There's one aspect of using Addons Linker that I don't think anyone has mentioned here yet:

If you organise your sceneries and liveries by geographical area, then you only see the relevant liveries in the MSFS menu. I also organise my aircraft into civilian and military so I don't clutter up my selections with inappropriate aircraft (for that session). This also prevents MSFS spawning the wrong AI types at gates/parking slots.

It's not a 100% solution, as I keep all the default MSFS stuff where it is (all mixed in together) - so you'll still see things appearing [apparently] out of place. I know even this content can be moved (with a little care), but I'd rather not mess with it.

Apart from that (as has been said) I agree the Addons Linker is brilliant for selectively enabling/disabling addons to track down bugs or incompatibilities.

So as my 1TB MSFS dedicated  drive gets full does AddonLinker allow me to use another drive to expand the available space while still  keeping everything active in the community folder? Or do you have to deactivate stuff?

Secondly why can't you just create shortcuts for files on another drive and put them in the community folder?

Edited December 14, 20223 yr by jarmstro

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

So as my 1TB MSFS dedicated  drive gets full does AddonLinker allow me to use another drive to expand the available space while still  keeping everything active in the community folder? Or do you have to deactivate stuff?

Secondly why can't you just create shortcuts for files on another drive and put them in the community folder?

Yes - you can use another drive with the Linker. Sure - you can do all the symlinks manually if you prefer, but you'd lose the handy/added functionality that the Linker gives you.

If you don't think you'd ever need to disable any addons (just leave them permanently linked to your new location) then you absolutely won't need the Linker.

19 minutes ago, Adamski_NZ said:

Yes - you can use another drive with the Linker. Sure - you can do all the symlinks manually if you prefer, but you'd lose the handy/added functionality that the Linker gives you.

If you don't think you'd ever need to disable any addons (just leave them permanently linked to your new location) then you absolutely won't need the Linker.

Thank you. I'll install it.

10 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Thank you. I'll install it.

You won't regret it. It's a superb piece of work! If you want to know more about the way I use it (probably way over the top!) then take a look at:
https://flightsim.to/file/14298/msfs-addons-linker-general-procedure

Edited December 14, 20223 yr by Adamski_NZ

12 hours ago, jarmstro said:

So as my 1TB MSFS dedicated  drive gets full does AddonLinker allow me to use another drive to expand the available space while still  keeping everything active in the community folder? Or do you have to deactivate stuff?

You can have multiple Addon folders on multiple drives and use AddonsLinker to activate or deactivate the content.

21 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

You can have multiple Addon folders on multiple drives and use AddonsLinker to activate or deactivate the content.

Yes, this can't be emphasized enough: you can store all -- 100%-- of your addons on any drive you like, completely separate from MSFS. Only selected links, which require minimal space, are ever placed in Community, and these links are unaffected by anything in MSFS. Addon Linker is an ingenious system that some folks still don't seem to appreciate, and it's free!

On 11/16/2022 at 10:51 AM, Shack95 said:

I also delete the content file and scenery index files when I install or remove something because I had quite some performance and tearing issues in SU10 and that seems to have solved the problem. Not sure if it‘s actually the case though. It might be more superstition than fact, but since I‘ve been doing this I haven’t had any issues, so I‘m gonna stick to this rather annoying routine for a while.

New to MSFS, can you expound on this a bit more. Where are these files at? I’m assuming MSFS rebuilds them on next load? Is this sorta like deleting the shader files from P3D times?

16 hours ago, B777ER said:

New to MSFS, can you expound on this a bit more. Where are these files at? I’m assuming MSFS rebuilds them on next load? Is this sorta like deleting the shader files from P3D times?

The content.xml file can be found here: %localAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache

In the same directory you will also find a folder called scenery indexes. The files inside this folder can be deleted as well. 

The sim rebuilds all these files when loading the sim. 

To be honest, I have no idea what deleting and rebuilding these files actually does. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can help. In my case it considerably reduced the stutters and tearing issues that came with sim update 10, so it has become a routine of mine to always delete these files before running the sim. It might be a complete waste of time by now though. 

Imho you shouldn't touch or worry about the content.xml anymore, it was completely changed with SU10 and now it's not rebuild automatically by the sim as far as i know. It's just created 'on demand' by some applications if they need one (for example navigraph creates one).

In Addons Linker there was in previous an option to remove or edit the content.xml editor but all that has been removed since SU10 because it's not needed anymore.

🍻

 

Edited December 16, 20223 yr by Bad_T

10 hours ago, Shack95 said:

The sim rebuilds all these files when loading the sim. 

As stated by Bad_T... that is no longer true for the Content.xml file!

Be careful about suggesting things that may not work 😉

On 12/15/2022 at 7:54 AM, B777ER said:

New to MSFS, can you expound on this a bit more. Where are these files at? I’m assuming MSFS rebuilds them on next load? Is this sorta like deleting the shader files from P3D times?

Note:  Do not delete the Content.xml file!

2 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

As stated by Bad_T... that is no longer true for the Content.xml file!

Be careful about suggesting things that may not work 😉

I wasn‘t aware of that as the file is rebuilt on my end. Thanks for clarifying that. 

56 minutes ago, Shack95 said:

I wasn‘t aware of that as the file is rebuilt on my end. Thanks for clarifying that. 

Not to worry.. we are all struggling to understand what Asobo has changed in the last two SU releases.. 😉