by Travis » Sat Nov 22, 2003 11:33 am
Like Erez said, the opacity is part of the model, which is unchangeable without the files it was created with. So you could get in touch with the author and see if they'd do a small upgrade. Most authors are pretty receptive about that kind of thing, and if you're REALLY nice about it, they usually do things with gusto.
As for modifying the other planes, you really don't have to modify the airfile to change the engine dynamics. Just the aircraft.cfg, which is much easier to mess around with. I'll assume you've never seen one before and walk you through it real quick.
Find the folder of the MB5 aircraft. Open it up and look for a file titled "Aircraft". This is the aircraft.cfg file. Open it up and check out the first thing you see. This part is what tells the sim what files the aircraft uses for different things. I won't worry about any of that now, as it isn't important to what we're doing.
Start scrolling down slowly and you'll start to notice different sections of the aircraft.cfg file. They're things like [contact_points], [weight_and_balance] and [fuel]. For a prop plane, look for an entry titled [piston_engine]. Under it is a whole slew of gibberish, but you don't need to understand any of it. Now minimize this aircraft.cfg and leave it open, cause we're going to need it later.
Go find the aircraft.cfg file of the Hellcat (or whatever aircraft you want to use) and create a copy of it in the same folder. Rename it aircraft.bak, or something similar. This is VERY IMPORTANT, as if you accidentally screw something up you can just delete the old aircraft.cfg and take the .bak off the end of the new one.
Now open up the aircraft.cfg. Find the same entry as before, [piston_engine]. Go to the other aircraft.cfg file (the one from the HB5) and copy the [piston_engne] section from it. Make sure you get the entire thing, but no parts of other sections. This is important. Go to the aircraft.cfg file from the Hellcat and delete the [piston_engine] section, then paste in the one you just copied. Now save and close both the aircraft.cfgs.
A word of warning: This may not work with just any aircraft. For instance, if you took the [piston_engine] section from a B-29 and put it on a Cessna, you would probably have some real issues on your hands. So if it doesn't work, come back for lesson #2: how to edit the [piston_engine] section.
Thanks
