Addon Scenery

[rwcatherall]

I'm a little confused as to which is the correct method for adding scenery. There appears to be two methods.

1. Add scenery via the Memu Bar->World->Scenery Library--Add Area.
2. Create an XML file and add it to Documents->Prepar3D v4 Addons.

The first methods writes to and updates the 'scenery.cfg' file and the second method writes to and updates the
'scenery_add-ons.xml' file. I see that 3rd party addons use either method. So my question is there a correct method or
does it matter that you have a mixture. Thank you.

Robert

[downscc]

Adding addon scenery via the Scenery Library, or more precisely the scenery.cfg file, is the legacy method. Using the xml method was introduced in v3 and in v4 became the preferred method, which is explained very clearly in the SDK you may access via the Learning Center.

The advantage to the xml method is that you may add scenery as well as effects, simobjects and autogen using one add-on.xml, which some developers are already using. You can also add aircraft (simobjects and dll/exe modules), sounds and anything not yet thought of using this method.

The user does not modify the scenery-addon.xml file. P3D will automatically update that file on each startup based on the addons that it finds active.

Creating the add-on.xml and placing it in the documents folder is the auto discovery method, the SDK also allows for the developer to place an entry in the programdata\...\add-on.cfg file pointing to where the add-on.xml is located allowing for the addition of object files and folders completely divorced from the P3D file structure.

There are many advantages to this scheme, foremost it allows the addons to be separate from P3D and when you do a complete P3D update the addons that use the xml scheme will be automatically found by the update.