Extra textures in A/C downloads

[highpockets]

What is the best method to move the extra textures out of the sim if they are not required in any missions to keep them for future use or reference in order to keep the A/C count in A/C manager below 100? Just copy and paste and leave in the A/C folder or move them out as a completely different folder in another folder somehow titled for your identification?

[Fibber]

....I am not a guru but you could probably move them to a "temp" ( or whatever) folder somewhere with your own identifier on the file. I would then Zip the file to save space. Just make sure that you go into the original A\C .config file and delete any references to the removed texs. Otherwise you will get a lot of error messages concerning the a\c and affect the sim.

[Captain Kurt]

Yep, This is a pet peeve of mine as a campaign builder. It's fine to have multiple skins if you just want to tootle around in free flight, but it works poorly in campaigns as the skin you want probably is not the first on the list and you get an inappropriate plane flying in your mission.

So, I remove all the extra skins and keep the one I want. There are 2 ways to do this. One is to physically remove all the additional texture folders except the one you want and modify the aircraft cfg to only use the the remaining texture folder.

But you don't have to remove the extra texture folders if you want to keep them for later, you only need to modify the cfg file so it does not see them. Then they won't count as additional planes in your total either. Here's how using the Alphasim Boston as the example:

The Boston folder has six (6) texture folders each with its own name like so:

Texture
Texture.2
Texture.3
Texture.4
Texture.9
Texture.10

Next open the aircraft.cfg file with Notepad and you will see that each folder is named in a separate section sequentially named by a header [fltsim.0], [fltsim.1], [fltsim.2] and so on. See below in purple text. CFS2 sees each one of the separate sections as a separate airplane and each counts against your total in the AIRCRAFT folder.

Also see that each [fltsim.xx] section has a different title - see in green text - which is the name you will see when you go to the free flight menu to find the plane.

Each separate section lists one of the texture folder names. See below in orange. The texture in the folder will correspond to the airplane listed in the title. Where texture = blank it will use the folder named "texture" which is the default for single texture aircraft.

We only want one skin to show up and only one plane in our AIRCRAFT folder count. Let's say we want to use the texture in Texture.9 folder. That is texture=9 in the [fltsim.4]
section with the name title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III USAAF 3

All you have to do is to type 2 or 3 slashes in front of the[fltsim.xx] header for each section that you do not want. Do not put slashes in front of the one that you want to see and then change the [fltsim.4]number to zero like this[fltsim.0]. You have to do this. CFS2 always looks for the zero first. If it does not see it the plane will not show up in the game.

See the example below titled Modified aircraft.cfg text and note the changes are in bold blue text.

Now when you run CFS2, only the ALPHA Douglas Boston III USAAF 3 will be seen and counted.

Try it. (Of course you don't need all the colors, those are only there to make the descriptions here more clear.) It works and the extra texture folders all will be preserved even though you are not using them.


Existing aircraft.cfg text

//Alphasim CFS2 Boston Mark III Version 2.0 9:23 AM 10/5/2004
[fltsim.0]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III RAF 1
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=
kb_checklists=boston_check

[fltsim.1]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III USAAF 2
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=2
kb_checklists=boston_check

[fltsim.2]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III Soviet 1
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=3
kb_checklists=boston_check

[fltsim.3]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III French 1
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=4
kb_checklists=boston_check

[fltsim.4]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III USAAF 3
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=9
kb_checklists=boston_check

[fltsim.5]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III RAF 2
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=10
kb_checklists=boston_check



Modified aircraft.cfg text

//Alphasim CFS2 Boston Mark III Version 2.0 9:23 AM 10/5/2004
///[fltsim.0]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III RAF 1
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=
kb_checklists=boston_check

///[fltsim.1]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III USAAF 2
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=2
kb_checklists=boston_check

///[fltsim.2]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III Soviet 1
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=3
kb_checklists=boston_check

///[fltsim.3]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III French 1
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=4
kb_checklists=boston_check

[fltsim.0]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III USAAF 3
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=9
kb_checklists=boston_check

///[fltsim.5]
title=ALPHA Douglas Boston III RAF 2
sim=Boston3
panel=
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=10
kb_checklists=boston_check

[Talon]

Captain Kurt,

You don't have to make seperate planes with multi texture planes. All you have to do is hand edit the mission file when you are don emaking the mission. Just put the name of the plane you want to use from the cfg file. Only thing you won't be able to go in missin builder to tweek the mission after.

[highpockets]

Thanks Guys
You have explained a little of the "Voodoo" to me as to why I kept seeing the various skins. I didn't edit the .cfg file, I just copied and pasted the texture into another fold and called it "extra textures"

[highpockets]

Thanks Captain Kurt
You suggestion solved my muliple textures problem, but not my Free Flight or QC failures. Rami has been working with me via PM and haven't solved it yet. We are scratching our heads. None of his suggestions worked and we thought that multiple texures might be the culprit.
Apparently not.
Again, thanks for the insight to how this sim works in that area.