Simviation Forums

I've been trying forever to simply add initials to an FSX plane but fail.
I open the airplane bmp file in photoshop, add the initials to the fuselage and save it to the same file I opened. I agree to overwrite the original

you need to complie it into a compatible BMP.

download DXTBMP and learn what type of BMP the aircraft is using.

the other thing you should do is post its blank file to the desktop or somewhere and edit it from there

Thanx for answering, DrBob. I tried the dxtbmp. I'm not interested in something that complicated. I'm interested in simple paint jobs. I'm experienced in taking a file out of the game, editing it & putting it back in. I never realized there was a difference in bmp files. That sux.
I like the idea of that Abacus Repaint software but I need to get a trial before I would buy it.

this difference is called the byte order... it's basically the order in which the image information inside the file is arranged...

usually bitmaps are stored in R8,G8,B8 (red, green, blue; 8 bits per channel, or 24bit bitmap)

then, when you have an alpha channel (transparency), it adds another channel and becomes R8,G8,B8,A8 (red, green, blue, alpha, 8 bits per channel, or 32bit bitmap)

but this particular order may change... some programs may read/write the bitmap differently... as in the alpha channel before the color channels... or other combinations... also they may add more information to the file, such as mip-maps

FS uses one of those different byte orders, namely DXT3 or 5 (which uses mip-maps)... that's why you must convert it before the it will show up in-game
FSX may also make use of .dds textures... which is the DirectX native format... but you will need to have a software that can save .dds files if you want to use that format

Cheers