Seeing others aircraft

[Ratus]

I fly as part of a clan in Hurricanes on MSN Zone.

Through your help files I have loaded up some excellent skins for different aircraft and these all work, on my system.

Our Clan has it's own paint scheme which works fine based on the files for a Hurricane_I. and these we can see each others aircraft in when we fly in these colours.

Having done that I thought it would be a bit of a wheeze to create slightly different skins for each member namely a small logo depicting the piltos nickname. They don't look to bad if I say so myself.

But we have found a problem none of us can see each others individual skin, we get one of or any combination of the following
My Aircraft in my colours
1 other member in my colours
Others in the original aircraft, in this case a Hurricane_I and some Others in a Spitfire_mk_1.

Each individual aircraft has it's aircraft.cfg file amended to show thier aircrafts name in the ready room but nothing else that I am aware of. It is basically the Hurricane_I file but with different texture files.

We have all carried out the following in the multiplayer.mis file.
Open the file multiplayer.mis file in notepad.
Scroll down past the line [Multiplayer] and find the line name="Spitfire_MkI" and change it to name="Hawker Hurricane Mk I" the name must be typed exactly as it is named in the planes aircraft.cfg file else you will not be able to play the game.

Now we have all changed the combatfs.cfg as per the following instructions to view others planes in CFS multiplayer.

Edit your combatfs.cfg file. Open combatfs.cfg in notepad, locate the line [Multiplayer] just down from this edit the following.

ALLOW_PLANE_MODEL_SEND=1
ALLOW_PLANE_MODEL_RECEIVE=1
ALLOW_TEXTURE_SEND=1
ALLOW_TEXTURE_RECEIVE=1
MAX_SEGMENTS_PER_SEC=1

I have all thier skins in my aircraft folder but it still doesn't show us as individuals.

We have carried out the following
In the multiplayer.mis file
Open the file multiplayer.mis file in notepad.
Scroll down past the line [Multiplayer] and find the line name="Spitfire_MkI" and change it to name="Hawker Hurricane Mk I" the name must be typed exactly as it is named in the planes aircraft.cfg file else you will not be able to play the game.

can anyone out there help us, I have trawled through all the various sites out there to no avail. Have Maxed the system and in the words of Scotty "She canna take anymore Captain" or have I missed something out.

Thanks in advance,

Ratus

[Dan]

All I can suggest is that you all have each other tex's installed on your PC... may work, it does in FS2002.
dan

[Hagar]

I've never flown online myself but I'm sure this should be possible. I've been trying to get my head round it for the last few days. It seems to me that if all players each have all versions of the aircraft installed this makes the combatfs.cfg tweak unnecessary. The aircraft would all need to be configured as separate aircraft with different folder names & appropriate title= entries in Aircraft.cfg. I'm not sure how you would go on with the multiplayer.mis file. I suspect that each player would need to add the name of their own aircraft. Depending on how many players are involved this could get a tad complicated.

PS. As this is CFS1 there could still be a texture conflict. It might be necessary to rename the textures of each repaint & hex edit the MDL files to reconise them. You might even need to rename the other files (AIR, DP & MDL) to make each one a unique aircraft.

[Ratus]

Many thanks for getting back guys,

I have tried it on my LAN with the two aircraft installed int he aircraft folder and it does work. The problem seems to be online.

I have bee trying to figure out how to make the other aircraft AI so that they are smaller files and that don;t show in the change aircraft selection.

I have looked at the other AI aircraft and tried to replicate the files but for each aircraft individually. All I have manged to do is create the aircraft but with bits missing ie gauges etc.  

I would like to try the idea of hex editing but not being formally taught how to do this i would not know where to start .... any ideas that would help me do it in mickey mouse language.

Anyway once again thanks for your help and I will update the post if successful.

Ratus  ???

[Hagar]

Hi Ratus. Converting an aircraft to an AI Only drone is quite straightforward. To remove them from the menu open their AIR files with AirEd from the Design section & change the Aircraft Type from 0 to 2. Don't do this for the default aircraft but duplicates should be fine.

AI Only drones must have Panel & Sound folders to work but need no panel or sound files at all. You can safely delete all files (including Panel & Sound CFG files) from these folders to reduce the file sizes. You could alias panel & sound to the player Hurricane if you prefer.

