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P3D v4 Beta with Prepar3D v4 support

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Phil31

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Arno

If Kevin can explain how he has installed the "other" Autogen description files I can mimic that with the AGX one and test it. I suspect that the way it is installed (using the new addon.cfg logic and addon.xml maybe ?) and therefore interpreted by Prepar3D V4 could make the whole difference between replacing and merging.

Philippe
 
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Phil31

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If that can help here is the answer I got from LM today:

"Prepar3D cannot load or merge more than one autogen xml file. The add-on.xml can be used to define a location of an autogen xml file to be used by the system. This file will be used instead of the default AutogenDescriptions.xml without replacing it"

So I am afraid that a version of ACM that actually merges the various autogen definition files is needed ....

I think that the beta version that you posted earlier will be perfect when it will also update the AutogenDescriptions_Legacy.sbp file

Philippe
 
kevinfirth

kevinfirth

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hmm that is interesting. So how is P3D supposed to know which autogen files it should use, in the event that multiple different sets are specified? Sounds like even more of a mess than the legacy fsx autogen problem!

Should we now have to manually organise our add-on.xml packages so that the correct autogen files are loaded last every flight? How could one realistically manage to accomplish that without shedloads of work?

This is a problem LM should have had at the top of their list to fix. Licence ACM to them Arno if the info from Phil is correct, they need your expertise clearly....
 
arno

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I guess from the prespective of LM it makes sense, Prepar3D is used for the professional market. In that case the system will be used for a certain training task and it would not be weird to prepare a scenery for that specifically. In that case just switching between different configuration files makes sense.

But good to know Prepar3D doesn't merge (yet). So that indeed means I need to update ACM to also update the legacy configuration file. Then it should work as before.

I'm just not sure at the moment how using the addon_xml to load another autogen configuration file might mess things up :D
 
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Phil31

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The way I understand LM answer is that we can call/select a specific scenery that is declared using an entry made within the addon.cgf. The scenery location can then contains different elements such as the scenery itself but also a specific autogen, sound set, etc... this list being described in the addon.xml

So when this scenery is activated it calls automatically the various elements described in the xml including the autogen that then replaces the autogen that resides in the autogen folder.

My two cents
 
arno

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The answer says no more than one autogen configuration file can be used by the system. So that sounds not per scenery but for the total simulator.
 
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ydelta

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Hello,

My tests on certain 3rd party sceneries with dedicated autogen show that ACM is still required as natively P3D V4 does not merge anything in the core description files. The addon.xml route won't do anything special with autogen if two editors have bespoke definitions.

Now as mentioned above ACM does not amend the AutogenDescription_legacy.spb which is new in V4 and linked to the new dynamic autogen feature. During my tests that was a problem as the merge did not actually merge the two definitions properly. It did only work if I created a copy of the standard definition file and renamed it with the legacy suffix.

So I would recommend that ACM also merges the legacy file and not just the standard one.
 
arno

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Yes, I'll add support for the legacy file soon. I did some thinking about it. I should probably allow developers to have a normal and legacy version as well (in case they want to differ between dynamic and normal trees as well). And if only one version exists it should be merged into both of them.
 
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ydelta

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Ok that makes sense to me. If developers offer both descriptions then both should be merged in the relevant files and if only one is proposed then it should be merged as the same description in both legacy and standard files. The only issue I see is linked to the vegetation display bug (aka the light green trees effect in v4) which can happen even if the dynamic autogen option is not ticked but one merges a new dynamic autogen description with a legacy file in the standard set of descriptions.
I would need to investigate further the content of the two sets to see where the difference lies and maybe ACM could detect this when parsing the content to avoid merging standard with legacy descriptions in one file...
 
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arno

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I doubt ACM knows if a autogen description is legacy or not. At the definition level it's just references to classes and models.

I think it's up to the developer to make sure no garbage goes in.
 
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ydelta

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Ok you mean the action of ticking the dynamic autogen function consists in just swapping definitions in the autogen folder and classes and models being either static or dynamic, ACM cannot see the differences when processing the merger?
In that case it's a bit more tricky than I thought we need to be careful what goes into the merging process as we may end up with garbage out... :)
Also LM may fix the tree issue over their next patch so the issue could be gone in the process.
 
kevinfirth

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Am using the v4 beta now
Am getting the dialog indicating ACM has made changes to my autogen configuration files every time I start P3D4, when there have been NO changes made. Is that how it should work now please Arno?
Cheers K
 
arno

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Hi Kevin,

Humm, no that's not how it should work of course. Does the log mention anything special?
 
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ydelta

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On my end it does not show up if no changes are made (either a modification of the description files or the addition of an active scenery with the autogen folder).
 
kevinfirth

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arno said:
Hi Kevin,

Humm, no that's not how it should work of course. Does the log mention anything special?
Click to expand...
Forgive me Arno, where does the log reside please? K
Belay that - got it!
 

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arno

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Since only the default.xml file was actually saved, ACM must think there has been a change in there. Maybe you can compare the old backup with the current one to see where the difference is?
 
kevinfirth

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arno said:
Since only the default.xml file was actually saved, ACM must think there has been a change in there. Maybe you can compare the old backup with the current one to see where the difference is?
Click to expand...
Both file sizes are the same 22,188kb. Both files report the same length and no of lines.
 
arno

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And would you have a diff tool to check if there is a character different?

Or I'm I thinking too much as a programmer now :D
 
arno

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Hi all,

I have uploaded a new beta version to the first post of this thread. In this version the legacy configuration should also be updated in P3D v4. This is done in two ways:

  1. If your addon scenery autogen folder contains a legacy definition, that one is used
  2. Else the AutogenDescription configuration is merged into the legacy one as well
There is no support for the addon.xml structure yet, because I'm not sure if makes sense to support it and in which way.

Let me know if it works well, so that I can release a new stable build.
 
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