His rant stops and instructions start at 4:40

Amazing video Matt. Thank you for the continued support to the flight sim community.

A big Thanks from me you taught me the basics of the whole aviation. Now I know how to fly the Aerosoft a320.

Thanks Matt for the clear and concise explanation. This helps in understanding why .xml addons are the way of the future and makes it a lot easier to update individual components rather than the whole package. Great vid.

Thanks Matt well done, pretty clear to me esp about the folder for addons

@Matt Davies. Great video and good to see you back on youtube. I would be very much interested in placing my addons outside of the main P3D folder, as you have done. However, i am not as comfortable as you are in doing so. If you could kindly make a tutorial video on how to do this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for this , bit apprehensive of updating but your video helped so much

Another great video Matt. Thank you!

Thanks Matt. I've been down two successful routes, both involving moving add-on scenery out of P3D. The add-on.xml method worked fine but I found using the Scenery Config tool to point to whatever paths I'd moved things to was easier, and immediately shows you if you broke a path, mis-typed something etc.

THX Matt, very usefull - especially the part reg. to the Addons folder. 👍

Thanks Matt! Made my work so much easier!!

Thanks Matt! 👍 I just went through your video and the way you administrate the sceneries by .xml brought up a question. How do I know if any scenery is copying any files into the default structure such as /effects or /scenery. And if so what do I do with those files? Just drop them out like the OrbX stuff? I really like the idea of getting my addons all together outside the sim. But I'm not sure if it's that simple to make it happen.

instructions not clear, computer became self aware

Thanks for the video! Helps me a lot :)

Many thanks for the tutorial Matt.

very well done !! thank you !! This helped me a lot

Total Lifesaver for this one. Just bought Version 4 and currently copying scenery :)

Matt you are a genius guy!!!!

Hi Matt, Im sorry to bother you. I wanted to ask you which program could I use to configure the lights? (approach lights, )I would like to change the luminosity to improve the definition when Im landing. I use PD3 V4 but I dont have Rex 4. Thanks!

What kind of things will you lose if you update the content without putting all of your stuff into separate folders and creating addon.xml files? I'm going to do a full format and reinstall once the Q400 is updated for v4 since I won't need v3 anymore, so I'm trying to hold out on doing all of that leg work for the addons since I have a ton of them.

Hey matt , tried you xml scenery sorting but after doing that all sceneries are grised in the scenery library so you cannot bring them up or down. As a result i have landclass that have a higher priority than the airport they are made for ? Is there a way to adjust priority or P3Dv4 does not care about layers ?

Very good video. Thanks for taking the time to make it. Two questions: So when I unistall the scenery component will it only uninstall the P3D default scenery or everything in the P3D folder? And also when I install the scenery component will it merge with whatever is already in the folder or override the entire scenery folder? Thanks

Great video, just one question - I noticed the XMLs for the sceneries you added in manually (i.e. UK2000 Manchester) only pointed to the Scenery folder, and not the Texture folder like what we saw in the FSDT XMLs, is it required? Thanks :)

Great video thanks Matt.. much appreciated...

When you installed the addon scenery that didn't go to the new add-on manager and you put it in the custom add on folder, did you install the scenery directly to that folder or did you install it into P3D then move it manually to the new folder

Will I lose my "effects" and "gauges"?? I have custom effects and gauges that I don't want to loose. Will the update overwrite them or re-create a new folder of each, which will remove both of the mentioned, or will they be fine??

Hi Matt, well I tried to follow this but got a bit lost! However all I want to do is move P3D and all the add on stuff to the default location i.e C:/Program Files/P3d as I want to use Vox Atc and the set up requires it to be in that folder. Any suggestions?

HI Matt, thnx for this very interesting video. Already a couple of years old, but still very valid. Next to the xml-files, I have also found a scenery.cfg file in Programdata. This file also holds the paths to addons. I want to relocate my sceneries to another drive. Do I have to update the paths in the xml-files, or in the config-file, or both? I hope you can give some guideline. Cheers, Niek

Nice tutorial Matt, I would also like to add that there is a very useful application called "Lorby-SI Addon Organiser P3D v4" that makes the xml file creation very easy!

Question(s): 1 - Why is it that FSDreamTeam has categories and paths for Scenery and Texture in their xml files but when you add FlyTampa and the others manually, you only have the scenery category and path? 2 - Taxi2Gate KMCO has separate folders for KMCO and KMCO-TERRAIN in the root KMCO folder. I added these as separate xml files/folders in my documents folder. Seems to work so far. My FlyTampa Tampa scenery is missing a lot of airport/ground objects though. 3 - how do you re-order the addons since P3D locks them in the scenery configuration screen? Thanks for the help and the tutorial!

