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Steam FSX: More than 1 install possible?

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dmaloof

Charter Member
Hi, I have the steam version of fsx and want to know if possible to have more than 1 install. i heavily modded when i first did it but would like anotha install for just payware planes and items. Thanks.:wavey:
 
No not possible. Largely because the files names in the AppData folder are fixed in stone. This is the reason it is not possible to install FSX Acceleration edition after an install of FSXSE as they would conflict with identical file names. It is possible the other way around i.e. FSXA install followed by FSXSE as SE pays homage to its predecessor. That i how I do it thus I will do any testing in FSXA and if good enough I will install in FSXSE. Hope I make sense.
 
What could be worth trying is setting up a second user account on your PC, then running your Steam account on that as well. Because so much of the FSX:SE installation shares the same structure as the DVD editions of FSX, the config files are mainly in My Documents, thus having a second user account will create a different path for them.

Ian P.
 
Clever idea but I think you would run into licensing issues. Though a good plan and waiting upon a Steam sale I got mine e.g. for if I recall about $14. But it should work for then there would be two separate and distinct AppData folders.
 
When I was doing exactly that to run two different scenery libraries, one for "general" and one for "airliners", I never found any licensing issues, although I can see how you could, if a product is licensed to a user on a PC rather than the hardware. All the add-ons I used were apparently hardware locked, because my "Airliners" user could see and use them all, as well as my primary account, which I used to install them.

These days I just use SimStarter, but that won't help in the example here... Or it might, actually. Although it might take some work. Have you looked into SimStarter at all, dmaloof? It used to be free, but is now payware through Aerosoft and has a lot more control and options than the free version that I use does. Having the ability to turn everything you don't want off and turn everything you do want on, within a single FS installation, is extremely useful? I now have dedicated versions for WW2, airliners, GA, Carrier Operations, plus a master "absolutely everything on" version...

Ian P.
 
Just a note: I had, for quite a while, FSX:SE on two computers at the same time. Same Steam account, namely mine. The only thing was, only one of the two could be online at once. Not a real big problem for me. Essentially, I did it to show my lovely wife the differences between FSX:SE and FS9. After a few months of flying in SE she decided she liked it better, so we purchased an account for her. Essentially, she wanted to fly with the two of us together in MP.

Point is, you can have the same FSX:SE loaded on more than one computer at a time, as long as you only want one sim online at any given time. Not the same computer, as far as I know, but I may be wrong on that. You can still run both installs at the same time, just not online or in MP with one another. Mainly, it started out as a vanilla back-up install for me, and then she decided she wanted it as well, so we got her set up with her own account.
My vanilla backup install is still on her PC right at the moment. I know, with SE it's not really necessary, since you can re-load, or repair, an install from Steam easily, just a habit I developed with FS9, having a vanilla backup hidden away someplace.

Steam may have changed something preventing this set-up now, but it worked for me.
Pat☺
 
That "Sim Starter" sounds like quite the program.

Because of the way the program was written, apparently, I've been able to install multiple iterations of FS9 on my computer, each iteration having in it aircraft peculiar to that time period. One for "early" (1903-1950), "1950s" (1950-59), and so on. No conflicts between versions and everything works fine. Sure cuts down on load time for each sim, too.

It is possible, with Sim Starter, to do the same with FSX? That is, have different time periods covered in each version of FSX, just as in the FS9 setup I've described?
 
I don't know about different aircraft sets, in the new version of the tool, because I use the old freeware one, but you can certainly create effectively different versions of the base sim. I have six different scenery sets, with different configurations for things like AI traffic, autogen density and the like. I don't think I can assign different aircraft sets, though. I just have one "livery manager" drop-down per sim version.

SIMstarter NG (the Aerosoft payware version) does more than this version I use does, but the Aerosoft page only specifies "Aircraft can be sorted, activated or deactivated" - it doesn't specify whether this is per profile, or per simulator.

Cheers,

Ian P.
 
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