Simviation Forums

You can change the file names & extensions of textures by hex editing the MDL file. Look for frhed in the Utilities section. There is also a little utility by Chuck Dome that will do this automatically although I forget the name. This has to be done carefully & following the rules to be successful. There is a tute ("Repainting FS98 Aircraft" I think) posted in the SimV Help & Tutorials section that explains it. As always, if you try it, make sure to take backup copies of any files before editing them.

PS. An easier method is to convert the textures to BMP format & manually rename the file extensions back to the original .xAF format. MW's BMP2000 will batch convert AF textures & save them as Extended format BMPs.

CWloew,

Have a look here...

you don't need to rename the textures... bitmap=bitmap.

As long as it is even sided and has 256 colorts you're OK.

Major advice: merge the fuselage before reducing color depth... otherwise you'll get some colors off.

Everone has their own favourite utilities & methods for using them. You also need some understanding & experience of what's involved in editing textures & a good basic knowledge of the various FS texture formats.

Personally, I find ConvR8 ideal for converting AF textures for repainting & saving either in the original AF format or as a standard 8 bit BMP. It will automatically resize edited 24 bit textures & convert them back to 8 bit resolution using the FS palette which saves a lot of messing around.

BMP2000 is ideal for batch converting existing AF textures & saving in the FS2000-style Extended BMP format. BMP textures used in FS2000 or later sims are not restricted to 256 x 256 size resolution or 8 bit (256) colors. Changing from AF to BMP would involve either renaming the saved BMP textures with their original .xaf file extensions or hex-editing the MDL to recognise the BMPs.