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Hi all: I am working on bringing back to life some aircraft and traffic in FS2000, by collecting information about vintage schedules and downloading some old aircraft. My first idea is to make it as real as possible it is in FS2000 for my home airport (TFN) in the seventies. I've got a lot of aircraft that flew there but some of them I NEED to improve their textures. And I've been quite successful with many designs, by simply converting them to BMP and editing them. (By transforming the model to accept BMP with "Tex512" and then changing textures to BMP by "Texture Converter" or "Convert r8" to edit) But for some of them the transformation to a BMP mdl just doesn't work. I always get a blank aircraft, whatever way I rename the textures to BMP. So I wonder if there's a tool apart from Airport Factory 99 (which I can't get), for just editing the AF textures, or being able to transform AF to BMP to edit and then back to AF. Does anyone know something about that that can help me?
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Converting CFS2/FS2002 Aircraft To FSX Tutorial by Erwin Welker Purpose FS2002 and CFS2 whilst old, offer a wealth of amazing aircraft to the flight simulator enthusiast. Unfortunately many of these aircraft do not run 'out of the box' in FSX. What is needed to make them compatible is a conversion process, which hopefully this tutorial will explain. Objective Converting the MDL (3D-model) using a hex-editor. Requirements You will need a freeware hex-editor so as to complete the conversion process. For this tutorial I will be using the editor "FRHED". You can download FRHED here: http://www.heise.de/download/frhed-1115453.html Knowledge Even though you might see the word HEX mentioned many times in this tutorial, knowledge of HEX editing is not necessary. What would make things easier for you though is a basic knowledge of how to edit your numerous aircraft.cfg files (aircraft, panel, etc.). The required time for conversion (with practice following the same routine) is usually around a minute. Let's Start First download and install a hex-editor. I recommend installing the editor to a location where it is easily accessible. I also suggest copying and pasting your MDL folder (this is the model folder of your aircraft) directly into the same folder as the HEX editor. This makes it very easy for you to find and to open the MDL with the hex-editor. Step 1 For our first 'try' let's go and download the CFS2 Libelle: liblcfs2.zip. Step 2 Run the Hex-editor (frhed.exe) and open the file named "Libelle.mdl". On the left you will now see a lot of strange and intimidating hex numbers. Don't worry! On the right you will see the translation from hex numbers to text. The old CFS2/FS2002 formats start with "MZ..." Also visible is the scrolling bar which (at this time) is at the 'top' position. Step 3 Now we need to interpret the required information. Remember, for this tutorial I am using the FRHED HEX editor, but using another hex-editor will be quite similar, except that it may differ a bit in the menu or options. Click EDIT in the menu and then Find... Now search for: 'RIFF' This picture above provides you with all the information you need. No activity is required at the moment. Step 4 Scroll the vertical bar (mentioned in Step 2) right up to the top, which in this case, is the upper right corner. Click with the left mouse button to the first symbol of "MZ". Now scroll down by keeping your finger on the left mouse button pressed. Using FRHED you will notice that the marked area changes from white to yellow. Continue slowly for some hundred lines until you reach the word 'RIFF'. Now stop! Do not mark any symbol after the word RIFF (that includes the word 'RIFF')! Step 5 Now you can delete the whole area marked in yellow by hitting the 'Delete' key of your keyboard. Step 6 Here is where we replace text (marked in blue). Using the feature to find and replace words in the HEX editor, search for the word CFS2 or FS80 (FS98). Now that we have located the words 'CFS2 or FS80' our next step is to replace them with the word 'FS90'. We are now finished with the HEX editor (you can relax). Save the edited MDL and if requested to overwrite, say 'YES' for overwriting and keep the extension f.i. Libelle.mdl. Now copy and paste the MDL back into the model folder of your aircraft. Final Steps Open the aircraft.cfg (found in the 'Libelle' folder) with a text editor or with WordPad. The top of the aircraft.cfg will look like this: [fltsim.0] title= Messerschmitt Libelle sim= libelle model= panel= sound= texture= kb_checklists= CheckList_Libelle As you can see, there are no entries for: manufacturer, ui_typ and ui_variation. Therefore we need to either copy and paste those three lines from another aircraft (to edit) or create the entries ourself. [fltsim.0] title= Messerschmitt Libelle sim= libelle model= panel= sound= texture= kb_checklists= CheckList_Libelle