Aerofly FS Aircraft SDK

In the Aerofly FS 4 Aircraft SDK we provide the DR400 aircraft as well as the “config.tmc” file. The “aircraft” folder is what we call the “intermediate folder” for all aircraft.

Inside the main intermediate “aircraft” folder there are individual folders for each aircraft (e.g. “dr400” or “q400”) and inside each of these folders there are option folders for repaints or additional optional parts.

Contents:

• config.tmc file which configures the Aerofly FS 4 Aircraft Converter
• Folders for each aircraft containing raw textures, raw model files and raw sound files, etc.

Starting the conversion:

• Right click one of the aircraft folders in the intermediate folder
• Select Aerofly FS 4 Aircraft Converter
• The converter window opens
• Press Convert button to convert the aircraft
• When the converter shows finished close the converter window
• Go into the aircraft intermediate folder and check the report.txt file for error messages
• Go to the user documents directory (or path defined in the config.tmc file) and check if your aircraft folders is visible there
• Start Aerofly FS 4 to see if the aircraft or repaint is now available

Inside the aircraft’s intermediate folder (the dr400 folder shown here) there are all the raw files that the Aerofly FS 4 Aircraft Converter needs to create a new aircraft for Aerofly FS 4.

The name of an aircraft folder must consist of all lower case English characters, with underscores, spaces are not allowed.

The file types seen here are:

• model.tmc file that defines which repaints the Converter should convert and which texture is to be converted at which resolution
• BMP, TIF, PNG raw texture files
• TMD, TMC aircraft dynamics and description
• TGI intermediate geometry file (exported from Blender, 3Ds Max, AutoCAD or Cinema 4D)
• WAV sound files
• option.tmc file defining the name of the default repaint
• preview.tif aircraft preview with transparency automatically generated by the Aircraft Converter
• report.txt automatically generated by the Aircraft Converter, contains all error messages during conversion

Please note that temporary files or source files such as photoshop PSD files, etc. should not be located inside this folder. You can move them into a subfolder with an underscore in front, then the converter will ignore the folder e.g. “_psd”

Aircraft options can be repaints, additional aircraft parts or replacements of existing parts or a combination of them. For example, in the A320 there are some repaints that also have sharklets and others that have regular wing-tip fences. On the EC-135 some repaints have the high skids, some have the low skid option.

The names of these subfolders must be all English lower case characters with underscores allowed, but with no spaces in the name.

Option folders are located inside the aircraft’s intermediate folder and contain an option.tmc file. The option.tmc file described below defines if the option is a default part, a replacement an addon or just a repaint of the aircraft.

They can contain the same files as the aircraft intermediate folder itself, including new TGI files that load a new 3D model with new textures. This makes it possible to add external parts to an aircraft without the need for those parts to be included in the main TGI file of the aircraft.

For repaints all textures inside the option folder replace textures with the exact same file name one folder higher, in the aircraft’s intermediate folder. When the name of the option folder is added in the model.tmc file in the Repaints list (separated by spaces) then the aircraft converter converts the textures and automatically generates a preview image as well. Option subfolders cannot be converted individually, instead convert the aircraft intermediate folder.

The config.tmc file is located in the same level as the individual aircraft folders. Inside this text file you can edit the source and target directories for the Aerofly FS 4 Aircraft Converter.

• UserFolder - The output directory, the default %AEROFLY_FS_4_USER_FOLDER% redirects to your Windows user documents “Aerofly FS 4” folder and all converted aircraft and repaints end up there, automatically installed for Aerofly FS 4
• DesktopFolder - This is the Aerofly FS 4 installation folder which contains all default aircraft and scenery, for the Steam version this is per default: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Aerofly FS 4 Flight Simulator\

Caution: Do not set the output directory (UserFolder) path to the Steam directory. This could potentially make Aerofly FS 4 unusable. Keep all your user created content out of the Steam folders because Steam can also just delete all of your user created files within the SteamLibrary folder without warning.

In the model.tmc file is a text file which only exists inside the aircraft’s individual intermediate folders. It is not copied to the final output directory by the converter. The designer defines which repaints shall be converted and which textures are converted at what quality in this file.

• BumpMapScaling increases or decreases the bump mapping intensity. Default 1.0 equals 100%. 0.5 or 50% would reduce the bumps by half.
• Repaints is a list of aircraft option folders (repaints only) which the converter will visit during the conversion process.
• FileOptions contains a list of texture quality groups. For example there could be one group of textures which all should be converted at 4096 x 4096 pixels and a second group with 2048 x 2048 pixels.
• Files is a list of file names (without file extension or path), for example: “ext01_fuselage_color ext01_fuselage_normal ext01_fuselage_specular” all separated by spaces.
• MaxTextureSize defines at what quality the textures in the “Files” list should be converted to.

