Texture alias?

[Tom Clayton]

OK - I can alias panels, sound, and even models. But has anyone figured out a way to reference textures from another aircraft's folder? That's really the only piece of the puzzle I need to be able to reconfigure a plane with a different loadout without having to do so through the fuel/cargo screen. An aircraft.cfg and *.air file take up very little space, as do folders with cfg's that do nothing but alias to another location. But then I'm still left with well over a meg of texture bitmaps in some cases. If I could find some way to tell the aircraft.cfg to look elsewhere for the textures, I could have an aircraft folder that's less than 100KB!

 

[Z-claudius24]

Hi,

Must be possible with a kind of "INI"
From my foggiest brain I remember (but not enough accurately for put a name on) of a payware aliasing the texture from a common folder .....
Unlukely I checked my install and this plane is not (more) in ...
And I think it's also the same for a freeware If I remember well ...
Maybe someone here have used those and have better brain cells than mine
IMHO

 

[Clarke123]

Hi,

Must be possible with a kind of "INI"
From my foggiest brain I remember (but not enough accurately for put a name on) of a payware aliasing the texture from a common folder .....
Unlukely I checked my install and this plane is not (more) in ...
And I think it's also the same for a freeware If I remember well ...
Maybe someone here have used those and have better brain cells than mine
IMHO

Didn't the Ready for pushback 747 do that?

 

[Z-claudius24]

Hi,

Methink this can be a good start point ... maybe:
Lesson 1: "Object Containers 101"


http://www.flightsimulatornetwork.com/group/fsnfilebutcherssponsoredbyriverrundesigngroup/forum/topics/lesson-1-object-containers-101?page=2&commentId=861558%3AComment%3A117770&x=1#861558Comment117770
Dunno if this will work in FS2004

 

[Z-claudius24]

Hi,

FS2004 (ACOF) - FS2004 Jetliners FS2004 Ready For Pushback Boeing 747-200
[SIZE=-1] [ Download | View ] [/SIZE]
Name: rfp_v2.zip Size: 66,588,385 Date: 08-24-2007 Downloads: 9,093
[SIZE=-1]

FS2004 Ready For Pushback Boeing 747-200 v2; now freeware. Includes the analog panel, tape panel and seventeen aircraft. One of the most accurate and detailed jetliner models ever when it originally came out several years ago. By Ralph Tofflemire, Chris Koegler, Bodo Mueller and Herve Dongmo. (English language manual available for download as RFP_V2M.ZIP)
[/SIZE] [ New Search | Exit Files List ]

Jeez .. nothing to read ... it's a installer .. LOL

 

[OBIO]

I once had a freeware package installed that had two or three models and aliased the panel, sound, and textures from a common folder. I can't for the life of me remember where I got the package, what the plane was, who did it.

I know that textures can be aliased...I just can't remember how to do it. I will do some experimenting and see what I can come up with.

OBIO

 

[OBIO]

HA HA! Found it! The Temco Pinto by David Wooster & Mick Morrissey use aliasing between one folder and another. I KNEW I had a plane that aliased texture folders. This is copied from the Temco Pinto With Pods folder:

texture=..\..\..\Temco Super Pinto tanks\texture.blue

I tested this on another plane and it works. I changed it to:

texture=..\..\..\Piper Super Pacer\texture.N70304 to alias a texture folder in the Piper Super Pacer folder to use on the Piper PA-20 Pacer (both by Brian Gladden and use the same textures).

So, there's the answer...courtesy of David and Mick and their fun little Temco Pinto.

OBIO

 

[Z-claudius24]

Hi,

Thank's OBIO ... good brain cells

 

[OBIO]

Hi,

Thank's OBIO ... good brain cells

Don't thank me...thank Dave and Mick. The only part my brain cells had in this is remembering which plane use texture aliasing. If it were up to my brain cells, we would all be running around our living rooms with airplanes made of Playdoh making airplane sounds with our mouths.

OBIO

 

[Tom Clayton]

Perfect!!! And now that it works, I'll move this to the Tips/Tricks section.

