25 minutes ago, captain420 said:

But the FBW Installer requires the installation to be placed directly into the community folder. How do we get around this?

There are indeed addons that insist on being installed into the Community folder.

I have a few myself.. best to let them have their way.  JustFlight Arrow is an example.

Arghhh, that means I have to go back and find my original archive files and manually extract them all over again. This is more work than I thought.

Sigh, I have to go back and redownload all the stuff that I had from flightsim.to now.

And how do I get my orbx library stuff to work with addon linker? I try to point it to my D:\Community Addons\Scenery\ location but it keeps saying its not empty. So I had to rename the folder, create a new D:\Community\Addons\Scenery\ and then was able to add the folder into my OrbX Central. But then I have to redownload all my OrbX scenery all over again. But once they downloaded, they put them in D:\Community Addons\Scener\msfs\??? Why does Orbx insist in making this more complicated. I didn't specify an 'msfs' folder? I want my orbx addons to go directly into D:\Community Addons\Scenery\

It should be D:\Community Addons\Scenery\orbx-airport-og20-fairways

Edited August 17, 20214 yr by captain420

1 hour ago, captain420 said:

How will this work if we use the flybywire installer to update our planes?

Simply configure your FBW installer to the relevant folder in your own set of Add.ons. For example mine is MSFS Add-ons > Aircraft > FBW. That's as simple as that, and the FBW downloader will know the location for future updates.

1 hour ago, captain420 said:

I want my orbx addons to go directly into D:\Community Addons\Scenery\

OrbX will insist on having its own separate folder and it can't be changed if we want to ensure future updates, it will also create an MSFS sub-folder regardless that too cannot be changed, otherwise it will show a re-download each time you open the OrbX tool. What I did was to accept a specific OrbX folder in which I have all my products from them (only a few)  This is the only exception I have so far, as I did not find a work around.

Edited August 17, 20214 yr by Bernard Ducret

1 hour ago, Bert Pieke said:

There are indeed addons that insist on being installed into the Community folder.

I have a few myself.. best to let them have their way.  JustFlight Arrow is an example.

I use the linker with the Arrow with no problems

I let the installer do its thing (it placed it in the Community folder) and then I used the linker to move it to E:\Aircraft.   Now, I'll grant you, come time to uninstall, I will want to move it back/unlink it.  But it does work perfectly w/Addon Linker.

1 hour ago, captain420 said:

How will this work if we use the flybywire installer to update our planes? The community folder will only show a shortcut or link to the actual folder. But the FBW Installer requires the installation to be placed directly into the community folder. How do we get around this?

Whenever I try to enable an add-on, I see 'could not read the manifest.json' file.

I am not at my PC now but i think that FBW installer has settings that you can change the installation folder to whatever you want.

1 hour ago, Bernard Ducret said:

OrbX will insist on having its own separate folder and it can't be changed if we want to ensure future updates, it will also create an MSFS sub-folder regardless that too cannot be changed, otherwise it will show a re-download each time you open the OrbX tool. What I did was to accept a specific OrbX folder in which I have all my products from them (only a few)  This is the only exception I have so far, as I did not find a work around.

That's a pity then that you can't set the install path to exactly what you want. The FBW Installer allows you to specify an exact path. I don't see why Orbx has to do it this way. I really don't like it creating an additional "msfs\xxxxxxxx\community\" folder for the addons.

I feel one of the big advantages of Add on linker is that it shows the version number

I wished creators kept their manifest.sjon up to date. It often happens old version numbers are used for a newer version.

Even WT made this mistake.

17 minutes ago, captain420 said:

That's a pity then that you can't set the install path to exactly what you want. The FBW Installer allows you to specify an exact path. I don't see why Orbx has to do it this way. I really don't like it creating an additional "msfs\xxxxxxxx\community\" folder for the addons.

Not sure what you mean.

My Orbx addons are in:

D:\Games\Orbx\Orbx Library

I just point addon linker to that folder and Orbx central and updates work fine.

It does mean you cannot sort your Orbx scenery into the same regional folders as the other stuff but an addon linker preset fixes that.

To be honest manually creating a stack of different install folders for the Orbx stuff would be a PITA anyway, it is better if Orbx have their own place.

