Proposal: Packages Groups in P3D Addon Manager

[Beaufort 0]

Hi,

as most of us I´m using P3D Addon Organizer constantly and cannot imagine to run my sim without the tool. THX for giving uns this phantastic freeware!

My proposal for a developement of the tool:

Would it be possible to make Groups for Packages, too?

My intention: I have very much sceneries, airplanes and AI´s. For flying I only activate the sceneries I need for the flight. I know, not needed to save RAM since we have a 64-bit sim. But the loading time of P3D is the longer the more is active. But acivating/deactivating with the help of groups (e.g. for geographic regions) is only posible for sceneries and if they are activated not in scenry.cfg, but via the add-ons method, only the entry for the scenery in the add-on.xml in Documents\Prepar3Dv# Add-ons\[folder] is disabled ("AddOn.Component.Disabled"), but not the whole package. Thus e.g. effects, sounds pp. only needed if this scenery is enabled are furthermore active and extend the loading time without any need. If I could build a Group e.g. for "UK" not only for Scenery, but also for Packages, one could set the whole package disabled by setting it "Active=FALSE" in the add-ons.cfg in ProgramData\Lockheed Martin\Prepare3Dv# resp. in AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepare3Dv#.

Would that be a possibility?

[Beaufort 0]

Sorry I did not recognize the thread "Addon Organizer" is just about this question. Seems to be not so easy to realize, anyway, it is a great tool!
 

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

P4AO has the "Strict package law" feature, it has been in the app for a long time. But in previous versions you could only enable it globally, not per group. The feature makes sure that whenever you disable something (whatever it is), the entire package is disabled, not only the component inside. Same thing that the simulator does on the "Options->Add-ons" dialog.

In the current version 1.56 of P4AO you can activate "strict package law" only for a single group too. When this is active, disabling the group will disable all packages where the sceneries come from.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Lorby_SI

[Beaufort 0]

THX a lot!

I have updated to 1.56 now and enabled "strict package law" now for my Groups. But it still works only for deactivating. After deactivating the packages for those sceneries of the Group, which are activated by the add-on method, are "red". But when I switch the Group to on, only the sceneries activated by the traditional method in the scenery.cfg turn "green", all other sceneries and the corresponding packages remain "red".

 

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

3 minutes ago, Beaufort said:

only the sceneries activated by the traditional method in the scenery.cfg turn "green", all other sceneries and the corresponding packages remain "red".

That is weird, this used to work in testing. I will take a look at it.

[Beaufort 0]

THX!

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

I'm unable to reproduce this. There is no difference between enabling or disabling elements, it is the same code. I have a really big package with all legacy Aerosoft products, scenery, effects, fonts, etc. When I put one of those sceneries into a group where "package law" is enabled, and then doubleclick the group, the whole group and the whole Aerosoft package are turned red as well. Doubleclicking it again, turns everything green.

Can you give me a specific example? Bear in mind that the checkboxes of the group dialog have a different purpose and are not related to enabling/disabling group assets. 

Edited August 22, 2021 by Lorby_SI

[Beaufort 0]

I tried it again step by step and made screenshots of every step to show you the problem - and now it works! I don´t know why, but it works perfectly. Phantastic - and sorry for the confusion.