I hate to be the one that says “. . .but in X-Plane we can. . . [insert some desirable feature]”, but, having just finished a, (possibly needless), reinstall, I am struck by what seems to be a glaring omission:
In X-Plane, within the equivalent of their “Community” folder, you can, (and it is strongly suggested that you do), create sub-folders for classes of 3rd party content, such as scenery, aircraft, terrain files, etc.
In MSFS the Community folder is a mish-mash of everything crammed all together, often times with names having no bearing on what it might be.
Question:
Is it possible to sub-divide the Community folder into categories? (i.e. A sub folder for one class of object, like aircraft - another sub folder for a different classification like scenery, another sub folder for something else, etc.)
If that’s possible, how do I do it?
If it’s not possible, has this already been suggested somewhere, where I can go add a couple of hundred up-votes?
IMHO, this would go a long way toward helping keep things in the Community Folder organized.
That would be my suggestion, but I believe the wish is for this to be done natively.
In reality, I think it would be very simple for Asobo to allow us to store our addons in any folder structure we choose. They just delve down the tree until they find a folder with a manifest, and layout JSON file, and that’s an addon.
If they find a folder without those, consider it hierarchy/layout, and move on to the next.
. . . and manually creating symlinks can accomplish all of this too, but that’s not the point.
The point is that a DOS-like flat file system model for third-party content is SOOOOO 1980’s, it’s not funny.
MSFS 2020 was introduced in the 2020’s if memory serves, and surely MS/Asobo knew how to organize a third-party repository file structure within the context of their program. This isn’t the first time this problem has ever happened in the software development industry.
The problem I have with Addon Linker, (in this particular context), is:
It’s yet ANOTHER third-party add-on created to shore up a native deficiency in the design of the software. All these additional add-ons create needless complexity and increase the possibility that something will interact badly with something else and cause the whole installation to go all pear-shaped. Or create CTD’s. Or cause your frame-rate to go all sideways. Or cause certain aircraft models to behave strangely. And so on, with no-one knowing exactly WHICH “3rd party add-on” is causing the problem THIS particular time because no-one knows what part of what add-on launched before that part of that add-on finished loading, etc.
It’s known to have problems with certain content, especially if it’s DRM’d/encrypted.
Though it’s not rocket-science, it’s not trivially easy either. Expecting someone off the street, who may not be as familiar with filesystems and just moving things around, to grab a sharp power-tool like that and muck around with their MSFS installation is a disaster waiting to happen, (IMHO).
One of my primary system design requirements is to have the absolute minimum of non-MSFS related material installed as possible so that the maximum amount of system resources is devoted to flying the sim instead of managing some add-on.
I have Addon Linker downloaded. I also have SkyDolly downloaded too. I have installed neither one since I am already having enough issues sorting through this sordid mess as it is - and these “extensions”, (add-ons), would just muddy the waters more than they are.
I want to simplify things, not make them more complex.
Or, they could allow a relatively flat hierarchical structure with separate folders for aircraft, scenery, etc.
NTFS junction points should have no effect on MSFS. They are already in use by default by the sim for your profile files.
That’s what I meant.
You have a top level folder, and inside that you have “Aircraftt”, “Airports”, “Sceneries” etc. The sim would just dig down through that folder structure until it finds those JSON files inside one of them, it detects that is an addon, then goes one level back up to continue down the list. You could have whatever structure you want.
Or just use Addon Linker which does all that for you already with junction points. If you are an MS Admin and are aware of what a Distributed File System (DFS) is, you will know how essential that can be to aggregate disparate file systems together into a unified whole.
I make extensive use of links of varying kinds within X-Plane, (using Link Shell Extension), and despite that I still have to tread carefully. Even with a very carefully designed file hierarchy, things can go sour.
I am sure that Addon Linker is a wonderful program, just as I am sure that SkyDolly is an equally wonderful program. I am equally sure that I will probably come back to these forums and abjectly apologize, wondering what took me so long to get with the program. In the meantime, I want things to work correctly natively before I start fussing around with additional complexity.
It just puzzles me how something this “obvious” (famous last words!), was overlooked in the design phase of the program’s design. It’s not like they didn’t have fair warning from the thousand-and-one add-ons made available for the other, older, versions of MSFS.