Simple hex editing to change texture names is not difficult once you get the hang of it. This might not be necessary. Try my other suggestions first to see how it works out. I can walk you through the hex editing later if you need it.

[Ratus]

Rgr I will give this a try Hagar and let you know asap

Ratus

[Ratus]

It still seems a bit hit and miss at the mo some times I can see them and some times they  can see me, I may be doing something wrong ocassionally.Will continue to try the method you suggested to perfect it.

The theory says it should work the practice is another matter.

Perhaps we could hock up some time for the hex editing walkthrough.

Many thanks for your time.

Ratus

[SilverFox441]

I experimented heavily with texture send and receive when CFS 1 was new.

It's hit or miss at best. Texture sends can take upward of 10 minutes to accomplish, and even then it's possible to lose the textures on a reconnect.

My advice, configure each members plane as a seperate plane...not just a texture aliased in the .cfg. This will bloat your aircraft folder, but will get the results you want. I know I tried it way back when, but can't remember now if the planes have to be functional. I think you can get away with only model, texture and sound folders for the planes you don't fly...just enough to let the system draw them and make sounds.

[Hagar]

I know I tried it way back when, but can't remember now if the planes have to be functional. I think you can get away with only model, texture and sound folders for the planes you don't fly...just enough to let the system draw them and make sounds.

You would also need a Panel folder. Panel & Sound folders can be empty as AI aircraft don't use the player panel & sound files. Adding a dummy CFG file to each folder will prevent problems with empty folders not being extracted by some unzipper utilities.

Perhaps we could hock up some time for the hex editing walkthrough.

Ratus. Please mail me from the address in my profile. I find this much easier than trying to explain things on the forum & can then do a proper walkthrough. The idea is to make each variation into a completely separate aircraft - exactly the same as any downloaded 3rd party aircraft would be. I see no reason why this wouldn't work just as well online as in single-player missions. You might like to download frhed v1.0.156 (frhed156.zip) here so we're both using the same tools. http://www.kibria.de/frhed.html

PS. I just made a copy of the default Hurricane_I. Deleting all files from the Panel & Sound subfolders reduces the folder size from 6.12 Mb to 896 Kb. This is further reduced to 256 Kb when zipped.

[Hagar]

This is the default Hurricane_I in QC flying happily alongside a duplicate configured as an unflyable AI Only drone as I suggested. The duplicate is named Hurricane_A & the MDL, AIR & DP files have been renamed with the Hurricane_A file prefix. The Aircraft.cfg has been suitably edited with the entry changed like this. The title= name can be anything you wish providing it's different to all the others.

[fltsim.0]
title=Hawker Hurricane A
sim=Hurricane_A
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=
checklists=Hurricane_I_CHECK

The repainted textures are renamed for each variation (from hurr_1.bmp to hurra1.bmp etc.) & the MDL file hex edited to recognise them. It's much easier to use the same number of digits in the texture file names. This could be repeated ad infinitum with Hurricane_B, Hurricane_C & so on.



I'm sure this should work online in the same way.

PS. If my theory is correct each player would have a fully flyable version of their own aircraft + AI Only drone versions of all other players' aircraft installed to their own CFS1. If this works you would not need to use the send/receive textures CFG tweak.

[Ratus]

Yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,

Using what we discussed in this thread Hi-D and thinking through all what you said and fidling with the files our work around and getting the other to copy files into thier systems has worked.

We had a field day the other night.  Some of the members had a bit of a problem but that was easily fixed by getting them to put the files in the RIGHT folders but hey it worked.  

I have been asked to send our thanks to you Hi-D, but I would have done it anyway, you are a star.

Cheers mate,  I will send you an email when I finish on an short term operation that I am on for the walk through, might be a couple of weeks though.

Speak soon and thanks again

[Ratus]

The last message from me had an error in it is thanks to Hagar not Hi-D beg your pardon mate.

Ratus

[Hagar]

The last message from me had an error in it is thanks to Hagar not Hi-D beg your pardon mate.

Ratus

Thanks Ratus. Glad my theory worked. I always thought it would but as I've never flown online I was never able to try it myself.

PS. It's possible to edit messages posted on this board - as you can see.