Overriding/replacing generic texture aircraft?

[steelpanz]

Howdy, long time, first time here.  I've tried to use the search engine to find the answer, but am not sure how to word it.  I am fairly new to the program and was curious how I could eliminate the generic airlines (FSX built-in textures) from being present in the simulator and have them replaced with textures I have added in.

Perhaps this question is very, very basic.  If so, I do sincerely apologize.  But I did attempt to search for the answer and apparently haven't used the right keywords.

Thanks for pardoning my ignorance.

[Daube]

Hi Steelpanz and welcome to Simviation.

I understand what you want to do but I'm not sure about what you've done yet: you said that you have added some new textures for a given plane.

Pardon my question but we need to know how much familiar you are with the installation of additionnal "repaints" (this is the "official" name ). Do you see your additionnal repaints in the aircraft selection menu ? Did you manage to fly once with one of the repaints that you have installed ? That would prove that you ARE able to install repaints correctly, and this would be a valuable information for the other members, so that they can provide you more usefull adivses !

[steelpanz]

Daube,
Thanks for your interest in helping me.  Trust me, in these anonymous forums, any help is appreciated (rather than what could be seen as stereotypical degrading for ignorance).

In regards to the textures, I have, for example, applied about 20 new 737-800 textures in my aircraft\B737-800 directory.  Once those texture folders were applied (each with the appropriate paint files and thumbnail), I was sure to modify the \aircraft.cfg file in the 737-800 directory with the appropriate numbering in the fltsim line.  

However, lately, I have reinstalled (new HD) the game and decided to override the textures that come as staple in the game.  This means I moved the generic textures (world travel, orbitz, etc) into a backup folder and made sure no texture line in the .cfg file referenced those.  i did, however, keep the original texture (simply labeled TEXTURE) file in this folder.

Now that I have done that, I have noticed that no 737 aircraft appear at, say, airports (or sky) even though my traffic setting is set to a high percentage.  Actually, since I have done this to my 747 folder as well (as an experiment), I have not seen any 747 aircraft at the airports either (simply referencing airports since I wasn't paying attention to sky traffic at the time of this experiment).  That led me to believe that I have done something in those 2 aircraft directories that purged not only the generic aircraft for those models, but any aircraft from being present.  As a matter of fact, the only traffic I'm seeing at airports is/are the generic M80 textures.

Hope that helps explain what I mean.  

[Daube]

Ok now it is clear. You really know what is a repaint and how to use and install them. That's good.

Now to your problem: the fact is that those default repaints are used for the default AI traffic (the other planes that you can normally see at various airports). Since you have removed the default textures, the default traffic can no longer exist, because the AI is looking for the aircrafts that you have deleted from the aircraft.cfg, and thus it cannot find them anymore.

That's why you no longer see any 737 or 747 AI traffic around.

Now there are two solutions, one simple and one very complex.

The simple solution is to install some alternative, freeware AI traffic from a group called World of AI (WOAI). You will find a lot of explanations on how to proceed, tutorials on how to install etc... even in this forum. To summarize, WOAI works with a little application, an installer. From the WOAI website, you can download AI "packs" for each airline company. A pack contains 3D models and textures for the planes used by a certain company, and all the definitions of the real flights of this company. So if you downlad, say, the pack for American Airlines, it's a big ZIP file, you tell to the WOAI installer where this zup file is, and it will automatically extract it and move the files where they should be in FSX.

In this way, you will suddently see American Airlines planes all over the planet (I mean, only in the airports where AA actually goes in real life, of course). Good thing is that there are TONS of packs to download. Bad thing is that the default AI traffic from FSX gets disabled... but this may not be a real problem for you.


The complex way would be to create your own AI flights, using exactely the planes you want with the repaints you want. There are some tools to do that, but it's quite a big amount of work for getting just a few flights. I'd recommend you to keep this solution for special flights that you would like to create for some special places. Unfortunately I am not able to create such flights, but I'm sure some people here know how to do and which tool to use.

In my FSX, I have removed the default traffic and installed some packs from WOAI, only the major airlines that I knew about, like Air France, Alitalia, Swiss Air, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, British Airways etc... and it's really cool to fly around and hear the ATC call those planes from time to time... "Speedbird 326 with you.... Speedbird 326 you're cleared to land" etc...

