An Important Thing For Folks New To X-Plane

If you are used to Prepar3D or FSX, coming to X-Plane can take some unlearning of old habits. Sometimes it reminds me of when I moved from PC to Mac, in that things seem a bit confusing at first, but over time you realize the new way is much more simple than the old way. One of those things with X-Plane is how you install new scenery, plug-ins, airports, and aircraft. With Prepar3D and FSX new add-ons usually come with their own installers where you click an executable file and it puts files wherever they are supposed to be. This may make installation easier in some cases, but also makes uninstalls or moving your X-Plane install to a new drive a hassle as files are often spread (and left) all over the place. X-Plane is quite different, and honestly, much easier. All you do is drag the folder where it is supposed to be. This thread over at the AVSIM forums makes the point:

In X-Plane, at least for scenery and mostly for adding aircraft, you just use the native Windows/Mac/Linux folders. Drag and drop into whatever location the instructions require and you’re done. As a side benefit, it’s super easy to transfer all your X-Plane stuff to a different drive, or new computer.

Easy. And when you want to uninstall that scenery, aircraft, or airport? The vast majority of the time you just delete the folder (or if you want to hold onto it just in case, drag it someplace else outside the X-Plane folder structure). I really appreciated this about X-Plane when I recently moved my installation to a new solid-state drive. I simply dragged the X-Plane 11 folder from one drive to the other. That’s something I never could’ve done in Prepar3D or FSX.

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