Hi Matt. Great video - 2 questions spring to mind - Number 1 how do you get your xml window into different colours when comparing the docs folder to the expanded details and 2) I, like you have my P3D v 4 on a drive other than C: - If I go ahead and repair my installation, will it place the xml files back as they should be

Hi Matt, thanks for the video. Question: So, if I understand correctly, one does not have to move all the addons, such as you did, to do the upgrade? (Although, it does seem more efficient.) Just a little fast there and a tad confusing. I have P3Dv4 on my C drive and just want to update to 4.1. I have ORBX as well. I'm thinking of moving the whole Flight Sim to a new drive, as you've got setup, that I'm going to purchase. Any performance issues not having it on the boot drive??? I have a 960 Pro M.2 form factor (512 G) set as C, primary drive. I'm thinking about getting an additional 1G 850 Pro and putting my PD3v4 there, as my computer is filling up fast. Again, thank you for the video!

Thank you bunches Matt! I kinda already heard about that you only need to update the three components but I learned something great and new about Add-On Management here which is gonna make my life a lot better. XD I need to organize my s*** soon then and “outsource” add-ons prior to updating to 4.1 ‘cuz I tossed them all in the P3D root folder like a fool lol. I’m not in a huge rush to update until after Saturday tho. I’m gonna fly VATSim CTP on a very stable v.4 before I can be bothered with that. Never change a running system, right? :P I just did the complete re-install when I made the update to V4 fairly recently so I wasn’t looking forward to another day of setups. XD

Hey Matt are you having problems with your A2A aircraft while on the ground?? rudder moves back and forth but the plane is not turning on the ground

Great "how to" video . Thanks Matt

Does this work when switching addons over from p3d v3 to v4? Or in the future v4 to v5? Or is it just meant for the new updates for the current version of prepar3d?

Hello Matt, Did they fix the slow autogen loading/popping in this update? Kind regards Jeff

Hey Matt, I kept skipping through the video so Im not sure if you mentioned it so, Are you going to be trying the Quality Wings 787?

How Did you do the flytampa amsterdam because that has amsterdam and amsterdam_LC? i can only see one folder in the addons called amsterdam did you include 2 xml files inside the amsterdam folder? thanks

Ok , so I have PTA for P3D V4 but I don't know link exactly of PTA adjustments that light, Do you know it? Sorry again

Things like turbulent design tera flora,Envtex, and FSGlobal need to be reinstalled? I don't know if they qualify the same as ORBX type or not.

Hi can you help me ,I have just changed from FSX to pre3d ver4 every thing went ok but I am not getting any sounds from the cockpit ie flaps,gear, switches ,apu, engine start up or the wheels touching the ground on landing, I can hear the engines once they have started. Hope you can tell me where I have gone wrong. David

Looking forward to seeing how the Full VR works inside P3d. I'm using it on Xplane 11 with flyinside using oculas rift and it's really good when you set it up right. If the results are good in P3d I might purchase it also, so very interested.

Thanks Matt for the help. Question how did you make your name to show on the P3D beginning screen? Is that a Professional version thing only? Or can I do it on my academic? Thanks.

Very good an informative video. I still have three questions tough: 1. Why do you separate the addons folder, one for the sceneries (or any addon, but it'll use scenery addons on my questions) that are installed from developers using the new addon-xml method and another one for all the sceneries that you manually moved out from the P3D root folder?. 2) In the case of the sceneries you manually moved from the P3D root folder, what to do with the files that the respective installers originally put (Fly Tampa and a lot of other developers use to do this way) into the Scenery folder inside P3D (mainly elevation files), do you left them untouched or you move then along too and to where?. 3) When you have to update/uninstall a scenery addon that you manually moved out of the P3D folder, do you delete them manually, then install and repeat the moving process?. Thanks for clarifying!

Thanks Matt. Just one comment - I understand from the P3Dv4 installation guidelines that it is not required to deactivate P3Dv4 when uninstalling the client. Out of interest, I uninstalled and reinstalled only the client and content modules as the change log in the scenery indicated nothing of relevance to where I fly. I did not have to move or backup any addon scenery files or aircraft that were installed in the main P3Dv4 folder - including ORBX scenery. All the addon scenery and aircraft remained in tact and working. So the reinstall process took 5 minutes. 👍🏼

Great video. 1 question please, can i just update the client?

how can i know what addon use the XML "way" and those that didn't use them?

Hi Matt, great VT as always... pulled all my Airports across, as you say 20-30min job... Done ! .. dont know where all this confusion came from a full re-install on P3D V4.1... back to basics.. Just read "how to install" on the website... lol

Do you know if effect files installed by and for different sceneries wil be deleted?