Of course they are similar AI addons in payware. But the freeware WOAI is already so complete that you will enjoy it for sure.

[Gypsy_Baron]

-SNIP-

However, lately, I have reinstalled (new HD) the game and decided to override the textures that come as staple in the game.  This means I moved the generic textures (world travel, orbitz, etc) into a backup folder and made sure no texture line in the .cfg file referenced those.  i did, however, keep the original texture (simply labeled TEXTURE) file in this folder.

Now that I have done that, I have noticed that no 737 aircraft appear at, say, airports (or sky) even though my traffic setting is set to a high percentage.  -SNIP-  

What you have done, apparently, is remove the one thing that the AI traffic
BGL uses to identify the aircraft to use...the "title=" entries for the default
aircraft paints.

What you need to do is RETAIN the "title=" entry in the Orbit, World, etc aircraft.cfg sections but REPLACE everything BELOW that with the
addon/repaint aircrafts data.

Below is the 2nd entry of my B737-800 aircraft.cfg file that replaces
the default "World Travel" data with an Air France repaint.
Note the commented out (//) lines of the original entry.

The default traffic BGL was compiled using "Boeing 737-800 Paint2" as
the aircraft for a particular route. It looks for that name in the "title="
entries of all aircraft and when it finds it, it then uses the data in that section
of the aircraft.cfg file to load the specified model, sound and testure.

  Paul
NOTE: Daube...you're too quick for me

[fltsim.1]
title=Boeing 737-800 Paint2
sim=Boeing737-800
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=AFR
kb_checklists=Boeing737-800_check
kb_reference=Boeing737-800_ref
atc_id=
atc_airline="Air France"
atc_flight_number="302"
ui_manufacturer=Boeing
ui_type=737-800
ui_variation=Air France
ui_typerole="Commercial Airliner"
ui_createdby="Microsoft Corporation"
atc_parking_types=GATE
//texture=2
//kb_checklists=Boeing737-800_check
//kb_reference=Boeing737-800_ref
//atc_id=N737X
//atc_airline=World Travel
//atc_flight_number=
//ui_manufacturer="Boeing"
//ui_type="737-800"
//ui_variation="World Travel Airlines"
//ui_typerole="Commercial Airliner"
//ui_createdby="Microsoft Corporation"
description="

[steelpanz]

Outstanding explanation.

[Daube]

There is a special mecanism in FSX for the "common" textures of a plane.
As you might know, a plane has some textures which are common to all the variants, and then some which are specific to a certain repaint.
For example, the 747 Orbit and the 747 Blank certainly use the same texture for the wheels, so the wheel texture is what we can call a common texture.

So, instead of duplicating all those common textures to EACH texture folder (for each repaint), you have another possibility:
- you place all the common textures in the "texture" folder
- in the folder of a repaint, you create a file nammed "texture.cfg", containing the follwing text:

Code: Select all

[fltsim]
fallback.1=..\texture

This means for the sim: "if you do not find a texture in this folder, then go and look for it into the ..\texture folder, it might be there".

It saves a lot of disk space

[steelpanz]

[quote][quote]-SNIP-

However, lately, I have reinstalled (new HD) the game and decided to override the textures that come as staple in the game.

[steelpanz]

There is a special mecanism in FSX for the "common" textures of a plane.
As you might know, a plane has some textures which are common to all the variants, and then some which are specific to a certain repaint.
For example, the 747 Orbit and the 747 Blank certainly use the same texture for the wheels, so the wheel texture is what we can call a common texture.

So, instead of duplicating all those common textures to EACH texture folder (for each repaint), you have another possibility:
- you place all the common textures in the "texture" folder
- in the folder of a repaint, you create a file nammed "texture.cfg", containing the follwing text:

Code: Select all

[fltsim]
fallback.1=..\texture

This means for the sim: "if you do not find a texture in this folder, then go and look for it into the ..\texture folder, it might be there".

It saves a lot of disk space

Thanks for the advice.  I looked through those .cfg files in each repaint, but it just never dawned upon me that I had just removed the texture folder it was referencing.  

So yeah, I replaced those and things are all well again.