fsx-ms Having trouble adding repaints to UT2

[BoeingFan88 2]

Hello all,

 

I'm sure there are some ut2 users on here so here is my problem. I'm wanting to add some repaints to UT2, and even though I believe to be following all the directions, these said repaints are not showing up. For example, I download opensky's 737-800w base model and paste into my ut2 aircraft folder. I also download the specific 737-800 model that the repaint needs and paste it into this base model folder. Then I download the repaint that I want and paste the texture file into this same base model folder. I copy the texture cfg and paste it into the aircraft cfg folder and do everything that the readme file says. Open up ut2 and try to add the repaint, but the only thing I see is the base model livery but no specific repaints. So I'm seeing the model but not the repaint for that model. I'm scratching my head on this one because it should work. Any ideas what the problem may be?

[AnkH 2,261]

I guess its related to the fact that UT2 does not use the "title=Boeing 737 abcdefgh" entry to separate repaints but the "ui_variation=XYZ" line. Happened to me several times, as the "ui_variation" line is usually identical for downloaded planes such as the Opensky 737. Also make sure that you do not have any "panel" folder inside an aircraft folder you want to use for AI traffic, as this can also lead to errors.

 

Last a little advice: never use planes that are meant to be full blown addon planes as AI traffic. The need of performance on an airport displaying several Opensky 737 will kill even a NASA computer. Why don't you replace the UT2 737 series with those from FAIB? Here the link: http://fsxaibureau.com/manufacturing/ You will find almost every current repaint for this 737 model, which is FSX native, AI model and superior to the one used in UT2. Most of the repaints you can find here on avsim, on flightsim or on one of those two pages:

 

http://www.flyingcarpet75.com

http://www.juergenbaumbusch.de/

 

And, if you already started with replacing 737 series, you can continue with the lovely FAIB A32x series...

[JSkorna 137]

You have to use the PowerPack to add stuff.

[AnkH 2,261]

You have to use the PowerPack to add stuff.

 

No, to add repaints, PowerPack is not needed at all. PowerPack is only needed, if you want to add further flightplans, modify or add airports etc. Adding repaints can be done via the classic UT2 interface menue.

[Midnight Music 252]

I don't use UT2 anymore but there were a couple of excellent guides on how to do that. One is at the UK2000 website and the other I found in the Flight1 forum for UT2. I could attach those documents here, but I don't think we're allowed.

[JSkorna 137]

No, to add repaints, PowerPack is not needed at all. PowerPack is only needed, if you want to add further flightplans, modify or add airports etc. Adding repaints can be done via the classic UT2 interface menue.

But then you must re-name the plane exactly as it was named in UT2 in the first place. That is the hard part for many users.

[yellowjack 28]

Sorry Jim but I must disagree.

 

Here's a tip for the OP.

 

Starting from the point where you have downloaded an Ai repaint and aircraft and placed the Ai Aircraft folder in the appropriate folder in your FSX installation.

 

Open your AI aircraft folder and change the aircraft manufacturers name in the aircraft configuration file to something you will recognise such as "My AI".

 

Ok, now open the UT2 app.  and click on the Aircraft repaints selection

 

Select <traffic> options then the appropriate equipment type and carrier, (assuming your doing a commercial aircraft repaint) after selecting the "UT Weekly official DB" from the top right hand side of the UT2 Screen.

 

Now turn your attention to the "Select Aircraft manufacturer" field below and find your Manufacturer (in this case using my example it would be "My AI". You should now have all your repaints together in a list (because you have given them all the same manufacturers name) so select the aircraft that you are going to use for this UT2 aircraft type and carrier and then select add to assignments. You will see its name added to the aircraft list near the bottom of the page

 

 Now you aircraft is added you can fill in the Max usage field. "unlimited" is often the go for commercial aircraft.

 

 You can now remove the original repaint by selecting the original aircraft and then selecting remove by clicking on the remove field.

 

By giving all your aircraft the same manufacturers name which relates to your repaints you can check that they are all seen by UT2 and will make your repaint selections much easier to find..

 

All that remains now is to check your new repaint out. The problem here is finding an example you can actually see to ensure that all is well and that's not so easy. You could always put a temporary panel configuration in the aircraft file and try selecting it from the FSX initial screen to check that it appears OK. Don't forget to remove the panel configuration file after you have checked though.

 

 Be warned that if your AI aircraft is NBG you may find that FSX may stop mysteriously when you in the middle of a flight because behind the scenes UT2 cannot load or display the aircraft.

 

I hope that this helps in your endeavours.

[JSkorna 137]

Sounds complicated. PowerPack is 2 clicks and UT2 is 2 more clicks.

[yellowjack 28]

I guess it depends on what one is used to. The big problem I have found is proving that the new Ai Repaints work and on more than one occasion I have been caught out by an AI aircraft that won't work properly which is only found out by a process of trail and error, nice if you are over an hour into a flight and flight simulator just stops working for no apparent reason. Its a great reason to take a backup before trying out new repaints and AI

aircraft.

 

Like a lot of new methods it only appears complicated to get started after that it is all downhill. It would certainly be advantageous to have some sort of test facility to check out AI aircraft for UT2. But at least with UT2 AI replacements are allowed.  

[BoeingFan88 2]

Well, still can't figure this out. Don't know why it has to be so difficult because it should be simple, but its not :/

 

 

I'm just trying to get some Virgin Australia repaints in the sim. Went to FAIB which I had tried before with no luck, and again downloaded the model. I'm going to explain exactly what I did because maybe I'm missing a minor step. This time I don't even see the model in the ut2 repaints.