3 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

There are indeed addons that insist on being installed into the Community folder.

I have a few myself.. best to let them have their way.  JustFlight Arrow is an example.

I have all my planes outside the community folder including the arrow and never had a problem 

What about Drzeweiki Addons? His installers don't let us choose where to install to and it installs into the default community folder. Anyway around this?

1 minute ago, captain420 said:

What about Drzeweiki Addons? His installers don't let us choose where to install to and it installs into the default community folder. Anyway around this?

With most things that work that way, I just let them install then move them elsewhere and then link them back in with addon linker.

Couple of things.

ORBX stuff: I have mine physically sitting in an ORBX library, where they are maintained by Orbx Central. But I have sysmlinks to them in with my other addon scenery in the addons folder I use via the addons linker. So when I want to activate an area I just do so in the addons linker, and that'll place junction entries in the sim's community folder for both the Orbx and non-Orbx stuff for that area. Only thing you have to watch out for is that when Orbx central does an update, it will place its own symlink for the updated product directly into the community folder. As long as they haven't changed the folder name they're using for the product (they do this sometimes, mostly with their partner products) you can just delete the new symlink - the one you have in your addons folder structure won't have been affected by the update. If they have changed the folder name, or if you've just installed a new Orbx product, you'll have to go and create new symlinks for the new names. It helps that the addons linker creates JUNCTIONs in the community folder, but Orbx uses SYMLINKs, so it's easy to spot when something's been changed.

Addons that install into community folder: All addons that have an install function (rather than just "copy these files into your community folder" instructions) should probably be installed there, in case they create registry entries. You can still effectively take them out of there and store them in your addons folder structure. Create an appropriate folder, then COPY (not MOVE) the newly installed folder out of the community folder to your new addon folder. Once copied, reset the "encrypted" attribute for the new addon folder and all its contents, and delete the original from the community folder. You can then use the addons linker in the normal way for such folders. If you're not sure about encrypted or other file attributes, it's not that complicated. You probably need a halfway decent utility file manager, as I don't thing Windows Explorer will let you do this, but you just need to right click in your file manager on the folder you create above (after you've populated it) and select 'attributes', then 'advanced' and de-select the 'encrypted' option. Press 'ok' or 'enter' or whatever your file manager wants and it will remove the flag.

Addons that install into the official folder: If you buy any addons from the MS Store, they will be installed in the Official folder, rather than the Community folder. This means they can't be handled by the addons linker. Unless you turn on the appropriate feature in the AOLinker. In this case you need a seperate Addons folder to contain these. On my system, I maintain a specific addon folder (Addons - official) which is then specified to the Addons Linker. I then use the technique above to "move" the stuff out of the Official folder. So the actual files for these addons end up in my "Addons - official" folder and nowhere else. Because these will include folders for all sorts of regional areas, or even aircraft, I then create symlinks to these "addons - official" folders in my normal addons folder setup. This gives me two things. I can now activate a region, for example France, which I have in my addons folder structure, and when I do this everything for France, including Orbx stuff, normal addons, freeware and official store bought products will all get loaded as JUNCTIONs in the appropriate (community of official) folders. Plus, whenever I do a sim update I can turn all the addons off and remove them from thye community folder with one preset, and at the same time put all the official folder products back in place (via junctions) so that the sim update can update any of those products if necessary.

I realise that if you haven't done any of this before it sounds complicated, but it's not that difficult once you get stuck in, and it gives you total control over your environment. With the combination of aircraft, liveries and sceneries I have, I am currently sitting at nearly 1800 addons on my system, And before anybody goes off on one about "what kind of word not allowed is this guy" I totally see this as my world sim, much more than just a flight sim. I want to make my world as complec and engaging and realistic as I can. I couldn't manage this without using these techniques.

Happy to help anyone if they want to pm me.

cheers,

Andy

The problem is when you move addons out of the community folder to your own folder, then you will get that msg in the msfs addons linker app "cannot read the manifest.json" file.

15 minutes ago, captain420 said:

The problem is when you move addons out of the community folder to your own folder, then you will get that msg in the msfs addons linker app "cannot read the manifest.json" file.

Interesting - I do not get that.