Great video - Thank you :)

Hi matt, always wanted a flight sim and never had the chance properly get a flight sim and now is my chance to but I need guidance. I loved your Boeing 767 video from Salt Lake to LAX. I want just that, but that will take time. I don't have a budget but I would love it if you could give guidance in what to get to run a flight sim. I'm not sure what flight sim I should use whether it is X-PLANE 11 OR FSX etc, what flight sim would you recommend and from there I will do research in how to run vatsim and other addons. Kind Regards Ethan

Matt, I followed your instructions exactly. Uninstalled the client, content, and scenery and then reinstalled client, content, and scenery. I then started the simulator, activated it. It opened the start up screen and I just tried to open the default aircraft and airport. It opened to a black screen with sound in the background. Cannot see any graphics. Any ideas?

When I install client.msi half way through installing it says it's stopped working, any reason why?

Matt, I downloaded client, scenery and content separately, try to install BUT client installed ok, but scenery and content can not validate and stop. What’s happening?

is it possible to put the p3d game in program86 but put all the addons to a external drive and how to have a correct path for that so can you do a video on that

Thanks Matt!

Is dynamic lighting fixed for users who have had problems with it?

Hello Matt. Thank you for your time and efforts - greatly appreciated, sir! Just a quick follow up question on the "new" VR menu. I only saw a couple of comments on it but I can't figure out my answer from them. I completed the update (all 3 - Client, Content and Scenery) and was really excited to see the VR menu when I opened the sim. No joy - no VR menu! Everything else is fine. The only thing I can think of is possibly needing to have one of the VR units already installed, but that doesn't make much sense. The question is, how do I get the VR menu installed (again, my update went PERFECTLY, so it seems that if VR support is something new, the menu should be there)? Thank you.

can you do a p3dv4 registry video for errors for addon erroring like fs2crew giving a error for the registry and let me know how to fix or when do that video

What could go wrong when simply moving Add-On folders to another drive: 1. You could mess up your scenery.cfg if you didn't remove the scenery prior moving the folder 2. Additional software inside that folder could use relative paths to other files in the P3D directory which will then be broken 3. Effect, sound and global scenery files belonging to the scenery will still be in the P3D folder hierarchy. So it is not save to assume that if you move a scenery folder to another drive, uninstall P3D, delete the P3D directory and then reinstall P3D, it will all work as expected. In the process, you could lose scenery files. On the other, P3D won't delete files not belonging to the original simulator installation. So if you don't delete the P3D root folder, you should be fine. But some people prefer a "clean" installation. A save way is to use "Hard Links" or "Junctions" using HardLinkShell. You can move the folder to another drive and then create a junction to it in the P3D root directory. The file system then assumes the original path for the folder so links won't be broken and future scenery installers of the respective developer will still find that folder. I agree that the new way of installing sceneries is the way to go. The optimal way is that all files belonging to the scenery reside in one folder, with the add-on.xml registering them. But this was not entirely possible as of P3D v3. It should work with the newly released P3D v4.1 however, even for autogen definitions. Which definitely did not work in v4.0. That is why we went only "half way" with our latest installers by using the add-on.xml method while still installing in the P3D root directory.

Any update about your PTA for version 4.1?

Hi Matt! i dont know if this aircraft is available for FSX But if you can find it? Its a Boeing 737-800 Primera air. And if you can fly from copenhagen to malaga.

Hi Matt I noticed your addon.xml scenery does not have layer level numbers you should use the Addon Manager freeware to reorder the scenery layers after every new addon is installed.

Can you do flights again please? BTW keep up the good work

VR for P3D! - Thats what ive been waiting for! Let us know how it works!! :-)

Some sceneries also have their own textures and/or effects files which are placed in the main textures/effects folder in the main P3D folder by default. Can those also be placed outside the main folder an 'bound' by an add-on.xml? Tnx

Hi Matt, Just logged into the American P3D site and went to download rev 4.1. It's a full 12gb download. Guess I'll have to wait until layer this evening to kick-off the update, but at least I will have time to scramble to get my add-on's in order for this update.

Thank you for this video...I am doing a 4.3 update now but this is by far an intuitive process. Lockheed Martin (as far as I can find) doesn't really explain this as clearly as you do. So I am downloading the entire 12.6 GB zip file, I will extract it, delete the client, etc files in the locations you describe and then reinstall same files with the latest version. Does this sound about right to you? Thanks for the post and for your help! Cheers!

Rest in peace 🙏

has anyone updated to v4.1 and having troubles getting matts prepared tweak assistant to run or will he have to update the software?

When delating "scenery" is orbx saved?

will 3pd better my sfx steam addition?

i have a question matt, do you have to know any kind of Programming language for make this xml?? in tha folder?

thank you so much!

