped into the community folder (or other folder if using something like the Addon Linker).

Don't think liveries added while the game is running are picked up though.

7 minutes ago, Dave CBFS said:

This happens now. Many liveries don't require any aircraft.cfg editing, they are self contained and simply dropped into the community folder (or other folder if using something like the Addon Linker).

This is great news! Do you mean you don't even have to list them in the aircraft.cfg file?

Nope, they have their own partial aircraft.cfg with the [flightsim.x] section and a [VARIATION] section that contains something like: base_container = "..\PMDG DC-6B"

You need to set up the folder structure correctly, and include a layout and manifest json files.

There was a doc online somewhere with the details, I'll have to see if I can find the link.

 

edit: found it here: https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/guide-creating-livery-packages-for-msfs.448795/

Edited June 25, 20214 yr by Dave CBFS

Yes, i am not sure how it works but the one livery for the DC6 I am using was just placed in the community folder and it works well.