The new SIMSTALLER by Parallel 42 is a utility to manage your add-on installs and potential conflicts. This free add-on management tool for MSFS is a versatile tool that will help you install and manage all your add-ons for MSFS.
Table of Contents
For New Simmers:
Finding the Community folder can be challenging for new simmers, especially if you need to be more comfortable navigating your way deep within the file system. The Community folder is where all your add-ons that you have added from developers and websites are. This isn’t your Marketplace add-ons. These are PC, third-party add-ons that you purchase or download from websites. Typically, you’ll need to find the community folder and move your unzipped files into it for MSFS to recognize it and make it available in the sim.
The SIMSTALLER utility will take away this complexity and frustration. It will simply add your downloaded zip file to the community folder, unzipped and ready to go. Nothing more needs to be done.
For Seasoned Simmers:
For those who have been using this simulator for three years and know the file system well, it can also be a timesaver and reduce frustration when installing add-ons. Many use a custom Community folder or the MSFS Add-on Linker program. This SIMSTALLER tool can easily be set up to install your add-ons directly into your linker directory, ready for you to link instead of unzipping, moving, and connecting.
A Valuable Feature of SIMSTALLER:
This tool comprises two main parts: the installer part and a “conflict reporting” part. This second part is like no other tool available today for MSFS. This utility can scan and report on potential add-on conflicts. MSFS uses a “Virtual File System,” here, all your add-ons potentially overwrite core sim files or other add-on files, causing conflicts in your sim. For all the experienced simmers, we have witnessed this with a sluggish system, crash to desktop (CTD), or simply very long load or unload times in the sim. This tool will help find those add-ons that were poorly written or override important core sim files that they shouldn’t have. This has to be the most crucial reason to get this add-on: Conflict resolution.
Did We Mention It’s FREE?
When you see a helpful utility like this from a reputable software vendor like Parallel 42, you would think there must be a price. After all, this feature is not available anywhere else, and this sim has over 22 million users as of June 2023. However, Parallel 42 has made this utility accessible on their website. Add it to your basket and checkout to download it. It will find your community folder and prompt you to change the add-on install directory to somewhere else, like a linker folder if you have one. It also reminds you of an “executables” directory where it can run program executables. These files don’t run in your Community folder, so they need their manual.
Parallel 42 has continually made airplanes, sceneries, and utilities that we all use in MSFS, such as Flow, Stripr, and Campout. Vehicles such as the Freedom Fox and the Juice Goose UTV. Very detailed specific scenes such as Sharktooth Ridge, Cheat River Island, and High Voltage. Parallel 42 has become known as a quality developer who adds products we don’t have yet and never knew we could have. In this vein, they continually surprise us with products we didn’t expect. Simstaller is one of them.
Summary
Siminstaller is well-made and very useful. As we keep adding more and more airplanes and sceneries to our sim, our Community folder gets so full that we need a bigger hard drive. Indeed, this has to have some effect on the performance of our simulator in a product that taxes our hardware already. Simstaller helps us to manage all those add-ons and sort out where the conflicts are. This has to result in better performance and a more stable system. At the very least, it gives us peace of mind to know something is watching that overflowing Community folder and keeping an eye on it. Thank you, Parallel 42.
