Sorry for what may be a dumb question, but is there any definitive answer to this?

Can you run an addon that has been updated for 2024 on a 2020 system or do you have to keep a copy for each sim (if you've also kept 2020)?

I know at some point I'll drop 2020 but in the meantime I have a couple of thousand addons on my 2020 system, over 2.5 Tb, and I don't want to duplicate that lot if I can avoid it.

cheers

No -unless Developer says so 

It would be an unwise procedure and might damage your pristine installation 

Dave Garwoods Auster works(Flightsimware.to) plus some Orbx sceneries developed for MSFS 2024 work well

xxd09

I asked the same question on another thread a few days ago and novody could seem to come up with an answer.

I have seen some developers producing different versions for both, so I have a suspicion that whilst backward compatibility was built into 2024, forward compatibility may be a bit more problematic.

Gary Summons has recently updated his UK2000 airports so that they work in both MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024. A handful apparently did not require any updates at all.

Why would you want to use 2024 ad-ons on 2020? Only if you are looking for trouble.

If it‘s a compatibility update, you can of course run it in 2020. For most sceneries I‘ve looked at in Contrail, the files are virtually the same that get installed in 2020 and 2024. The compatibility patch was always applied to your 2020 (!) installation too.

Native 2024 sceneries, that might be a different thing. However anyone saying this might „damage your installation“ does not understand how addons work. That‘s nonsense.

For scenery there are a fair few new 2024-specific elements, most of which seem to be minor detail enhancements such as extra embellishments to painted lines and extra ground details that you can add. 

I assume 2020 simply won't read them in a 2024 compiled addon as the programming isn't present and will render what it can. Nothing seems to require being removed and nothing's fundamentally different. There's just extra code that 2020 will be blind to. 

But that code might be enough to crash the sim. A comma in the wrong place is enough to do that.

Planes might be a very different matter. 

 

Edited November 29, 20241 yr by superspud

Thanks, @superspud, I was hoping someone like your good self might respond, and you've confirmed what I was sort of thinking. I'd already guessed that aircraft would be likely to be an issue and planned to run 2020 and 2024 versions separately for their respective sims, but I wasn't sure about scenery changes.

I took a full backup of my entire addons folder structure on Nov 18th, so I think I'll set my 2020 addons linker to run from that backup copy, and let my "live" folder now become my 2024 folder with my 2024 copy of the linker. I'll do all my 2024 updates in to that folder and effectively freeze my backup for 2020 use as long as I want to retain that sim. Complete firewall between the two environments.

At this point, I'm beginning to really appreciate a lot of the 2024 environment, but I'm finding that my very extensively tarted up 2020 environment actually looks better in many places. But then we're only a week or so in with 2024, and little bug-fix type addons and tips are already appearing. One of the major things I'm liking about 2024 is how quickly it starts and, almost more impressive, shuts down. It means shutting down and restarting the sim to make a change (to the addons) becomes a more "normal" part of the setup process rather than the teeth gnashing experience it is with 2020. Plus, I'm getting my controls set up a lot better now, and although I'm only using free flight at the moment (and it will always be my main thing) it's sort of nice to see the other stuff appearing now.

And thanks to everyone else who responded - appreciate it.

On 11/29/2024 at 11:18 AM, Christopher Low said:

Gary Summons has recently updated his UK2000 airports so that they work in both MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024. A handful apparently did not require any updates at all.

However, if you purchased those in the MSFS marketplace, you won't be able to install them yet since the marketplace isn't available.

On 11/29/2024 at 9:58 PM, CFIJose said:

Why would you want to use 2024 ad-ons on 2020? Only if you are looking for trouble.

think  maybe the op   meant  it  the other  way  round