Hi John,
Right, large mug of coffee at the ready..
?
With all the MS flightsims, from CFS1 to FSX an aircraft (ac) folder contents structure is basically all the same, ie it needs to contain a Model, Panel, Sound and Texture set of files along with an airfile, an aircraft config (aircraft.cfg) file, and in CFS1/2, a DP file.
A standard ac folder will usually only have one texture folder, which contains all (generally speaking) the textures required to 'paint' the ac whilst flying in that sim. Picture 1 shows the file structure of a Lancaster BIII in CFS2, with the original single texture. As there is only one texture, the texture folder is named as just that.
There is a 'control' file, called an aircraft configuration file or aircraft.cfg as it appears, which links the model with the panel, sound and texture files of that ac. Open up this file using MS Notepad, and you will see as in Pic 1a. The first section is what we're interested in ie
[fltsim.0]
title=GB-Avro Lancaster B.III
sim=lancaster
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=
As you can see after model, panel etc there is an = sign and then blank. This tells the sim what folders to use for what purpose. So by leaving blank, this defaults to the only folders of that name will be used. So for texture, whatever is in the folder called 'texture' will be used in the sim for that ac.
There are several ways to change or add extra textures to the same model or ac. The easiest and simplist way is to swap the original texture file for the new one, and there you have a new texture. But if you wish to keep the original and add several more, then a few alterations will have to be done.
Take the new texture set, make a a new folder and place them inside. Name the folder texture, but this time add a '.' (fullstop or period) followed by a title to name it. As with the Lancaster BIII, see Picture 2. I have added texture.Jane, texture.Orchid and texture.Princess etc. If you did nothing else and went and flew this ac, the original texture would show up, but the others would not. This will be have to be done by modifying the aircraft.cfg file. See Pic 2a.
Again open the aircraft.cfg file. Basically you have to duplicate that first entry section (as above). So highlight all that first section, copy and paste to just below the original first section (one line space in between each section), do this as many times as you have new texture/skins.
Leave the original section and go to the first line of the first copied section where it still says [fltsim.0] change this to [fltsim.1]. If you have more than one new texture go to the next copied section [fltsim.0] entry and change that to [fltsim.2] and so on, there is no limit! BUT the [fltsim.XX] entry must be sequential (ie .1, .2, .3) and the very first one must be '0' (zero).
In each section go to the 'texture=' section and after the '=' add 'texture.XX' (XX being the title of that texture. It can be a name or a number). Again do this as many times as there is the number of new textures. See Picture 2 for an example. Make sure the titles of the new texture folders matches exactly with the entries in the cfg file. Then save the modified cfg file.
Restart the sim and go and select the same aircraft with several choices of new textures!!
This multiple option modification can also be applied to sounds, panels and even models....Just make sure you add the correct entries in the aircraft.cfg file, use a '.' before your new title name, AND that the spellings are all the same.
Hope this does the trick, give it a go!
Cheers Shessi
Ha ha ha!, just seen TW's reply, it took me a time to write my reply...well John I'm sure your request is well covered now.
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