[Freeware] Peeyem, a simple package manager for Microsoft Flight Simulator [v0.6.0]

Peeyem is a simple to use package manager for Microsoft Flight Simulator. It allows you to view all the official and community packages available on your system. Community packages can be enabled or disabled between game sessions to minimize the game’s memory foot print.

It works by creating soft links or junctions to the enabled packages. No directories or files are moved when enabling or disabling packages.

Requirements

.NET Core 3.1 is required to run the application. You can download it here.

Download Peeyem v0.6.0

Change Log

v0.6.0, “Flying a plane is no different than riding a bicycle, just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.”, 2020-12-06

  • Added: “Enable Selected” and “Disable Selected” menu items to the package context menu.
  • Added: The set of enabled packages can be saved to and loaded from a file.
  • Added: The waypoints of the flight plan of a mission package are displayed on a map.
  • Improved: Points of Interests are displayed in the Objects list of the package details panel.
  • Improved: Peeyem tries extra hard to determine the real package type of packages of types Core and Unknown.
  • Improved: Installing packages with the option “Required files only” takes into account packages with an invalid layout.json file.
  • Bug Fix: Failed to correctly read a small category of directory names containing non-ANSI characters.
  • Bug Fix: The “Select All from” context menu item did not allow you to select all packages in Official, Community or Warehouse package directory.
  • Known Problem: On one configuration Peeyem is be unable to recognize the junctions it creates resulting in an inconsistent view of the Community directory. Thanks to fredm@FlightSim.to for helping me to find the cause of this issue but so far no success.

v0.5.0, “I feel the need… the need for speed.”, 2020-11-02

  • Added: The package detail panel has been moved to the right side of the window to be able to show more information about a package.
    • The airports of a scenery package are shown on a map.
    • The scenery objects of a scenery package are shown on a map.
    • The aircraft configurations are shown with more detail.
    • The package detail panel can be enabled or disabled in the View / Details menu.
  • Added: An option to delete the content cache file when you enable or disable a package. You can enable the option in the Environment category of the Options dialog.
  • Improved: Various little performance improvements to better cope with large package libraries.
    • Reading aircraft configurations.
    • The airports and SimObjects of a scenery package are read on demand and in the background. This should reduce the performance hit when working with large package collections.
  • Bug Fix: Changed the value used to show the name of the liveries.

v0.1.0, “Scratchin’ the itch”, 2020-10-01

  • Initial release

Acknowledgements / Credits

Screenshots



6 Likes

Can´t download and test it :frowning:

Apparently the download failed because the GitHub repository was still private. I have changed that. If you’re still interested, please try again.

now it works, thank you. Will test it in the evening.

Thanks for your efforts.

Could you add a note for the uninitiated such as myself not so much how it works, what are the potential upsides, please? Is it an organisational tool mainly? Does it interact with manual cache? I’m a little skeptical about adding any third party software to an already unstable product (whilst it remains unstable anyway) but if there may be a stability upside to using this, would certainly be willing to try it out (or maybe in the future once the Sim is less buggy)

I am unable to enable or disable any community packages. Each package radio box remains checked within Peeyem

I am unable to amend the file path to my official folder. Within Payeem this option is greyed out displaying the default path only

C:\Users\andre\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Official

It tries to solve a couple of issues:

  • IMHO package management should be an integral part of the game but it currently is not; mayby in the future who knows. On the other side I’d prefer Asobo to concentrate on improving the core game.
  • If you currently add too many packages to the community folder the startup time of the game grows near exponential. I have found packages that are 1 and even 2 GB in size and they have a greater impact. Peeyem tries to make that information visible for non-technical users.
  • A general curiosity for how things work; in this case the packages, the meta data in those packages, etc…

I have a small list of features I want to add for me as a user but I think they will also be useful for other users too.

Sounds great and thank you for taking time to answer. I am experiencing increasingly long/frustrating load times, and consequently have been very wary of putting anything in the Community folder! This is definitely an option worth trying and also looking forward to future features you see fit to share.
All the best.

I stay away from the Official packages. They are made visible for completeness. I have no idea how the sim will react if you disable official packages.

Community packages can only be disabled if they live in the Disabled folder and then enabled later. Maybe I’ll add a feature to assist in the migration later.

Hello…
I am using your package manager for 2 days now and i am very happy with it.
I would like to ask… Is there any way to implement a multiple items enable / disable button or something like this?
Because is a lot of clicks if you want to enable or disable multiple items at once.
I can select multiple items lines with Shift + click but i have to click in each item checkbox to enable them or disable them.

Thank you very much.

@Yngwiedis,

the next version will have a lot of usability features. If I find a workable solution for handling errors during multi-enable/disable I’ll add it.

Thank you very very much for your answer.
I am looking forward for the next version.

My MSFS install is on the D-drive but I cannot redirect PeeYem to my directory. Is it possible to add that functionality?

The Official packages should be detected when first started. If not, you can edit the settings.json file to override the detected value.

The other paths can be selected using the Options dialog.

Is it possible to organize packages by country and city? Many individual buildings, stadiums and bridges spawn, created by different developers. I want to put them in one bag. For example “London” or “England”. Then press one button “turn on” if I’m going to this place. This is a very important feature as we will soon see millions of additions.

There is no location meta data yet to extract from a package. I have a couple of ideas but for now you’ll have to stick to creating an organization on disk in the warehouse and use the Location property to sort and find them.

The next version, due any time now, has a lot more usability features and my wish and ideas list is long…

1 Like

Tried that, doesn’t work. When I change the path in the .json the mod resets to default upon executing.

:confused: Is there anything in the log file? v0.3.0 allows you to select the directory using a dialog.

2020-10-11 04:58:39.029 0001 [I] Application Startup
2020-10-11 04:58:39.036 0001 [D] Peeyem 0.2.0
2020-10-11 04:58:39.036 0001 [D] Running on Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200.0
2020-10-11 04:58:39.037 0001 [D] Using .NET 3.1.8.
2020-10-11 04:58:39.037 0001 [D] Using UI culture “English (United States)”.
2020-10-11 04:58:39.037 0001 [D] Using culture “English (United States)”.
2020-10-11 04:58:54.793 0001 [I] Application Exit

Please use v0.3.0. The log in v0.2.0 was just a first attempt. v0.3.0 gives more detail. Be sure to check it does not contain any private information before posting it.

1 Like