Add-on aircraft pics not showing up in the 'select aircraft' menu

[tidewater]

I'm running FSX on Vista. Installing add-on aircraft is easy and they fly fine, but their photos don't show up in the 'Select Aircraft' menu. I see some designers add a thumbnail and some don't. I see the FSX default aircraft have thumbnails in their 'Texture' folders and those aircraft show up on the 'Select Aircraft' menu just fine, as one would expect. I've tried adding the add-on designer's thumbnails to their 'texture' files, but they still don't show up in the 'select aircraft' menu. A basic newbie question for sure, I realize, but how do I get these add-on aircraft to show up in the 'select aircraft' menu?

[jetstreamsky]

Sounds like you're doing the right thing, the only thing I can think of is that the thumbnail file has to be called exactly that i.e. 'thumbnail.jpg" or .bmp

Or is it that the added versions don't show at all, this is to do with the model not having a panel folder and config, as FSX assumes the model to be AI.

[JoeW]

You could have 2 or more planes with the same name. That will cause that too.

[tidewater]

Yup, upon closer inspection, the thumbnails in the game say 'JPG file'. The thumbnails I've tried installing from add-ons so far have all said 'bitmap image'. I guess that is the answer. I'll try more add-ons 'til I find one with a thumbnail that says 'JPG file'. Thanks!

[CBris]

Make your own thumbnails...

They're just jpg pictures in the ratio 2 wide, 1 high. Normally 256 x 128, but FSX accepts larger.

[hschuit]

Another possible cause: An invalid panel= or texture= reference in the [fltsim.n] section of the missing plane's aircraft.cfg file. This happened to me after moving / renaming panel / texture folders.

cheers, Henk.

[Cazzie]

Make your own thumbnail from a screenshot as ChrisB says. Size it at 400 X 200 pixels, name it thumbnail and save it in a .jpg format. File the thumbnail in the texture folder containing the aircraft you wish displayed. Also add a Texture.cfg file in your texture folder for FSX. To make a texture.cfg, copy the below and paste it into Notepad and save it as texture.cfg in your texture folder.

[fltsim]

fallback.1=..\texture
fallback.2=..\..\..\..\Scenery\Global\texture
fallback.3=..\..\..\..\..\..\Scenery\Global\textur e

Caz

[falcon409]

. . . . .Also add a Texture.cfg file in your texture folder for FSX. To make a texture.cfg, copy the below and paste it into Notepad and save it as texture.cfg in your texture folder.

[fltsim]
fallback.1=..\texture
fallback.2=..\..\..\..\Scenery\Global\texture
fallback.3=..\..\..\..\..\..\Scenery\Global\textur e

Caz

Caz, I've never seen that before. What does that do exactly?

[tidewater]

Thanks for the help, everybody! I've been playing around with it and found the easiest way to get an aircraft to show up in the select aircraft menu is to google search the aircraft you want, say the Zenith CH-701 STOL for example. Google "CH-701 flight sim", choose 'images', and up pops a zillion CH-701 pictures... including thumbnails from flight sim. Copy and paste the image you like best into a temporary folder, rename the image 'thumbnail', then copy and paste it into your aircraft's texture folder, and bingle springle, you're in like flynn! Easy is fun!

[BASys]

Hi Folks

Basically it's a mechanism to -
- minimize duplicate textures being processed
- save disk space

For further information,
please see FS-Developer - Wiki - Texture.cfg (FSX)



FSX was released with an incorrect path in the texture.cfg files.

FSX default aircraft's fallback.3 reference,
generally refers to an MS 'development folder',

    fallback.3=..\..\..\..\..\..\Scenery\Global\texture

i.e.
a folder path not present on a user's system.

The correct path for FSX default Texture folder is -

    fallback.3=..\..\..\..\Texture

Warning -
FSX Acceleration's FA-18, (and some other 3rd. party aircraft)
use additional fallback.# lines.
You should edit those aircraft's texture.cfg files manually.



HTH
ATB
Paul