 

I downloaded a compressed file called FAIB7378V13. Inside this were a couple of folders. I went to the fsx folder and inside that was a folder titled FAIB_737_800_W. Since I knew I was going to get a repaint for winglets, I copied this into my ut2 folder.  I then downloaded the repaint. There was a readme inside this download that talked about how inside the texture folder you will find textures for FSX-DXT5 and FS9-DXT3. Now it doesn't seem so cut and dry when I open this texture folder because what I see in the texture.VOZ folder is a folder titled fs9 and then two texture files by themselves. I'm guessing these two texture files are the ones for FSX? Kind of confusing. Anyways I copied those two texture files and put them into a new folder that I titled texture.VOZ. I then pasted this into the FAIB_737_800_W folder. I then went to change the .cfg file that came with this model and followed just what the readme in the repaint download told me to do. I copied the fltsim.x entry that came with the repaint readme and pasted it into the .cfg folder. The .cfg folder had no previous entries, just a note at the very top that said paste flightsim entries here. So that is what I did, and I renamed the entry fltsim.0. When I went to the ut2 repaint area and selected the 737-800w and Virgin Australia, I didn't even see the FAIB model in the dropdown options. Last night, when I did this I remember seeing the model but not the repaint in the variants dropdown box. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

 

Disclaimer: I'm not super well-versed in repaints, changing .cfg entries, and manipulating folders around. I would say I'm an average joe at this. I've looked at some how to stuff but I feel that some things are briefly mentioned that for a person like me may need a bit more explaining and emphasis. Hopefully from the steps I described above someone can figure out what might be the issue, because I know there are a lot of well-versed people on here

 

Thanks again for helping this newbie out!

[BoeingFan88 2]

For further clarification these are what the first couple of lines look like in the .cfg folder:

 

 

[fltsim.0]
title=AI B738W VOZ
sim=FAIB_7378
model=winglets
texture=VOZ
atc_airline=VIRGIN
atc_parking_codes=VOZ
atc_parking_types=GATE
ui_manufacturer=Boeing
ui_type=B737-800W
ui_variation=Virgin Australia
description=Standard

 

[General]
atc_type=BOEING
atc_model=B738
editable=0
performance=
Category = airplane

 

The lines under the fltsim.0 heading is what I copied and pasted from the texture readme.

[AnkH 2,261]

Ok, if you check your aicraft.cfg, this is what you need to have inside your UT2 aircraft folder:

 

1. you need to have the FAIB aircraft folder inside your UT2 aircraft folder.

 

2. inside your FAIB aircraft folder, you need to have the correct .air file, according to your aircraft.cfg, this must be "FAIB_7378.air".

 

3. inside your FAIB aircraft folder, you need a folder called "model.winglets", inside this "model.winglets" folder, you need to have a corresponding .mdl file, called FAIB7378W.mdl and a file called model.cfg.

 

4. inside your FAIB aircraft folder, you need to have a folder called "texture.VOZ", inside which your textures must be placed.

 

I quickly downloaded the FAIB basepack to show you in a screenshot, how it should look like:

 

 

In fact, the name of the Folder inside your UT2 aircraft folder does not matter. It can be as shown above, "FAIB_737-800_W", or whatever you like.

 

As soon as your folder structure, your files and your assignments in the aircraft.cfg is correct, you fire up UT2 (never change aircraft folders and stuff while UT2 is running, it needs the startup to correctly recognize new aircraft!), this is how it looks like:

 

 

As soon as you click on "Traffic options" and then on "aircraft repaints", you will see this submenue:

 

 

Here you now can assign whatever plane you want to whatever UT2 schedule entry you have. For a Boeing, you first select UT2Weekly_official as database, unless you use another database (own schedule for example). Then, you can decide, if you only want to see "default repaints", "no repaints" or "any repaints". To make things easier, select "ANY repaint". Now, you can select on the left panel in the "UT2 Aircraft selection" the plane you want to be assigned. If you are ready to assign, you can now use the right panel "FSX aircraft selection" to assign your own aircraft. The pulldown menue "Select Aircraft Manufacturer" reads the "ui_manufacturer" line in your aircraft.cfg's, therefore you have to browse to "Boeing" (according to the aircraft.cfg you provided above). In the "Select Aircraft Type", the "ui_type" line is shown, in your case you should have the "B737-800W" entry there and finally, in the "Select Variation" pulldown, you will find the "ui_variation" line, in your case it should have an entry with "Virgin Australia". As soon as you selected your aircraft, you click on "Add to Assignments" and it should show up on the list below ("Currently Assigned Aircraft"). Depending on your needs, you then can either remove the already existing entry just above the newly added, or you can leave it as it is. Just be aware: if the first entry in the list is a "DEFAULT" repaint, your plane will not show up unless you have the "show default repaints" option active. If you do not want to show "default" repaints in FSX, you have to delete this entry in your assignment list.

 

That's basically all.

 

ONE NOTE: it would be helpful, if you post a screenshot of your folder structure you have, if above explanation does not work for you...

 

 

Sounds complicated. PowerPack is 2 clicks and UT2 is 2 more clicks.

 

Please show us, how you add and remove repaints in Powerpack... I really wonder how this should be possible...

[JSkorna 137]

 

 

Please show us, how you add and remove repaints in Powerpack...

 

It's not installed any longer as I am using MT6.

[AnkH 2,261]

It's not installed any longer as I am using MT6.

 

Sorry, but then why you spread wrong information? It is not even mentioned in the official feature list of UT2 Power Pack: http://ut2.flight1.net/index.php/downloads/ut2-power-pack.html

 

Anyway, lets see if my explanation helps BoeingFan88 to solve his issue.

[JSkorna 137]

Because I did it for years.