Content.xml Editor?

[KL Oo 699]

14 minutes ago, kt069 said:

As far as I know, Lorby has an organiser for MSFS, as well.But I did not try it.

https://www.lorby-si.com/downloads.html

Yep….I was going to kudos to @Lorby_SI Oliver who appears to have taken on the challenge and is converting his amazing P3D Addon Organizer for us with MSFS.

I think this should do what the OP is asking?

[Bad_T 581]

did a little test for inclusion inside addons linker, well to be honest i'm still not sure if it's really useful to edit that file, but well 😜

If i can finish it properly next weekend i'll add it, it's just an option people will certainly not be forced to use it if not needed but maybe it can help those who already edit that file manually 😜

the features could be these :  see what is active or not / see what is not on your system anymore / see the location of each entries (community, official, linker folder) / move up/down (probably wil not make any difference) / auto-remove entries not your system anymore / set the active flag to true or false

🍻

Edited November 29, 2021 by Bad_T

[Barnes 192]

25 minutes ago, Bad_T said:

If i can finish it properly next weekend i'll add it, it's just an option people will certainly not be forced to use it if not needed but maybe it can help those who already edit that file manually 😜

 

Looks like a cool housekeeping feature! Looking forward to the update.

Thanks again for this indispensable tool.

[Nemo 1,305]

6 hours ago, Bad_T said:

did a little test for inclusion inside addons linker, well to be honest i'm still not sure if it's really useful to edit that file, but well 😜

If i can finish it properly next weekend i'll add it, it's just an option people will certainly not be forced to use it if not needed but maybe it can help those who already edit that file manually 😜

the features could be these :  see what is active or not / see what is not on your system anymore / see the location of each entries (community, official, linker folder) / move up/down (probably wil not make any difference) / auto-remove entries not your system anymore / set the active flag to true or false

🍻

Thanks for your efforts. Looks good.

AFAIK, the order of entries plays an important role if you add "remove static a/c at XXXX" add-ons. Many of them appeared in the last two weeks. It is important that their entry in the content.xml is below the XXXX airport entry and thus having a higher priority as the airport itself.

[mamu82 278]

12 hours ago, Bad_T said:

 

- move up / move down (just by reading this thread i don't understand if it would make a difference though 😳), i thought it was just the alphabetical order of the addon that gave its priority and the content.xml would not change anything about that, but maybe i'm wrong, never investigated much about this file.

🥂

It does

Scenery loading works as "layers"

The last entry in the content.xml Is the last loaded, making It the TOP layer. 

It Is Easy to understand that if a scenery works over something else (base scenery, Exclusions etc) It Needs to be on top of that scenery

In the case of a reinstallation or deletion of the content.xml, the file Will be generated automatically, alphabetically , in this order:

FS base scenery/ official content/community content 

 

A wise content Developer should think ahead and name Is package in order to make sure a correctly compiled content.xml won't broke the right order of loading that Is needed for his package to work (and should not abuse of this, otherwise our community Is gonna be full of zzz_)

 

 

 

 

[jrw4 624]

OMG, this is starting to sound like the scenery.ini nightmare of X-Plane. Some of us just want to fly, not edit text files that then need to be edited again the next time one wants to make a change. I thought MSFS ended that for good. Perhaps more to the point, what am I doing wrong here, since I didn't know that the content.xml file even existed? Do I need to edit this whenever I change an add-on?

Have a good week, everyone. Fingers crossed that we'll see a hotfix for that annoying ground level fog sometime soon.

Edited November 29, 2021 by jrw4
Typo

[Nemo 1,305]

19 hours ago, jrw4 said:

... Some of us just want to fly, not edit text files that then need to be edited again the next time one wants to make a change. I thought MSFS ended that for good. Perhaps more to the point, what am I doing wrong here, since I didn't know that the content.xml file even existed? Do I need to edit this whenever I change an add-on? ...

Not that I want to edit MSFS files. But for add-ons which depend on each other it may become necessary. It also depends on how add-on developers produce their products and  how MSFS handles it. Until now, luckily, there is no need to edit the content.xml, except some rare cases which I mentioned above.

Edited November 30, 2021 by Nemo

[Bad_T 581]

as promised, for those who requested something like that, here's my little try at a 'content.xml' editor integrated insde Addons Linker. I can probably easily transform it in a standalone little tool if needed for those who don't use the linker.

Link --> https://gofile.io/d/aRQrCj

if you don't know what it is and never worried about that file in the past then don't worry because you don't need it 👍, it's just for people who like to go a bit further with their sim tweaking.

The zip contains only the EXE file, you still need all the other AddonsLinker files, just replace the EXE.

