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MSFS24 Best practice experiences - Making 2024-scenery compatible with 2020

uuseri

uuseri

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This post is about: Opening a MSFS 2024 project in MSFS 2020.

(Mods: I was on the edge of opening a new topic as I was unable to find anything related to this. I can split this into a new topic as well, but its relevant to this thread as well IMO)

Issue: Attempting to open a FS2024 project (SDK 1.3.4.0) in FS2020 (SDK 0.24.5) crashes the sim.

What I did after working on FS24 project: I renamed the project folder with -2020 suffix.

What I saw after opening & building a working project:

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I don't know to which "asset group" the log refers to. The file remains in the project folder, and its contents are

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project Version="2" Name="airport-htor-ng-wazi" FolderName="Packages" MetadataFolderName="PackagesMetadata">
<OutputDirectory>.</OutputDirectory>
<TemporaryOutputDirectory>_PackageInt</TemporaryOutputDirectory>
<Packages>
<Package>PackageDefinitions\greyskies-airport-htor-ngwazi.xml</Package>
</Packages>
<PublishingGroups/>
</Project>


Scenery's Asset group type is "copy" after initial loading:
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Changing "copy" to "BGL" doesn't help. It seems to be prequisite to open the scenery in editor, though.

What I've done as the fix so far:
- Deleted all other assets but "scenery" from the project
- Disabled external libraries from starting with FS20

So: Are there any tricks to do in order to cross-develop newer project files in FS20?
 
Last edited:
Have you just tried to drag'n'drop the 2024 package XML onto the 2020 fspackagetool? That should compile some of the project, with perhaps the modelLib not compiled. It gives you a starting point as to what is not compatible with 2020.
 
rhumbaflappy said:
Have you just tried to drag'n'drop the 2024 package XML onto the 2020 fspackagetool? That should compile some of the project, with perhaps the modelLib not compiled. It gives you a starting point as to what is not compatible with 2020.
Click to expand...
Here are results of using your method:

When "scenery" is set to "copy" and a manually placed tree model is deleted from scenery definition XML:
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A smörgåsboard of errors are visible when "scenery" is set to "BGL":
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Errors seem to be mostly "DTD/Schema" definition related. There's also an "AirportArchetype" error at the end, which didn't exist in previous SDK, as far as I recall.
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I'm not savvy enough to manually convert project files.

Best option would be to have backwards compatibility options built-in by Asobo/MS. I doubt this is going to happen.

Simultaneous development in both sims, as showcased on this site, seems to be the only viable way.

Unless someone produces a script or something similar to convert files.
 
I fell foul of this when first using 2024’s SDK. I made the fatal error of not creating a backup of my project folder in my rush to try out 2024’s SDK tools, and buggered my 2020 project. In hindsight not the worst decision in the world as I do like the new Decal feature in FS2024.
 
Don't think you can do backwards compiling, specially if your project has animated sim objects or objects with lights.

If this is your project, always design for the lowest version, then make necessary updates to the latest version.
 
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