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urgeflaske

Limit on entries in aircraft.cfg?

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Hi!

 

Im currently setting up flightplans and some of the textures requires many entries in the aircraft folders.

Will i lose performance by having like 100+ entries in the same aircraft.cfg?

 

By looking at some old flightplans and textures, i notice that some basemodels that was the same, had two different folder with different names. But i cant seem to get that to work when making new ones.

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There is a limit of 18 liveries.


Ed Wilson

Mindstar Aviation
My Playland - I69

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There is a limit of 18 liveries.

 

Thanks.

 

I used to have a bunch of flightplans + aircrafts. But in the old setup, some of the base packages that was the same (for example FAIB 738W) was named differently, but it was still the same base model. So Norwegian had its own FAIB 738W folder, and other companies also used the same basemodel, but the folder had a different name. I tried the old Norwegian pack i had, and renamed the base folder, and put it in the P3D folder with the same flightplan, but the Norwegian AI's doesnt show up in P3D (probably because i renamed the folder).

 

Since there its only 18 entries allowed, i have to make a few different folders for Norwegian as there is like 80 textures for it. How should i rename it so AIFP will recognize it?

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I think Ed may be talking about flyable aircraft rather than AI.

 

My FAIB 737-800 Winglets folder has over 600 entries in the cfg with no problems.

 

Cheers

Jack


Jack Johnston

 

Banner_FS2Crew_NGX_Driver.jpg

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Good lord... seriously?

 

I can't imagine waiting for that to load...  :shok:

 

But yes... I was talking non-AI... didn't realize this was AI.


Ed Wilson

Mindstar Aviation
My Playland - I69

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I think Ed may be talking about flyable aircraft rather than AI.

 

My FAIB 737-800 Winglets folder has over 600 entries in the cfg with no problems.

 

Cheers

Jack

 

Oh, ok. Just thought it was weird that in the old setup, Norwegian had its own folder because there was so many textures.

 

So you dont have any problems with performance what so ever?

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As Ed says, it does take a while to load - I have about 800 flightplans (God knows how many liveries!) from AIG and their contributors, plus of course all Henrik Nielsen's shipping, but once it's loaded I don't notice many performance problems, except for EGLL which is a bit of a slideshow with UK2000 and FTX England installed. Everywhere else is acceptable.

 

Jack


Jack Johnston

 

Banner_FS2Crew_NGX_Driver.jpg

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My understanding of how the textures work is they are only loaded when needed.  So if you have 100 textures, FSX/P3D won't load them all initially.  It will load them only when the particular livery needs to be displayed.  Where you might notice it would be at an airport that is a hub for an airline that has lots of different liveries since then you might be loading 20 different textures instead of just one.

 

Don't forget to validate your aircraft.cfg files with AI Aicraft Editor.  If you do any manual editing of these files, 99.9% chance that you've introduced errors, which will prevent liveries from showing.  This program will scan your aircraft.cfg files and report all the errors.

 

http://www.owlsnest.eu/tools.php

 

There are many other things you can do to improve performance.

 

- Reduce complexity of AI aircraft MDL files by adjusting/removing LODs with ModelConverterX.  This is especially a problem if you have 4K monitor.  AI aircraft LODs were designed back in the days when we all had 1280x1024 monitors and become ineffective at 4K. In other words, at 4K, you are pretty much always seeing the most detailed LOD, which is very bad for performance. Note that some AI aircraft model authors forbid you from doing this so check the readme before you modify MDL files.

 

- Make sure all AI textures are no larger than 1024x1024 and all have mip maps.  Most can be converted to DXT1, which will make them significantly smaller file size.

 

- Use a one common night texture for every aircraft model (save in main texture folder), instead of one night texture for every livery.  Note, depending on model, you may lose tail lights when doing this, but you reduce texture load by 1/2.

 

- Use single engine variant instead of separate model for each engine variant.  Obviously only do this if you don't care if correct engine variant is shown.  Also, you might see minor texture artifacts on some of the engines.

 

 

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My understanding of how the textures work is they are only loaded when needed.  So if you have 100 textures, FSX/P3D won't load them all initially.  It will load them only when the particular livery needs to be displayed.  Where you might notice it would be at an airport that is a hub for an airline that has lots of different liveries since then you might be loading 20 different textures instead of just one.

 

Don't forget to validate your aircraft.cfg files with AI Aicraft Editor.  If you do any manual editing of these files, 99.9% chance that you've introduced errors, which will prevent liveries from showing.  This program will scan your aircraft.cfg files and report all the errors.

 

http://www.owlsnest.eu/tools.php

 

There are many other things you can do to improve performance.

 

- Reduce complexity of AI aircraft MDL files by adjusting/removing LODs with ModelConverterX.  This is especially a problem if you have 4K monitor.  AI aircraft LODs were designed back in the days when we all had 1280x1024 monitors and become ineffective at 4K. In other words, at 4K, you are pretty much always seeing the most detailed LOD, which is very bad for performance. Note that some AI aircraft model authors forbid you from doing this so check the readme before you modify MDL files.

 

- Make sure all AI textures are no larger than 1024x1024 and all have mip maps.  Most can be converted to DXT1, which will make them significantly smaller file size.

 

- Use a one common night texture for every aircraft model (save in main texture folder), instead of one night texture for every livery.  Note, depending on model, you may lose tail lights when doing this, but you reduce texture load by 1/2.

 

- Use single engine variant instead of separate model for each engine variant.  Obviously only do this if you don't care if correct engine variant is shown.  Also, you might see minor texture artifacts on some of the engines.

 

 

Thank you for the tips.

 

When downloading a livery, i use the same basemodel that its made for, and also linked to in the readme-file. So its like plug and play. Add the textures to folder of the basemodel and then copy/paste whatevers in the liveryfolder aircraft.cfg to the basemodels aircraft.cfg.

 

I've seen some of the textures comes with mipmap textures. Do you recommend to use them instead of the original files that are provided?

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I've seen some of the textures comes with mipmap textures. Do you recommend to use them instead of the original files that are provided?

 

Yes, absolutely.  AI textures should be mip-mapped.  You can use imagetool.exe to add mip maps to an existing texture and convert it from 32-bit to DXT format. Imagetool is included with the FSX and P3D SDK, which you should be able to find online.

 

Even with plug and play, it's very easy to make mistakes.  For example, if you forget to change [fltsim.X] correctly, that aircraft and all others that follow it won't show up. AI Aircraft Editor will find that error and many others with the Validate Aircraft tool.  It's free and definitely must-have program for people that manually edit aircraft.cfg files.  All errors except atc_airlines undefined must be fixed.

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Yes, absolutely.  AI textures should be mip-mapped.  You can use imagetool.exe to add mip maps to an existing texture and convert it from 32-bit to DXT format. Imagetool is included with the FSX and P3D SDK, which you should be able to find online.

 

Even with plug and play, it's very easy to make mistakes.  For example, if you forget to change [fltsim.X] correctly, that aircraft and all others that follow it won't show up. AI Aircraft Editor will find that error and many others with the Validate Aircraft tool.  It's free and definitely must-have program for people that manually edit aircraft.cfg files.  All errors except atc_airlines undefined must be fixed.

 

Thank you!

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