Universal Replace of Image Files

[Kodiak]

Hi guys,

I'm using Golden Wings 3 with FS2004 and it does a pretty good job of transforming things back to the 1930's except for a few things, and for me the most obvious are the fuel stations. I've found some of the fuel station bmp files and replaced them with an image of a 1940's fuel truck that comes with GW3, but the fuel stations still display.

Are there BDP type files in FS2004 that I need to delete to get my new image to display on the replaced files?

Here are the fuel station files I've found so far that I've replaced:

Medium_Fuel_Station
Medium_Fuel_Station_LM
Small_Fuel_Station1
Small_Fuel_Station1_LM
Small_Fuel_Station2
Small_Fuel_Station2_LM

I found all of these in Scenery/Generic/Texture. What am I doing wrong in trying to replace these images?

P.S. Also, if you know of a better image to replace them with, such as a 1930's flatbed with some gas cans on it, or a 1930's fuel truck please let me know. The image I was trying to use is from WWII and would be better than a modern fuel station, but maybe not ideal.

Thanks!

P.S.S. I guess I could have called this thread "How to replace modern fuel stations with a vintage alternative?" as I'm open to any ideas!

[zijdemans]

Funny to read that more people have not taken the step to FSX, and are still flying FS2004, and more specifically, GW3. I am not very good in modifying "under the bonnet" but I did replace a number of AI planes with better looking ones . I find GW3 a beautiful world, so I am interrested to hear any tips to even further improve.
By the way, I found a guy who hosts the old Golden Hager website!

[Mick]

Well, before I can suggest anything I must ask what the fuel stations look like without their textures. I've never seen one undressed. Do they have the same shape and detail only all gray, or are they just blank gray boxes? Or blank 3D thingies like the trees look when they aren't textured?

If the 3D objects are shaped like fuel stations, it doesn't matter what textures you use, you'll still have the same modern-looking fuel stations, just with weird patches of colors and fragmentary markings on them that are meant to fit something with a completely different shape.

If the bare 3d objects are just rectangular boxes, they'll look like boxes with weird patches of colors and fragmentary markings on them that are meant to fit something with a completely different shape.

My point is, whatever the shape of the 3d objects, you can't change it by fiddling with the textures, except that you can make transparent parts, or make parts disappear, using the alpha channel. The textures have nothing to do with shape other than the ability to make parts invisible via the alpha channel. Maybe they wouldn't look quite so modern if you disappeared that top part and the stanchions that support it.

You could repaint the fuel stations using old-fashioned lettering and logos, and that would be really neat and worth the effort, but they'll still have that modern-looking shape. Maybe they wouldn't look so modern with Golden Age style graphics on them.

You could just make the fuel stations disappear completely, which would only be a problem if you like to use them to refuel your plane. The easy way would be to make the textures completely transparent using the alpha channel. But then they'd still be there - they'd just be invisible - which could lead to a lot of annoying building crashes as you taxi on the ramp. You wouldn't be able to see them, but the sim would still sense their presence and record a crash if you hit one. Kimber did that to make the nuclear plants disappear, but since we don't have cooling towers on or near airports, the chance of colliding with an invisible one is pretty nearly nil.

You could probably get rid of them completely by excluding them, though sometimes stock objects resist the effects of exclude files. It should work, at least most of the time. I've excluded some fuel stations that were in annoying locations on the ramp at some airports. But only a few. And then you'd have to find another way to refuel your planes, like by editing the aircraft.cfg file, or setting the sim to Unlimited Fuel. Making an exclude file for every fuel station at every airport that you like to fly from would get real tedious real quick, which is why I've only done a few of them.

It kinda seems to me like something that would be neat to have, but not really worth the effort to do on a large scale.

[Mick]

... By the way, I found a guy who hosts the old Golden Hanger website!

I didn't know Tom was missing!

Seriously though, I think GW is one reason many of us haven't made a move to FSX.

Another reason is that we've seen the screen shots and saw that while FSX looks better than FS9 straight from the box, it doesn't look any better than a well-developed FS9 installation like many of us have. Missions, moving car traffic, animals and even moving aircraft carriers are frills that have little attraction for some of us.

[Kodiak]

Thanks, Mick.

I didn't think about them having a 3D component just like a plane would. But now I get it and as you say sounds like more work than its worth. I may fiddle with going the invisible alpha channel route, as I would rather not see them if I can't replace them with something vintage. Over all Golden Wings works great at representing the 1930's. I stay away from the large airports and get a real good 30's vibe from the little airports except for those darned fuel stations...lol

Cheers!

