I really, truly do hope, though, that one of your major goals for the next significant upgrade to X-Plane (9.1? 9.2? hopefully sooner than 10.0) is to completely revamp the filesystem layout of the whole X-System. All modern operating systems are designed to support multiple users, and those users expect their applications to work correctly in these environments.

On my Mac OS X machines, I would love nothing more than to be able to install X-Plane by simply dragging one application icon to my Applications folder (or dragging one folder icon, since there are several other programs besides the sim itself). On first launch, X-Plane could show me a map interface for downloading scenery files off the DVDs, and place all of those files in /Library/Application Support/X-Plane/Scenery. Custom scenery, aircraft models, and the like could all go in either the system or the user’s Application Support folders, depending on the user’s preference. Software updates can be handled by X-Plane itself, as is common practice nowadays. (You can even add a simple sort of “self-repair” or at least self-diagnosis as a menu item in X-Plane, which would check for the most common filesystem layout problems encountered by users. This could be a great “step 1” procedure of any tech support calls, and I bet it’d save a lot of time and headaches.)

I know the software installation paradigms differ between the three major OSes, so I think you need a very generalized abstraction layer between the filesystem layout and X-Plane’s code. Yes, it’s a lot of dirty work which has very little instant gratification, but it’s something that needs to be done eventually, and the sooner it is, the better for you as both programmers and as tech support.

In the long run, support issues caused by disk quota, non-executable or network mounted user homes, the “clean up desktop” tool in Windows or alternative Desktops and Screen Managers will probably outweigh the support benefits of a frontally visible X-Plane folder (if it is visible at all – the amount of desktop clutter I’ve seen at work makes me rather pressimistic).

In this case you don’t need to file a bug because it’s already addressed in the 2.0 installer. Generally you should file bugs using the bug report form taht can be found off the contact page on x-plane.com (NOT by posting on this blog!). Blog comments take a while to go through since I have to get around to approving them to prevent spam.

Paploo: I agree that the “whole continent behavior” in the 1.x installers is annoying. Here’s the good news:

1. The new 2.0 installer has a map that lets you select the scenery you want to install (both for an initial install/new install and later as an add/remove scenery operation).

2. The new 2.0 installer IS compatible with DVDs that are already burned using the 1.x installer.

The 2.0 DVD installer will be available for download (mainly for tech support reasons, e.g. if we need to fix a bug).

But you could grab it, run it off the HD and insert a continent disk. It’ll give you the “add/remove global scenery” option and the map will show the particular set of DSF files on that DVD. Pick them in 10×10 clumps.

DVD sets baseed on the 2.0 installer span disks – that is, 1 installer on disk 1 lets you install everything, and it prompts you to change disks.

If you use the new installer with your old disks, you may have to go through several disks to install scenery…the images on the covers show the “region” they cover, but for example if you wanted the US-canadian border you might have to go through two steps with two DVDs to get all the files you want.

Second: Speaking of installers, I was installing more of my global scenery onto my computer, and found myself mildly frustrated that if I wanted, say, just Hawaii, I had to install *all* 9 GB of the South American scenery first, and then remove most of South America (I dumped everything south of the equator in the end)

Sometime in the future, it would be really neat if the installers for a region disc would present you with a clickable map where you can select sub-regions to install. Maybe 10 degree by 10 degree or 5 degree by 5 degree squares that can be selected by the user as necessary.

With this installer your home dir will be the default on Linux. I trust LINUX users to know where their home folder is.

Still waiting for XSB for Linux…

Eduardo.