Editing Airport Textures

[xmaramena]

I'm a complete newbie with textures in flight simulator. I've been playing the flight simulator games for ten years, I've created my own textures for other games for the last three, but I've never done any editing with FSX.

I think the main thing I want to be able to do is add gate numbers for the main airports I use - Heathrow, Gatwick, Nice, Dubai, LA and Lanzarote. I don't know exactly how airport textures work - are they individually editable for each airport, ie. would I be able to paint on the gate numbers on the taxiways and aprons for each airport, or is there just a universal "airport taxiway" texture would that affect every airport?

Also, I haven't taken a look inside the folder. Do I need extra programs like unpacking or conversion tools, or can I just go in and edit the textures there and then?


Sorry for making you sigh with reluctance and boredom with this post which has probably been asked a million times before, I just want to be able to find my gate! Thanks.

[scruffyduck]

They may not be what you are looking for but there is a library of letters and numbers called VFR_Letters_SS_V2.zip. It should be in the file library here or perhaps on AVSIM. These are library objects and you can use an object placement tool to place them in your scenery. Tetures for airports will depend on what you are really looking at. However for the most part they are going to apply to all the airports - so for example if you edit a taxi surface then it will affect all airports. The same is true of most of the buildings - the textures are going to be common to many buildings. The alternative for the airport surface is to create the entire airport in a tool such as GMax or perhaps FSDS (not sure if you can do it in Google Sketchup but a check with the guys over at FSDeveloper.com would confirm that. In that case you have full control over the way things will look. For something like Heathrow though that would be a major undertaking