3 texture folders in 1

[ColR1948]

I downloaded an aircraft the other day, it showed up in the sim no problem, I went to edit the texture and then found there were 3 texture folders inside the main texture folder.

 

The entry in the aircraft.cfg looked like this: Texture=BEECH\N1234

When I looked in the texture folder there were 3 other folders: N1234 N3456 N5678

 

It's the first time I've seen this, when I used the AI Aircraft Editor it didn't show the textures but when I used FSPaint that did show the 3 separate textures.

All I could see why they used this method was to save writing 3 separate entries in the aircraft.cfg I later wrote the other 2 entries and used the texture folders from the main folder editing the first one of course, was this done to make the aircraft load quicker because FS has less to read when loading I wonder?

[StringBean]

I have seen this method used a lot with AI.

 

If you had a B737 with several airlines and each airline had several liveries you could use this method to reduce the clutter a bit in the B737's folder.

 

As you found out you need a separate aircraft.cfg entry for each livery regardless of the folder structure.

 

IMO your download was either in error by not giving you three aircraft.cfg entries or the uploader was not aware of the other two folders when it was uploaded.

 

The only advantage to doing things this way is less clutter in the aircraft's folder.

 

I doubt there is any performance gain or hit in doing so.

 

Programs like FSPaint and AIAE use different methods, FSPaint looks for physical texture folders where AIAE reads the aircraft.cfg.

 

peace,

the Bean