 

[johnh_049]

one of the best tips i've seen in a while.:salute:

 

[Tom Clayton]

In case anyone's wondering, the best practical application for this would be something like David's Lightnings, where you have one model without tanks, and two other models with different size tanks. You can put just one model in each of three aircraft folders, alias the panel and sound as usual, then alias the paints too. Then each aircraft.cfg can be configured to be loaded with the correct fuel for the tank variation. That way, you can add all the paints you want to the "master" aircraft folder, and alias the textures in the other two, allowing you to reduce your disk usage for textures by two thirds.

The "master" would contain just one model, plus the panel, sounds, and all the paints. The others would contain one model each, then alias everything else.

As a test, I moved all four sub-folders out of my default Baron and aliased everything with the above syntax. It turns out that you can't alias the .air file or the kneeboard files, but everything else is fair game. This is all that's in my default Baron's folder:

And this is the test folder that contains the rest of it:

And here's what the top of the aircraft.cfg looks like:

[fltsim.0]
title=Beech Baron 58
sim=Beech_Baron_58
model=..\..\..\test\model
panel=..\..\..\test\panel
sound=..\..\..\test\sound
texture=..\..\..\test\texture
kb_checklists=Beech_Baron_58_check
kb_reference=Beech_Baron_58_ref
atc_id=N058BE
ui_manufacturer=Beechcraft
ui_type="Baron 58"
ui_variation="White with blue and gold"
description=...

I'm now operating the Baron out of a folder that's only 112KB!

 

[modelr]

I'm guessing the way you shorthanded the folder locations, you must use the ENTIRE folder address in the cfg.
As in model=..\..\..\test\model equals
C:\Program Files\Microsoft games\Flight Simulator 9\Aircraft\test\model


Am I right?

 

[OBIO]

Don

Before I remembered the Temco Pinto, I tried to alias the textures using the full written out directory...C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games....yada yada yada....it didn't work. Using the format from the Pinto, the ..\..\..\ yada yada yada, did work.

Tim

 

[Tom Clayton]

Yep (nope?) - it's not shorthand. That's the way it is in the cfg. I'm not entirely certain how it works, but I believe it goes back to the days of DOS code.

 

[graemeb]

Another technique to alias a texture (say TEXTURE.XYZ) from PLANE_A to PLANE_B is as follows:
(This assumes that the TEXTURE.XYZ is in the PLANE_A folder)

- Create a new folder in PLANE_B called TEXTURE.XYZ
- Edit the aircraft.cfg file in PLANE_B folder to incude a reference to TEXTURE.XYZ (ie: texture=XYZ)
- In the new TEXTURE.XYZ folder create a new text file called TEXTURE.CFG
- Edit the TEXTURE.CFG to read as:

[fltsim]
alias=PLANE_A\texture.xyz

 

[Tom Clayton]

That only works in FSX. There are no cfg files in the texture folders of FS9.

 

[Dangerousdave26]

The .. stands for move up one directory.

FS9 always assumes "texture=" means the textures are in the default folder. If you enter a value in texture=value then FS9 looks for the texture.value folder.

Placing the .. into the texture=..\ means move up one level from the texture folder and look there. Of course you have to define what you are looking for so texture= ..\value defines the folder that houses the textures which its name is value.

So if we used the C172 as an example then

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Aircraft\c172\Texture

..\ = c172 folder
..\..\ = aircraft folder
..\..\..\ = FS9 folder
..\..\..\..\ = Microsoft Games folder


So lets say I moved the C172\texture folder to a folder on the C drive named Alias_textures. The path to it would be

..\..\..\..\..\..\Alias_textures\C172\Texture

 

[Tom Clayton]

Good to know how that works - thanks! :ernae:

 

[graemeb]

That only works in FSX. There are no cfg files in the texture folders of FS9.

I beg to differ Tom, it is working on my FS9 where I have several texture folders aliased. You have to manually create the texture.cfg file - it does not exist by default.