[norab]

Don't know if this will help or not, go to

http://oldhangararchive.jrwilliamsart.us/


scroll way down to nearly the bottom of the page and look for

Moorestown, NJ Circa 1928

by JimM

and

Patch to add working Gas areas


it's a nice little airfield that includes a period gas pump as a fueling station. you may be able to adapt it to your needs

also at Flightsim there are fuel pump scenery objects

FS2004 Gas Pumps SS Scenery Objects



HTH

[Terry]

ADE will delete the modern pump station. Download a library named GAS PUMPS SS.BGL which has a bunch of old pumps. That's not the file name it is the working folder name, sorry I don't remember the zip file name.

[Kodiak]

I find GW3 a beautiful world, so I am interrested to hear any tips to even further improve.

I'm brand new to FS2004, so this may be old news to most, but the two payware products I added to GW3 over the last month are REX and GE Pro II. Plus I also use the freeware FSrealWX.

I tried the freeware HDEv2 clouds, and they are better than the stock FS9 clouds, but the REX clouds are just exceptional.

Also, I read an article that said GE Pro II and GW3 weren't compatible as they both did the same thing in replacing textures. But I like to fly in the Pacific Northwest and I also have a base in Cairo using Air Hauler, and the thing GW3 doesn't do is replace all the stock global textures like GE Pro II does. So I installed GE Pro II first (just the Global Coverage - Day and Global Coverage - Night textures), then GW3. That way GE Pro II textures show everywhere there aren't GW3 textures and I don't see any stock FS9 textures at all. So the undeveloped areas like the mountains in the Pacific Northwest and the desert outside Cairo that GW3 doesn't have textures for look fantastic now compared to the stock FS9 textures.

I'd love to hear anything else others have done to spruce up GW3 also!

P.S. There is also a little vintage roads add-on Bill Lyons did that I think looks better than what he used in GW3. It is dated about two years prior to GW3 and I don't know why he didn't include it in GW3. You can find it in the Piepentol/Stinson Reliant package from Bill Lyons at The Old Hanger. It is in the Custom Classics Extras folder. It also has add-on files for taxiways which you shouldn't use with GW3 (unless you want old worn out concrete taxiways instead of grass), but if you just install the hiwaysu and/or roadssu files you'll get what I think are better looking vintage roads.

[zswobbie1]

+10 for Golden Wings.
I've added so much into my GW install. Some of the most interesting & essential is the scenery, planes & paints from http://ford-tri-motor.net/
I fly my Golden Wings far more than my FS9 & P3D!

'Go, the Oldies"!!!

[Mick]

This discussion reminds me of something I'd long forgotten.

Some years ago, long before Golden Wings, Bill & Lynn Lyons released a texture set that was supposed to give FS9 (or might it even have been FS8?) an old, Golden Age look. It made all the buildings and facilities look very old and beat up, with broken windows and peeling paint. It looked great in its own way, but it looked totally unauthentic for the Golden Age.

In the years of the Golden Age, those buildings and facilities didn't look old and beat up; they looked new and spiffy, because they were new and spiffy then. Those replacement textures didn't make the airports look like they looked in the thirties; they made them look as if they might look today if they'd been built back in the thirties and had been abandoned for decades. That might be an appropriate look in a sim set in the current era for the occasional abandoned airport that hasn't been turned into a shopping mall, but it affected the entire FS world and it was completely inappropriate for a sim set in the Golden Age. It turned FS world into some kind of post-Apocalyptic dead zone.

I don't recall what that texture set was called, but it's best forgotten anyway. I've been a big fan of Bill & Lynn Lyons since I discovered Golden Wings 1 for FS98, but that beat-up texture project sure proved that anybody can have a misfire once in a while. I think that was the only thing the Lyonses ever did that I didn't like. Apparently nobody else liked it either, including Bill and Lynn, since it quickly disappeared into FS history.

[Kodiak]

Thanks, norab and Terry.

I guess your posts came in last night when I was writing mine about GE Pro and I didn't see them. I'll have a look at what you guys are talking about as it sounds exactly like what I'm looking for!

Cheers!

I agree, zswobbie1. I've also got FSX, but Golden Wings is what grabbed me

[No Dice]

You may try using ExBuilder V.2, it removes scenery objects from existing landscape.
May be worth a try...I have had great luck with it.

Find it here:
http://www.thefreeflightsite.com/Design.htm

Dave

[Kodiak]

Ok, thanks No Dice!

Right now I'm playing with a free copy of Instant Scenery 3 and will also take a look at some of the freeware mentioned here to decide how I want to go after this. I've got the file shown by norab above and will definitely be switching out the modern fuel stations for the vintage pumps now, but just deciding on how to do it. Would also be nice to knock out a few modern buildings that GW3 still leaves standing at certain airports so all these tools you guys have recommended will be very helpful