No image in selection menu ?

[GBJim]

I recently installed Virtavia's F-4 Phantom II Pack 2 for FS2004, in my FSX Steam powered machine. The aircraft flies great, but I have no F-4 image in my selection menu, just the planes title with a big question mark. I have tried inserting a F-4 jpeg image into the texture folder to no avail. The texture folder contains all bmp images, so I even tried a bmp F-4 image. Nothing works.

 

Does anyone have any idea on how I might install a F-4 image in my selection menu ? It's a FS 2004 program that I am trying to use in FSX Steam ? Any fix ?

 

Thank you.

 

Jim

[f16jockey_2]

I have tried inserting a F-4 jpeg image into the texture folder to no avail.

Very good start. Now just rename it to thumbnail.jpg.

 

Wim

[tiger1962]

Very good start. Now just rename it to thumbnail.jpg.

 

Wim

 

And the thumbnail.jpg image size must be no larger than 256x128 pixels.

[mrzippy]

And the thumbnail.jpg image size must be no larger than 256x128 pixels.

 

Technically correct, but I have used .JPEG images that were bigger and they actually worked!

[kalizzi]

I recently installed Virtavia's F-4 Phantom II Pack 2 for FS2004, in my FSX Steam powered machine. The aircraft flies great, but I have no F-4 image in my selection menu, just the planes title with a big question mark. I have tried inserting a F-4 jpeg image into the texture folder to no avail. The texture folder contains all bmp images, so I even tried a bmp F-4 image. Nothing works.

 

Does anyone have any idea on how I might install a F-4 image in my selection menu ? It's a FS 2004 program that I am trying to use in FSX Steam ? Any fix ?

 

Thank you.

 

Jim

 

Hi Jim,

 

You need a thumbnail image for each of the textures/repaints of the specific model you have in FSX. This thumbnail is used to represent the repaint you have in FSX aircraft selection list. The FS2004 aircraft (and port overs to FSX from FS9, naturally) do not have a thumbnail in them, because FS2004 is different. You need to create one yourself, which is very straight forward.

 

 

1. Click on title with a big question mark so that the aircraft shows on the FSX preview window. You will see it rotating.

 

 

2. Time a screenshot to the position of the aircraft you want to put as a thumbnail, as it rotates. I usually do that by pressing control + print screen.

 

 

3. Open Windows Paint, then press control + V to paste the screenshot onto Paint main screen.

 

 

4. Use the rectangular selection tool to select a rectangle around the captured aircraft screenshot, trying as much as possible to make the aspect ratio of your selection 2:1, like 400x200 for example. Paint shows the size of your crop selection on the bottom left of the screen, on the status bar. Once selected, press crop, it will retain only your selection and discard the rest of the screenshot.

 

 

5. Now you have the cropped aircraft shot alone in your rectangle, select "resize" and use pixels for units, then make it 256x128 pixels. Press OK.

 

 

6. Now go to the menu and select "save as" then select JPEG picture and name it as "thumbnail" without the quotation marks.

 

 

 

 

7. Now using your windows explorer, copy and paste this resulting file, named thumbnail.jpg into the particular texture folder of the aircraft displaying a large question mark. When you restart FSX you will get your recently created thumbnail displayed in lieu of the question mark.

 

 

A good way to start and gain experience is to make a backup of your F-4 folder in full and play with the other one. That's it.

 

Best wishes.

 

Khalid

[GBJim]

GOT IT DONE ! Thanks guys.

 

Jim