Matt are you using Windows 7? You seem to have a Win7 start menu.

Matt, although a step in the right direction for P3D Addon Management, There are still quite a few addons that will need to be re-installed: 1. PMDG 2. Active Sky 3. Cloud Art 4.Rex Texture Direct 5.Orbx Global (As it replaces default textures) 6.Carenado So still not that easy to upgrade.

What about effects?? and textures of airport sceneries??

Thanks Matt, however I am still somewhat confused by this xml business. I don't understand why it was necessary. Since v3 we have been able to locate scenery outside of LM, and you simply set its location in the scenery library (which is defined by scenery.cfg). I did this for all my sceneries (except Orbx which as you quite rightly state is a special case) . When I first moved from v3 to v4, I simply copied the scenery.cfg from v3 to v4, and (after doing an Orbx reinstall), everything worked perfectly (except for incompatible sceneries which I later removed after testing). Scenery.cfg is in program data folder, which I think is not touched by sim updates, but even if it was, you could simply copy it before doing an update or even reinstall, then copying it back. So why this complication with xml files? It just seems , well what's the point? I am now in the situation where I have some sceneries which have been installed with "new style" v4 installers which don't appear in scenery.cfg. I'm getting a bit old and doddery, and sometimes need to check whether I have an airport installed for a particular destination - now I have to look in two places rather than one to see them all. I know what you are probably going to say, I need to create xml files/folders for all of them, but I have a massive list of sceneries, this is a huge amount of work. Some bright developer (cough!) needs to write a little program which will read the scenery.cfg and create the xml's for you...........

Thanks Matt! Btw. one is already are able to download only the required items from the LM account ;) Still good to download and backup the whole package.

matt are you planning to try out the qw787 any time soon?

Am I right in assuming 4.1 only needs client and content. Hence scenery is not required. 4.1 has not modded the scenery and hence folder copy out is not required for 4.1. And thanks Matt. Sterling work 😊

Hey Matt, will you be taking part in CTP, if so please can you make a video on it, thanks. I'll be there too!

Followed your instructions sto uninstall those three .msi files, content, client och scenery. Dos not work so now I have to reinstall all from schratch, the full P3Dv4.1 so have to reinstall all scenerys and all add-ons :( Not happy!

Can I get away with just updating the Client.msi to get to 4.1? Do I also HAVE to reinstall the scenery.msi and content.msi. In the past when in P3Dv3 I only ever updated the Client.msi and it seemed fine

Hi Matt, another great tutorial. How how you installed FSDreamteam airports? When I try and install it doesn't give me the v4 option..

I've never had to do any if this. If I uninstall P3D completely, all the custom files from third party add-ons that were in the P3D directory will still be there. They won't be deleted. Only the P3D files and folders will be gone. So when I reinstall P3D in the same directory, everything mostly just works after I start the sim and it regenerates its libraries.

when ever i starts the game and head to select the aircraft, the game suddenly gets crashed... please anybody help me

a great tutorial, are you going to fly the quality-wings 787 when it becomes available on p3d ?

Matt when are you going to be making more P3D videos.

What dates does he steam on twitch?

I´ve already update to version 4.1 and this is my feedback. First of all i only update client installer and the Content as Lockheed Martin informed in ''Release Notes'', Content and Scenery is optional. As result i only update Active Sky and Cloud Art, ChasePlane also but static mode is not working (update soon) . PMDG is working and was not necessary to re-install and my 3 Boeing are intact. ORBX is working like a charm. GSX is also working without any issues.One more thing i have made the opposite of Matt Davis when i uninstall the Client installer if you want deactivate i said NO. Being so i do not have to put the user and password because it recognize my credentials if i say NO. I was a bit ansious because i´ve heard some addons cause problems and everything must be installer again but today im happy. Uffffffff.

What about aircraft and utilities?

Where is your source material for this? This may be simple to a computer savvy person such as yourself but it is not intuitive to me. I would of had to spend years to figure this out on my own. I would like to read Lockheed Martin's procedure. I just had to reinstall P3D because my PMDG add on would not install without updating P3D. I wish I found your video before starting. Thank god I don't have scenery and weather. X-plane 11 updates so much easier.

I have 100 sceneries plus a lot of the ORBX stuff. Wish they all did the xml method.

Great work Matt +1'd :)

Why the hell do I have to see the activation? Because I want Prepar3D! To play my favourite flight Sim game. But how do I activate?

More tutorials por favor! ;-)

Hope you guys can make simstore

Okay I am reall uncomftable with the fact that the addon folder is in my documents... My c drive is almost full and I want to move the folder somewhere else. But I don't know if p3d will still be able to read it...