New aircraft livery manager - FS Paintshop

[Jimmy RFR 406]

So, I had worked this up awhile back, but after downloading and installing 40+ paints for the superb AN-2, I found myself with motivation to finish it to a point where it might be useful to other people. I've personally found it useful, especially for adding paints to a plane when you already have 40+ paints installed.  It also helps keep things rather tidy, which is, er, a 'fault' of mine.

 

I do plan on uploading it to the library + a few other spots, but I thought I would spot a link here for anyone to try out if they wish.  If / once I get any feedback that this thing actually works for people other than myself, I'll submit it.

 

There are a few small documented bugs that I plan on fixing, and it's only been tested on Win 7 and Vista. Also, it requires the .Net 4.0 framework. It's completely portable, no installer or registry stuff, just unzip it where you wish.

 

40 some wonderful AN-2 paints makes me feel that I needed to contribute something back to the community. If anyone finds it useful, great, if not, oh well. ^_^

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6080706/FS_Paintshop_v1.20.zip

 

(the below screenshots look strange / stretched on my viewing of this post, but hey, they give a general idea perhaps!)

 

 

 

[FloG 148]

Thank you very much for your effort, it sure looks like a very useful utility, Jim!

[Jim Young 2,356]

It works!  My only problem was placing quotes for ui_manufacturer, ui_type, etc., in the boxes and you already had it set up to place the quotes for the line items that required quotes.  So I had double quotes and the aircraft did not show up at first until I opened up the aircraft.cfg and saw I didn't need to enter the quotes and removed them.  Maybe you could place something in the blank boxes stating enter without quotes which would disappear when an entry was made.  I suspect this is a non-issue if you are adding lots and lots of aircraft.  Thanks for your contribution!

 

Best regards,

Jim

[Jimmy RFR 406]

Thanks Florian!

 

 

 

My only problem was placing quotes for ui_manufacturer, ui_type, etc., in the boxes and you already had it set up to place the quotes for the line items that required quotes. So I had double quotes and the aircraft did not show up at first until I opened up the aircraft.cfg and saw I didn't need to enter the quotes and removed them.

 

Thanks for bringing that up Jim!  Yes, the application currently adds quotation marks for the lines that require them.  But of course, because I knew that it automatically adds the quotes, I never thought to test what would happen when a user enters quotes as well.  Should be a simple fix.

[Jimmy RFR 406]

 

 

It works! My only problem was placing quotes for ui_manufacturer, ui_type, etc., in the boxes and you already had it set up to place the quotes for the line items that required quotes. So I had double quotes and the aircraft did not show up at first until I opened up the aircraft.cfg and saw I didn't need to enter the quotes and removed them. Maybe you could place something in the blank boxes stating enter without quotes which would disappear when an entry was made. I suspect this is a non-issue if you are adding lots and lots of aircraft.

 

Jim, I've fixed the issue you had found.  The application now smartly detects whether a user has attempted to put in quotes themselves and does (hopefully) the proper thing, all transparent to the user.  Thanks again for telling me about it.

 

New release:

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6080706/FS_Paintshop_v1.21.zip

 

I also added the capability to handle texture folders that hold sub-folders.  From my research, it's not the recommended way of handling repaints, but I had a few planes that had repaints stored like that, so there we go. A few other things were fixed / tweaked as well.

 

The link in the main post isn't active any longer - I wish I could edit it!

 

If I don't get any feedback of issues, I'll submit it to the library.

 

Then I can try to finish my other FSX program - a custom web browser that can fire up FSX with a mid-air flight loaded at the spot picked on a map - currently works for google maps and skyvector. ^_^

[Jim Young 2,356]

Thanks Jim.  I'm sure a lot of people will find this utility useful. 

 

I already own most of the MSE V2 States already so probably won't need your next endeavor of flying from a spot picked on a Google or Skyvector map.  Sounds interesting though!

 

Best regards,

Jim

[Jimmy RFR 406]

 

 

flying from a spot picked on a Google or Skyvector map.

 

Well, I had been trying to do something similar to starting a flight in MS Flight, where you can just drag your plane to where you want to start from, and the flight loads in mid-air.  I initially had it setup so that you could completely set a flight up, engine paramters, radios, switches, the whole works, but that was far too complex - it works simpler to just use a saved flight, and load it up with new co-ordinates, altitude & heading. Obviously it wouldn't work for certain complex planes, but it does for most simpler GA.

 

My motivation for restarting work on it is the upcoming FTX Global - I figure that occasionally it'd be really nice to pick an interesting spot from a map to take a quick sight-seeing tour around, rather than doing the research to find an airstrip to take off from.

 

I usually fly from cold n dark to cold n' dark, but sometimes you just want to sight see!

[guenseli 1,577]

I want to bump this up!

 

I'm very interested in this at it seems to be easy but could change order of liveries.

(I could do that manually, but I search a long time for such a tool)

 

If anybody could upload it again, this would be very nice!!!!

[DaveWW 3]

Can't seem to get the Dropbox Links to work, just getting an error 404 when clicking the link.  Anyone else having this problem?

[Jimmy RFR 406]

Hi guys - thanks for bumping this up.  Yes, currently the dropbox links to the are down, as I'm currently a few versions past my last public release.  I do have plans in the near future to upload this to the library; I just want to make sure all the bugs are gone first!!

[guenseli 1,577]

Great!

If you need sth. to test, please drop me a note!

[guenseli 1,577]

Any news ... so impatient

[Jimmy RFR 406]

Hmm... when I say the 'near future', sadly I'm talking in weeks and months.  You'll have to be patient for awhile, I'm afraid!

[guenseli 1,577]

oh no, don't say I have to be patient

 

Couldn't you send me the above version meanwhile, please?

Wouldn't nag you about possible bugs

[Dougal 165]

what a pity the old versions are not available;-(