ui_manufacturer= Messerschmitt ui_type=Libelle ui_variation=CFS2 warbird converted to FSX Important: If you still have FS2004 in use, load the converted aircraft first into that simulator (starting on the ground). The aircraft.cfg will be extended automatically with some parameters. You can then paste that aircraft into FSX. Starting the converted aircraft in FSX first can cause certain problems with the air files. In this case I recommend exchanging both the air file and aircraft.cfg with an appropriate one by keeping: Header Eyepoint Contact points Lights Now let's take a look at the panel.cfg found in the Libelle. As we can see below only the gauges marked with "!" are working in FSX: gauge00=fw190a!Airspeed, 0,42,40,40 compatible gauge01=fw190a!Altimeter, 79,41,40,40 compatible gauge02=fw190a!Attitude, 39,41,40 compatible gauge03=fw190a!Gear, 66,122,48,26 compatible gauge04=fw190a!Vertical_Speed, 79,81,40,40 compatible gauge05=fw190a!Heading_Indicator, 39,81,40 compatible gauge06=fw190a!Clock, 0,81,40,40 compatible gauge07=Me262turbine_temperature1, 79,1,40,40 not compatible gauge08=ME262N11, 1,1,40,40 not compatible gauge09=Me262oil_pressure1, 40,1,40,40 not compatible gauge10=bf109e!Fuel, 1,122,40 compatible gauge11=bf109e!Fuel_Warning, 43,123,20,36 compatible In this case ALL the incompatible gauges will have to be replaced. If that is too much work or too difficult, an easier way is to replace the whole panel with an appropriate one from another FSX aircraft. Sound All that is left to do now is to check the 'Sound' folder. Does the aircraft use its own sound set or is it aliased to another aircraft? After looking we can see that the Libelle is configured for aliased sound: alias=Mig-15 Fagot\sound Because it is highly unlikely that we have that particular MiG-15 installed on our system, let us instead choose an aircraft which is installed by default in FSX, in this case the Learjet 45. Simply change Mig-15 Fagot with Lear45 and you are good to go. Another option is to paste a complete sound folder into the Libelle. Well...that's it. Was it so bad? At the beginning I thought that working with a hex-editor was just for computer professionals but after a while (as you can see from this tutorial) it's possible to do the conversion in a minute! My advice? Don't hesitate - try it! I wish you every success! Credit goes to Erik Hertzberger who kindly provided me this knowledge. Erwin Welker -
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How To...Convert CFS2 Aircraft To FS2002 By Daryl Reseigh This is a tutorial on how to convert Combat Flight Simulator 2 aircraft into FS2002. These models work perfectly and look and fly really well. The following aircraft have been converted and tested: F6F3 Hellcat F4F4 Wildcat P-38F Lightning A6M2 Zero A6M5 Zero N1K2J George G4 Betty All these aircraft are beautifully modeled and have fully moving parts, panels and textures. Step 1 Locate your CFS2 using Windows Explorer (by default this will be at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\CFS2) and open the aircraft folder. There you will find a list of aircraft that are currently installed into CFS2. We are only copying the default CFS2 aircraft at the moment. From here you should see a folder called A6M2_ZERO. Right click it and select copy. Go back to the Microsoft games folder and double click Fs2002 and open the aircraft folder. Right click in an empty space there and select paste. The A6M2_ZERO folder will then appear. Step 2 We now need to rename this folder. To do this: right click the A6M2_ZERO folder and select rename. As you can see the folder is in capitals, we need to change them into lower case lettering. Retype A6M2_ZERO but in lower case (a6m2_zero) and press return. Once you have done this double click on the a6m2_zero to open its contents. Here you should see MODEL, PANEL, SOUND and TEXTURE folders in capital letters. We need to change the lettering once again from capitals to lower case lettering. So right click on MODEL and select rename and retype MODEL in lower case lettering ("model"). Repeat this for each folder (model, panel, sound and texture). Step 3 Once you have done this the aircraft is ready to fly in FS2002. They appear under unspecified in the FS2002 aircraft selection menu. All you need to do is repeat Steps 1 and 2 for each aircraft but only the ones listed above. Downloaded CFS2 aircraft do not display properly in FS2002! I also have the add-ons Combat Aces and Korean Combat Pilot and I have found these aircraft also work in FS2002 perfectly by following steps shown above. These aircraft also work if you have the replacement .air files to make them flyable: B-25 P-39 Cobra Dauntless Oscar Val B5 Kate Tested System: Duron 900 MHz 512 mb SDRAM GeForce 2 Graphics Card These replacement files are found on FlightSim.Com under CFS2 aircraft. This will only work with aircraft files, not scenery. Happy Flying! Daryl Reseigh SonicHair2002@aol.com -
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