Did GSX create this folder...?

[WebMaximus]

Just noticed I have a folder called Prepar3D under ...\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin and in the same location I also have a folder called Prepar3D v3.
 
Having the Prepar3D v3 folder makes sense since that is the only version of P3D I ever had installed on my system since I last wiped my PC. As for the other folder I'm not sure. As seen in the screenshot below it only contains 2 files where the content of the Prepar3D.cfg file is 2 lines also seen in the screenshot below.
 
Looking at the creation date of the folder it appears to have been created as part of installing GSX so I just wanted to ask if the installation indeed does create this folder as part of the installation and if yes why it creates a folder called Prepar3D instead of using the already existing and "official" Prepar3D v3 folder?
 
This is what it looks like on my system

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/94801887/Prepar3D%20folder%20under%20AppData.JPG

[virtuali]

Looking at the creation date of the folder it appears to have been created as part of installing GSX so I just wanted to ask if the installation indeed does create this folder as part of the installation and if yes why it creates a folder called Prepar3D instead of using the already existing and "official" Prepar3D v3 folder?

The new "official" Prepar3D v3 folder under %PROGRAMDATA% is used for many configuration files of the sim, but NOT for the Prepar3D.CFG file, which is correct, since the Local Roaming profile is supposed to be used for these files, since different users on the same system might want to use different settings, so the location of the Prepar3D.CFG is STILL under %APPDATA%, because the %PROGRAMDATA% folder is system-wide, so it won't allow different users to store their customized preferences.

So, the GSX installer is entirely correct using that folder.

The reason why you only see *those* lines, it's because you installed GSX WITHOUT running P3D, not even once. Since the Prepar3D.CFG is created the FIRST time you launch the sim on any given user account, either you never ran P3D when you installed GSX, or you ran into a different user account, so the file was never created or it was created into another user account.

So, in this case, the GSX installer will only create a file with the settings IT needs to change, since it cannot obviously create  a complete Prepar3D.CFG file, if one is not already there.

[WebMaximus]

Hi there Umberto,

I think you misread/misunderstood my post a bit.

I never mentioned the ProgramData folder found directly under your system partition normally C. If you read my post one more time you will find the path and folders I'm talking about.

I had launched P3D lots of times before installing GSX and there was already a Prepar3D.cfg file by the time I installed GSX. The problem though is my Prepar3D.cfg file is located in the ...\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v3 folder and not the C:\Users\Richard\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D which is a folder incorrectly created by GSX when installed into a P3Dv3 installation.

This also explains why it only contains two lines because since the GSX installation program is looking for a Prepar3D.cfg file in the wrong location (C:\Users\Richard\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D) for a P3Dv3 installation of course it won't find any Prepar3D.cfg file in that location and in fact not even the folder. Then it creates both the folder and the Prepar3D.cfg file while the correct location would have been C:\Users\Richard\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v3.

So this answers my question and I now fully understand the history behind this C:\Users\Richard\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D folder and I'll just get rid of it since it's not needed with the correct and official Prepar3D.cfg file found in the C:\Users\Richard\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v3 folder where the skinned animations setting is already set to 1 and I also made sure that tidy.exe file is found in the C:\Users\Richard\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v3.

Guess it would be a good thing if you updated the installation program for GSX to correctly identify the Prepar3D.cfg file and folder when installed into a P3Dv3 installation.

[virtuali]

I never mentioned the ProgramData folder found directly under your system partition normally C. If you read my post one more time you will find the path and folders I'm talking about.

...
Guess it would be a good thing if you updated the installation program for GSX to correctly identify the Prepar3D.cfg file and folder when installed into a P3Dv3 installation.

Ok, I understand you now, it was just the "v3" missing. The issue is, it's not "missing".

It's redundant, since we set this value automatically using a default function of the installer program we use (Inno Setup), which doesn't have a way (using that function), to NOT set an .INI key depending on other conditions, like the existence of a folder or some other variable, like the version of the sim.  It has such feature when installing files, but not when setting an .INI value, so what you see there, is the value we had to set for P3D V1.

It's entirely harmless, it won't make any difference to the installation, because it's related ONLY to setting the "SKINNED_ANIMATIONS" to the correct value of 1, since that's the ONLY key we set using the default Inno Setup function.

For ALL other purposes, we detect the correct P3D folder using OUR OWN code, and that's working fine and the location of the Prepar3D.CFG file IS correctly detected everywhere else.

In order for users not to be mislead into thinking this might be some kind of bug of the installer, we'll sure update the installer to use OUR OWN (correct) code, even to set the SKINNED_ANIMATIONS value.

Which, by the way, in P3D is very unlikely to be set to the wrong value ( disabled ), since there's no way from the user interface to change it ( in FSX is called "Advanced Animations" ), but since the value IS still being read from the Prepar3D.CFG file, as an excess of precaution, we set it in P3D too, even if it's very unlikely someone would disabled it, the only way to do it would be editing the .CFG file by hand.

[WebMaximus]

Sounds great, thanks for the thorough explanation Umberto!