A suggestion for Asobo, Microsoft, et. al

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It seems to me that no matter how well-tested and well-intentioned the Asobo and/or Microsoft bi-weekly updates are, they cannot be tested in every potential environment and installation configuration that (can) exist in the real world installed base of MSFS 2020. It is with this in mind that I make the following suggestions:

[Mea culpa if this has been suggested in another form or forum]

Before any downloads begin, perhaps ALL updates (bi-weekly and otherwise) should check to see what, if any, mods or addons are in the community folder of the intended target of the impending update.

Perhaps this inspection of the community folder could reveal and state any mods or addons that have specifically been tested and shown to have continued to work AFTER the installation of the impending update.

Conversely, perhaps this inspection of the community folder could reveal and state any mods or addons that have NOT specifically been tested and shown to have continued to work AFTER the installation of the impending update. If this is the case, stop the installation of the update and FORCE the contents of the community folder of the targeted installation to match the contents of the community folder of the source of the update environment.

Furthermore, DO NOT allow the update to continue until the community folder of the targeted installation matches the state of the community folder of the source of the update. Once the target and source community folders are in sync, the update can proceed.

Once the update has been succseefully installed, the end-user is then welcome to repopulate their community folder with their favorite mods and addonsā€“one at a time with proper testing and evaluation of each addition to the community folder to ensure that it functions properly with the new version of the simulator.

If it is determined that one or more of the mods and addons has a problem with the new version of the simuilator, the end-user is welcome to contact the developer of the mod or addon so the issues can be addressed.

By doing the above, I suspect that there will be way more ā€œsuccessfulā€ update experiences and way less complaining in these forums about all the things that the update broke.

This is just my opinionā€“there may be other solutions just as good or worseā€¦

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There is a warning before each update that the ā€˜Community Folderā€™ should be emptied to another folder before installation but I suspect only a minority of people adhere to this.

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Yeah, that obviously isnā€™t workingā€¦

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Here is what i do, i just put the nummer 2 or whatever key i like in the community folders name something like 2community.and leave it there with al addons in it.
I also create a New folder empty with the name community and lease it empty.
I also make back up copy of the joystick profiles especially the default keyboard and xbox ones. For they change if asobo forget arrow keys to add in original places.

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Thatā€™s a good idea and Iā€™ve used a similar tactic. At one point I had nearly two dozen mods in my community folder. I guess I thought I was going to use all of them at one point or another. However there came a point in time where I found myself only using about six or eight mods, so I reduced the clutter.

Once I realized that updating with a clean community folder and then bringing the mods in one by one helped me make sure I knew which one(s) broke the simulator, I was home free.

I donā€™t know how to fly the jets; even though I owned several of PMDGā€™s offerings on FSX. So I stick with the basics of the Cessnas and the Beeches. Any mods for them are well maintained and Iā€™m familiar enough with them that none of the recent updates has caused me any grief.

I feel your method, mine and others that approach reintroducing the mods after the update is complete and working are the only way to know what the simulator is doing.

As an electronics technician I was taught that you only make one change at a time when troubleshooting; mostly because making more than one introduces too many variables.

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And that right there would explain why so many were complaining that the arrow keys no longer worked for them.

The only question I have is: why didnā€™t I see that issue? I never experienced the arrow key failure with the last update. Very strangeā€¦

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Thatā€™s not what it says, at all.

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I didnā€™t reply to his original reply to my post because I hadnā€™t ever seen the message myself.

Regardless, Iā€™ll try to look for it next time the simulator updates and see if I can find it.

Although, it really doesnā€™t matter to me because I have a method that works around any damage caused to mods by any updateā€“well, except for the case of the arrow keys mentioned above that never impacted me anyway.

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Please , if possible , would you provide the filenames of those profiles ?
I have not been able to find them.
Thank you.
Greetings

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Hi @CitrousGorgon81,
As this topic is old, I am going to close it as most of what the OP brought up is in the wishlist.

For your question, it depends on MS Store/Gaming Pass or Steam version.

Do a search on the forum for ā€œWGSā€. The ā€œWGSā€ is a folder name that contains the bindings. This is not human readable and is synced with the cloud.

Search results for ā€˜wgs folderā€™ - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums