So I have installed the livery megapack for various aircrafts, however, I also wanted to install a separate norwegian livery that wasnt part of the megapack. How do I actually do this? The megapack liveries are showing up, but the norwegian livery isnt. 

Good question. Please let me expand on your question a little.

I just came across the A320 mod project in the other thread and I understood that it puts just a few files / folders in the Community folder which are then apparently automatically used by the sim instead of the original files.

So I wonder how we can do that ourselves. For example I edited the original flight_model.cfg files to have a less twitchy control (I put that in the tips and tricks section). It would be much more elegant of course to just put an edited flight_model.cfg file in the Community folder and leave the original untouched. 

But how does that work? What folder structure do we have to use? How does the sim recognize the files in the Community folder?

Could anyone with more knowledge explain that? Or point to some tutorial?

 

I can recall that you used to need to edit the cfg and add the new texture path to it....have not yet gotten around to playing with the files so i cant say which ones or where right now.

5 minutes ago, hangar said:

I can recall that you used to need to edit the cfg and add the new texture path to it....have not yet gotten around to playing with the files so i cant say which ones or where right now.

Sounds like old school fsx 🙂

10 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

Good question. Please let me expand on your question a little.

I just came across the A320 mod project in the other thread and I understood that it puts just a few files / folders in the Community folder which are then apparently automatically used by the sim instead of the original files.

So I wonder how we can do that ourselves. For example I edited the original flight_model.cfg files to have a less twitchy control (I put that in the tips and tricks section). It would be much more elegant of course to just put an edited flight_model.cfg file in the Community folder and leave the original untouched. 

But how does that work? What folder structure do we have to use? How does the sim recognize the files in the Community folder?

Could anyone with more knowledge explain that? Or point to some tutorial?

 

Good question also! I haven't looked at the A320 mods in detail yet, but can you reverse engineer that folder and file structure? I will look at later also.

In the megapack liveries there is a .json file that seems awfully complicated. Here is an example:

    {
      "path": "SimObjects/Airplanes/Asobo_A320_NEO/TEXTURE.DELTA/A320NEO_AIRFRAME_WINGS_ALBD.PNG.DDS.json",
      "size": 102,
      "date": 132398508751470306
    },

Im not sure how Im supposed to add a livery manually... 

8 minutes ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

Sounds like old school fsx 🙂

yea heh, something's telling me that the more time I spend with this, the less surprised I will be about that 🙂

6 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

Good question also! I haven't looked at the A320 mods in detail yet, but can you reverse engineer that folder and file structure? I will look at later also.

I tried to replicate the structure of the A320 mod for the C152 but without success. I also tried to copy the complete C152 folder into the Community folder and make my changes there, but that also didn't work - the C152 was completely gone from the sim (could be restored easily by deleting the copy of the folder).

So there must be something more to it.

Just now, Andreas Stangenes said:

In the megapack liveries there is a .json file that seems awfully complicated. Here is an example:

 

Yea, the add on sceneries I've installed have a JSON file as well, which I think is being used to join multiple simobjects folders for the same aircraft so the sim interprets them as one. Because of a bug, to use Flightbeam KDEN you have to remove the JSON files from the asobo handcrafted KDEN in the Official folder.

However, it would be worth testing the old fashioned way, because the default liveries are installed through the P3D/FSX method in the aircraft.cfg file and a TEXTURE. folder. All found under the aircraft in the Official folder. There may be more than one way to add a livery, especially if just adding one...

For reference...

 

4 minutes ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

In the megapack liveries there is a .json file that seems awfully complicated. Here is an example:

    {
      "path": "SimObjects/Airplanes/Asobo_A320_NEO/TEXTURE.DELTA/A320NEO_AIRFRAME_WINGS_ALBD.PNG.DDS.json",
      "size": 102,
      "date": 132398508751470306
    },

Im not sure how Im supposed to add a livery manually... 

Did you try to add the Norwegian files in this location?

\Packages\Community\liveries-a320\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_A320_NEO\TEXTURE.NORWEGIAN

Can I add subfolders in my community folder, or do all the things I put there need to be in the community root folder? Ie, Id like to make category folders like /airplanes, /liveries, /utility etc, but wonder if the megapack  will stop working? Or will MSFS read all the subfolders automatically and it doesnt matter which level under the community folder things are placed? 

To answer my own question: No, you cannot make subfolders. Whatever you are trying to install must go into the root folder, at least if it is going to work out of the box. The megapack liveries need to be taken out of the megapack folder and the airplane folders need to go into the root of the community folder for the liveries to show up in sim. 

10 minutes ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

To answer my own question: No, you cannot make subfolders. Whatever you are trying to install must go into the root folder, at least if it is going to work out of the box. The megapack liveries need to be taken out of the megapack folder and the airplane folders need to go into the root of the community folder for the liveries to show up in sim. 

Yes, I also found that. I'm afraid that folder will get quite confusing quickly. But it seems you can at least rename the folders without doing any harm. So you can for example let the names begin with "airplane-", "livery-", "utility-" etc. to have some structure.

It's not too difficult to do, but there are a few more steps you need to take to add a livery.

1) If you look in your community folder, you will see where to put the folder for your livery...so if you installed the mega pack you'll see that it's community\liveries-a320\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_A320_NEOCommunity\liveries_a320\ and then in there you'll see lots of "TEXTURE.[airline]" folders.  Copy your TEXTURE.Norwegian (or whatever it is called) folder of your Norwegian livery to this same folder.

2) Go to the liveries_a320 folder and find the layout.json file.  Open that up in a text editor.   You'll see all the entries that look like this:

    {
      "path": "SimObjects/Airplanes/Asobo_A320_NEO/TEXTURE.DELTA/A320NEO_AIRFRAME_WINGS_ALBD.PNG.DDS.json",
      "size": 102,
      "date": 132398508751470306
    },

    These entries reference where the simulator will look for each texture file used by each addon livery.   Copy a section like above and paste it after the last entry of the file, and change the path from "TEXTURE.DELTA" (for example) to TEXTURE.[whatever your Norwegian livery folder name is].  Do this for each of the files in the Norwegian texture folder.  Use the rest of the JSON file as a reference to make sure you're entering it in correctly.  The last entry of the file should not have a comma after the close bracket "}".  Make sure you put all your entries before the close bracket "]" at the end of the file.  Make sure you include references to the texture.cfg and thumbnail files in your Norwegian texture folder.

3) Go to the aircraft.cfg file in your community folder for the A320, and add a new entry at the bottom of the file:

[FLTSIM.x] (change x to the next available number)
title = "Airbus A320 Neo Norwegian" ; Variation name (You must change the title or it will not load and may make all the other liveries disappear)
model = "" ; model folder
panel = "" ; panel folder
sound = "" ; sound folder
texture = "JETBLUE" ; texture folder (Your Norwegian folder)
kb_checklists = "Boeing747-400_check" ; Procedures/Checklist sibling file name
kb_reference = "Boeing747-400_ref" ; Reference information sibling file name
description = "TT:AIRCRAFT.DESCRIPTION" ; Variation description.
wip_indicator = 0 ; know if the variation is good to go or still WIP : -1=Disabled, 0=Rough, 1=1st Pass, 2=Finished
ui_manufacturer = "TT:AIRCRAFT.UI_MANUFACTURER" ; e.g. Boeing, Cessna
ui_type = "JetBlue" ; e.g. 747-400, 172
ui_variation = "JetBlue" ; e.g. World Air, IFR Panel (Change to whatever you want it be listed as in the livery selection window)
ui_typerole = "Commercial Airliner" ; e.g. Single Engine Prop, Twin Engine Prop, Rotorcraft, etc
ui_createdby = "Asobo Studio" ; e.g. Asobo Studio, Microsoft, FSAddonCompany, etc
ui_thumbnailfile = "" ; app relative path to ThumbNail image file
ui_certified_ceiling = 39800 ; service ceiling / max certified operating altitude (ft)
ui_max_range = 3500 ; max distance the aircraft can fly between take-off and landing in (NM)
ui_autonomy = 7 ; max duration the aircraft can fly between take-off and landing in (Hrs)
ui_fuel_burn_rate = 5300 ; average fuel consumption per hour (lbs/hr) - reminder: fuel density is ~6.7lbs per US gallon
atc_id = "N324JB" ; tail number (You can change this to anything you want)
atc_id_enable = 0 ; enable tail number
atc_airline = "JBU" ; airline name
atc_flight_number = "320N" ; flight number (You can change this to anything you want)
atc_heavy = 1 ; heavy?
atc_parking_types = "GATE,RAMP,CARGO" ; "ANY" / "RAMP" / "CARGO" / "MIL_CARGO" / "MIL_COMBAT" / "GATE" / "DOCK"
atc_parking_codes = "" ; Comma separated and may be as small as one character each
atc_id_color = "" ; color for the tail number : i.e. "#ffff00ff"
atc_id_font = "" ; font for the tail number
isAirTraffic = 0 ; Is the plane usable for air traffic
isUserSelectable = 1 ; Is the plane selectable by the use

4) Open the sim and see your livery.  

I hope this is easy to follow.  I'm tired today so my technical writing skills aren't as sharp at the moment.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Edited August 24, 20205 yr by Troyair One

On 8/24/2020 at 9:13 PM, RALF9636 said:

So I wonder how we can do that ourselves. For example I edited the original flight_model.cfg files to have a less twitchy control (I put that in the tips and tricks section). It would be much more elegant of course to just put an edited flight_model.cfg file in the Community folder and leave the original untouched. 

But how does that work? What folder structure do we have to use? How does the sim recognize the files in the Community folder?

I want to do exactly the same. There must be some kind of tool / converter to generate the layout.json and manifest.json files to inject the package from the community folder into the sim (on top of the core files - replacing them at runtime).

If I only knew how...