Caution - Do not just add all textures into a 4096 px group, this would dramatically increase the VRAM requirement of the aircraft and leaves less room for scenery and could cause out of memory issues on weaker systems. In the converter the texture memory size should indicate below 200 Mb before you exit the converter window.

Inside each aircraft option or repaint folder there has to exist an option.tmc file otherwise the option/repaint is not converted by the Aerofly FS 4 Aircraft Converter and not loaded by Aerofly FS 4.

Inside this text file there only needs to be the “Description” and “Type” property. Other parameters are optional.

• Description defines the name of the repaint/option as visible in the aircraft menu
• Type defines what type of option the folder is. Use “repaint” for repaints.
• Requirements (optional) - A list of options, separated by spaces that this option requires. For example, a repaint may only allow the winglets, then the repaint option.tmc file should contain “winglets” in the Requirements property
• Tags (optional) are a list of tags separated by spaces. Mutually exclusive options can be filtered out by their common tags. So if for example if there are multiple configurations of external parts that you want to add of which only one should be active at all times, then each option which is affected by this should have the same tag. This could be “gear” or “external_parts” for example.

Available option types:

• repaint - livery, paint-scheme, repaint
• addon - additional parts that are added onto the aircraft like a refueling boom, external loads, a new instrument mounted in the cockpit (e.g. EFB or tablet)
• replacement - replaces parts of the existing aircraft with other parts, e.g. larger tundra wheels, different propeller, engine options, new wing-tip option (e.g. optional winglets)
• hidden - this option should not be made visible in any menu that displays all available options, for example when the winglets only work with some repaints and not with others the winglet option would be set to “hidden”
• default - this option is always loaded unless another option replaces the default, default options are also hidden and cannot be deselected, only replaced
• base - special tag for aircraft with a base variant shared between several aircraft. Contents of a base folder are always loaded and the option is hidden to the user.

Download the repaint kit for the aircraft and move the downloaded folder into your intermediate aircraft SDK folder, parallel to the dr400 folder from the SDK. Please note that Aerofly FS 2 repaint kits can be used, you only need to rename the repaint.tmr files to option.tmc files and update its contents.

• Right click the folder of the aircraft that contains the repaint kit folder inside of it
• Select the Aerofly FS 4 Aircraft Converter from the context menu
• Click Convert and let it run
• When finished exit the converter
• Start the simulator
• Check if the repaint kit blank livery is now available in the simulator and load it

If the preview image is blank then the Converter “config.tmc” file is not configured correctly and the “DesktopFolder” needs to be changed. Make sure that it does not end in “aircraft”.

If you do not see the option at all change the “config.tmc” UserFolder to the correct path e.g. “C:\Users\jh\Documents\Aerofly FS 4" (replace jh with your own windows user name). If your user name contains special characters it may not work, then use a folder on your drive that does not contain special characters and copy the results over from there to the user Aerofly FS 4 folder manually.

• Copy the blank repaint kit folder and rename it to your desired repaint name, using only lower case English characters and underscores, no spaces. For example: “air_france”, “red_blue”, “d1234” or “n123za”
• Edit the option.tmc file and change the Description property. Set the description name to a short English text. You can use proper capitalization, special characters etc. in this description field which is shown to the user in the aircraft selection menu. For example: “Air France Special”, “Red/Blue Stripes”, “D-1234” or “N123ZA”
• Edit the model.tmc file inside the aircraft’s intermediate folder and add your repaint folder name into the “Repaints” list, separated by a space after the “blank” repaint, e.g. “blank red_blue d1234”
• Convert the aircraft once more just like before and check if your repaint with the new description text shows up in the aircraft selection menu.

Using your preferred graphics program you can draw over the textures in your repaint’s folder.

When saving the files make sure that they are either *.png, *.tif or *.bmp files which override the files in your own repaint folder.

• BMP files should have 24 bits with 8 bits for each RGB channel.
• PNG and TIF files can have RGB and Alpha.

Go to the intermediate folder and convert the aircraft folder with your repaint inside of it. Let the converter run through. Then reload the aircraft in Aerofly FS e.g. by restarting the simulator or by selecting another aircraft temporarily. You can then check your updated textures on the aircraft.

Repeat step 3 an 4 until the repaint is done.

To refresh the preview image you need to go into your intermediate repaint folder and delete the preview TIF image and convert again. The converter then takes a little longer but the repaint image is rendered automatically for you.

If the preview is blank then check that the DesktopFolder in the config.tmc file is set correctly.

If the aircraft in the preview image is at a strange attitude then you need to change the ContactSpheres property inside your aircraft’s TMC file, delete the preview and try again.