The image below shows the main feature, should be straighforward if you are used to edit that file manually.

Notes :

• the new screen is available in the 'Tools' menu
• to move up/down you can also use drag and drop rows (i'm aware that when doing so it does not automatically scroll, for now you need to scroll with the mouse while dragging, good exercice for hand/fingers coordination 🙈😂😜)
• if you have addons managed by other tools (orbx, other vendor, ...) the tool will obviously not see them if they are not activated and so they will show as 'not found'.
• there is no reminder to save if you changed something, so you will loose your changes if you forget to click on the save button
• a backup of the previous content.xml is always saved for now when you click on the save button --> content.xml_backup_<datetime>

probably still needs some tweaking, feedback welcome if you think it should have been done differently.

Thank you 🍻

 

Edited December 5, 2021 by Bad_T
added some more notes

[Barnes 192]

2 hours ago, Bad_T said:

as promised, for those who requested something like that, here's my little try at a 'content.xml' editor integrated insde Addons Linker. I can probably easily transform it in a standalone little tool if needed for those who don't use the linker.

probably still needs some tweaking, feedback welcome if you think it should have been done differently.

Thank you 🍻

 

Looking good. Thanks for the added feature.

I have noticed that each time I open the app, I have to navigate to the location of content.xml file to open it.

Would it be possible to add the ability for the app to remember the location of content.xml after first use so that it is not necessary to navigate to it each time?

Thanks

Edited December 5, 2021 by Barnes

[Bad_T 581]

yes sure, i can save the selected path.

I thought the file would be opened automatically, on my system it's located in the folder mentioned below so the tool will look there by default and open it automatically (if found). I thought the location would be the same for everyone (but i have Steam version, maybe MS-Store version has files elsewhere)

By default, the tool looks for the content.xml file in this folder --> %appdata%\Microsoft Flight Simulator

which resolves to -- > C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator

@Barnescan you please maybe tell me where your file is located ?

Edited December 5, 2021 by Bad_T

[Barnes 192]

1 minute ago, Bad_T said:

yes sure, i can add the selected path.

I thought the file would be opened automatically, on my system it's located here so the tool will look there by default and open it (if found). I thought the location would be the same for everyone (but i have Steam version, maybe MS-Store version has files elsewhere)

the tools looks for the content.xml file in this folder --> %appdata%\Microsoft Flight Simulator

which resolves to -- > C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator

@Barnescan you please maybe tell me where your file is located ?

I am using MS-Store version.

Location for content.xml for me is --> C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache

 

[SierraDelta 1,342]

3 minutes ago, Barnes said:

Location for content.xml for me is --> C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache

Same for me - also on MS-Store version.

[Bad_T 581]

oh i see 🙈, thanks guys, yeah it's a competely different folder.

It's probably the same for every MS-Store user so it would be a good idea to add that folder also in the automatic detection. Saving the choosen one seems a good idea anyway so i will add that too.

🍻

Edited December 5, 2021 by Bad_T

[Dazzlercee23 66]

20 hours ago, Bad_T said:

oh i see 🙈, thanks guys, yeah it's a competely different folder.

It's probably the same for every MS-Store user so it would be a good idea to add that folder also in the automatic detection. Saving the choosen one seems a good idea anyway so i will add that too.

🍻

Not sure it is reading the file correctly for me.

I have a number of water fix files showing as ACTIVE in the actual file when opened with notepad, but they show as AVAILABLE through the new tool.

It almost looks like the tool is predicting the content.xml based on currently selected files in AddonLinker.

[virtuali 4,421]

On 11/29/2021 at 9:34 AM, mamu82 said:

A wise content Developer should think ahead and name Is package in order to make sure a correctly compiled content.xml won't broke the right order of loading that Is needed for his package to work (and should not abuse of this, otherwise our community Is gonna be full of zzz_)

It's not a matter of being "wise" or not. The SDK dictates that, in order to be accepted on the MS Marketplace, a package should follow a specific naming convention that for airport sceneries (which are the ones affected by the loading order ) is: developer-airport-icao-airportname

So, unless airport developers will all start renaming themselves with a Z, relying on the package name is not a solution, also considering the automatic sorting triggered by removing the CONTENT.XML will result in areas in the Official folder always getting a lower priority than areas in the Community folder so, what if you have an add-on bought from the Marketplace that *must* stay on top of something in the Community to work ? Its name won't help so, rearraging the CONTENT.XML would be required in any way, regardless how the two packages were named.

Yes, we (and many other developers ) are trying to convince Microsoft/Asobo an UI like FSX had is required in the sim but, until then, it might be useful having an utility doing that, for those that find difficult editing the file manually.

Edited December 6, 2021 by virtuali