That’s just an X-Plane thing though. I somewhat remember their documentation which states which order your addons have to be read in. So in that respect X-Plane is worse in that we can put our addons in any order we choose, so both platforms have their limitations in that regard.
Someone at Asobo must have had an inkling of what might be coming years down the road when there are literally thousands of addons out there. At some point it might need to be refactored to support very large file systems containing thousands of addons.
I have, quite tediously, changed the folder icon colors of each type of add-on. Airports are cyan, liveries are bright green, aircraft are deep blue, utilities are red, etc.
The worst part of this is the mess that is Windows implementation of changing an icon. There is no batch(!?!?) way to do this and there is way too many steps. Apple figure this out with ease, why couldn’t Microsoft?
Anyhow, since Windows doesn’t have a labeling or tag system that would allow for the directories to be organized, the colors work great for quickly identifying what I want to move out of the OneStore or Community folder.
It’s just a tedious process doing the initial job, but once done it’s pretty easy to do when you add a new add-on or two.
I picked up the colored icon collection from a source on the Internet.
I’m not going to say anything. I’m not going to say anything. But. But…
….
Just…
….
…run Addons Linker
You won’t regret it. It does more and better than you could ever hope to wait out for a native solution. It won’t happen, so the sooner you get into this the sooner you will have a neat structure to take into the future.
Or to put it another way, you’re making more work for yourself the longer you leave it as you’ll have even more stuff to organise the first time when you finally give up waiting
It’s a very easy and actually fun to use software. It’s not at all heavy, it’s standalone (no installation / registry nonsense to worry about) and very powerful with some extra features in there that will solve a lot of CTD’s caused by badly named freeware materials. But the basics you need are really easy to understand and fast to use. The more you use it, the more you see how you can arrange things better but at any point you can make new or move folders and mods within them and just refresh the app, and it finds all the mods you had enabled again reliably. Easy peasy. Very very solid software.
It also checks for invalid links and duplicates (copies of the same mods in 2 places or even just the same ICAO you may have from 2 mods so you can decide which to keep).
I’m here waiting for you to thank me after you set up your first profile
I am planning on messing with it, but I have some post-reinstall qualification testing I want to finish first.
Seriously, just when I think I have the beast that is MSFS nailed-cold, stable, and repeatably working the way I expect it to - and I am confident enough to try something “experimental” like Addons Linker or SkyDolly, the blasted thing goes all pear-shaped on me, scares me to death, and makes me forswear any kind of modification in the future for fear that it will go pear-shaped in a way I cannot recover.
Yea I know the feeling well mate. It’s a finicky beast. Compounded by the complexity of PC’s hardware, drivers, bios and Windows updates and other software.
Big ‘ol mess.
I’m in the same boat. Did a bios update on Friday and whole PC froze in the bios screen after the flash, Windows not loading, scary visual glitches in bios next time I went in. Managed to get back to Windows but FS runs really bad now so I’m back to diagnosing and testing instead of enjoying. Had to change a bunch of settings just to get playable but it’s nowhere near as good as before I flashed the bios no matter what I tried so far.
At risk of stating the obvious - did you try backing-out the troublesome bios update? I don’t know what MoBo you’re using, but there should be a way to revert to the older bios. That would have been my knee-jerk, reflex action if a bios update went all pear-shaped on me.
Don’t wanna derail this thread but it’s the troublesome AM5 Asus board (X670E-F) that has been known to set fire to the new AMD chips as it lets voltage go too high, so I felt I should have the latest revision before trying to push more speed out of my system.
I still have the old Bios on a USB I can put on again, or maybe clear CMOS and put the newest one again (maybe something didn’t update properly) but gonna try a few more things first with the ram. Ran out of time over weekend so gonna attack it again tomorrow. Fingers crossed!
Spend so much time just fiddling with this game and associated gubbins instead of flying it isn’t even funny
I’ve had some odd effects from doing things like that. I typically rename an aircraft folder with a suffix indicating its version number. This usually works fine, but I’ve had some weird effects with the JF Arrows, and the Warrior. They sometimes won’t “unlock”, and I’m left with the yoke fully deflected to the left. When I rename the folder to what it was originally it works.
The original request for this was nearly three years ago, when I voted for it. It would not require much coding (having coded similar things myself) but Asobo have so far chosen not to. And this is not likely to change.
So I’m afraid we all have to live with it, or use yet another workaround.
