Hello, I have been using the fantastic Addon Organiser for a while now, it is a great piece of work, many thanks.

I am using P3d 4.5 & P3D 5.0. and am able to group scenery, however is there a way of grouping packages? I have read through the manual and cannot see if it is possible.

I want to be able to create a quick preload of Orbx scenery, if I am flying in Australia I want to shut off the rest of the World Orbx packages in a group so only Australia loads for this session, no point loading Africa, England, Americas etc if I am in Aus. By switching them off vastly speeds up loading times. I use AddOn Organiser to switch all ORBX FTX packages off and only load the True Earth when In England, it loads so much quicker.

It is time consuming to have to switch each package on / off and whilst I am able to create Orbx scenery groups to achieve a similar end, the packages remain switched on and it is difficult to ensure all the associated effects, elevation stubs etc are switched off. 

Many Thanks.  

Hello Roger,

tricky. That is a massive code change, since with P3D a scenery can be the entire package or only a part of it. I'm not sure that this can be handled with the same grouping mechanism. Feels more like an additional mechanism would be required. Not sure if that kind of effort is warranted for a P3D related app - or if anybody is still using it (except you of course).

The MSFS variant can do this already, but with P3D... I will look into it, but can't promise that anything will come out of this.

Many thanks indeed, I cant ask for more.

I am not a developer, just a thought, perhaps a way to select multiple packages at once, sort off {ctrl+click} along with a "select all" and the ability to deselect the few desired packages for the flight to be taken.

Many developers like A2A are continuing to support P3D and MSFS. A2A News

7 hours ago, Ace9 said:

Many thanks indeed, I cant ask for more.

I am not a developer, just a thought, perhaps a way to select multiple packages at once, sort off {ctrl+click} along with a "select all" and the ability to deselect the few desired packages for the flight to be taken.

Many developers like A2A are continuing to support P3D and MSFS. A2A News

 

Another thought, maybe the simple answer, saving a profile of selected packages. The idea is from P3Ds ability to import / export controller button and axis profiles.

Many Thanks again. 

6 hours ago, Ace9 said:

 

Another thought, maybe the simple answer, saving a profile of selected packages. The idea is from P3Ds ability to import / export controller button and axis profiles.

Many Thanks again. 

You could do that yourself, by swapping in/out copies of the two add-ons.cfg files (those contain the package definitions and their status). But that is way too clunky for my taste.

14 hours ago, Ace9 said:

perhaps a way to select multiple packages at once, sort off {ctrl+click} along with a "select all" and the ability to deselect the few desired packages for the flight to be taken.

That is not really the problem that I have to solve.

The existing scenery groups are essentially a simple database. But that database can only manage sceneries at the moment, not packages. I can integrate packages too, that is not a problem either - but doing all this requires a second configuration dialog - and that takes quite a bit of effort.

Or I follow your other suggestion and just let you save the current state of the packages into different profiles - but that isn't really that different - it requires some form of database table too.

I just need time which I currently don't have. But I never have time, so not to worry. I have a concept about how I want to do it, and when that is mature enough, I'll just type it into code.

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by Lorby_SI

Btw. Theoretically, by activating "strict package law" in P4AO, having the scenery element in a group disabled should disable the entire package that it belongs to.

But doing this has consequences for everything else, you won't be able to switch of parts of packages anymore.

Edit: but that might be a solution. What about I add a simple checkbox to the group definition, where you can activate strict package law for that group? That way, you can configure groups that disable packages and others that don't. That would take all of 10 minutes to implement...

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by Lorby_SI

wrong thread

 

Edited July 16, 20214 yr by reecemj
wrong thread

Hi Sorry for the delay in replying, been working away from home. 

I did not know there was 2 add-ons.cfg files to update, one is in ProgramData\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D, is the other in AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D?

So if I read you correctly, the Active=FALSE or TRUE lines in the add-on.cfg is the code that tells P3D if a packages is on or off? I understand what you say, I used notepad find and replace switching Norway from Off to On and Scotland from On to Off. Now I could save the cfg as Norway.cfg 

[Package.45]
Path=E:\Orbx Libs\ORBX FTX\p3dv4\EU Norway
Active=FALSE
Required=FALSE

[Package.46]
Path=E:\Orbx Libs\ORBX FTX\p3dv4\EU Scotland
Active=TRUE
Required=FALSE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

[Package.45]
Path=E:\Orbx Libs\ORBX FTX\p3dv4\EU Norway
Active=True
Required=FALSE

[Package.46]
Path=E:\Orbx Libs\ORBX FTX\p3dv4\EU Scotland
Active=False
Required=FALSE

I have strict package law enabled and can see when I disable an Orbx package component, the Mesh for example, the whole package is disabled. But If I disable Europe package, then the packages England, Scotland Ireland, Eire, Wales, Norway must also be disabled along with all the European Airports packages, same goes for all Orbx stuff of which I have almost all of it.

I only fly GA VFR to speed up loading times I only need to load the scenery packages where I will be flying, so a check box to configure Active groups would be great along with the ability to save and load Active package profiles by way of the add-on.cfg - this would be the answer to my dreams. Decide where I wish to fly - open P4AO, select the package add-on.cfg profile of that area - job done inside of a minute.

In reality as you suggest, to create several profiles "by hand" in note pad would save time in the long run, but I fully concur with your statement below  😁 and I use both P3D v4 and v5 so I need to do this twice unless the add-on.cfg is the same? they look the same! 

On 7/13/2021 at 7:57 PM, Lorby_SI said:

that is way too clunky for my taste.

  Many thanks

Edited July 18, 20214 yr by Ace9
Add info

Just seen my message I will check out 1.56.5 - suffice to say at first glance 🤞 this may be the business.. 👍 

Thank you so very much.

Edited July 18, 20214 yr by Ace9

Sorry to report I am getting errors with v1.56.5

 

 

 

and when selecting multiple scenery files with the Multi Select box checked, {this also errors in the previous version (1.55 b10) I have just discovered. }

 

Edited July 18, 20214 yr by Ace9

I need to know what the "Details" buttons on the Exception window have to say.

Please send the information by email to the address on the last page of the P4AO manual, a forum is not the right place for that.

Email sent with details.

On 7/19/2021 at 11:24 AM, Lorby_SI said:

the address on the last page of the P4AO manual

I received a Postmaster delivery error so used the form on the website.

Hello @ll,

looks like the cause was a broken scenery.cfg file. There was an additional empty "[General]" tag near the beginning of the file. Once removed, the app worked normally.

Edited July 25, 20214 yr by Lorby_SI