Just to clarify all this night light and standard file stuff. Here are the steps to nirvana.1. Take out all your "standard" *.bmp files out of all of your aircraft texture folders and place a representative set in the fsxtexture folder. The "standard" files comprise the "l" light maps and files like props, wing lights, or whatever - anything common across all the texture folders for a particular aircraft.2. Place a texture.cfg file in each of your texture folders (all your repaints) using the following entry:(fltsim)fallback.1=c:fsxtextureNOTE: Of course if you're not using "c" drive place whatever drive letter you are using in this path. Also, remember to use square brackets in your config file.NOTE: If you're wondering about replacing one file with another - size wise - don't. The cfg file is 39bytes and a typical "l" file is 1Mb - go figure.You can use a program like "fileboss" to place multiple copies of the texture.cfg file into your texture folders - all at once. You can download "fileboss" from the net - free for 30days. Actually you'll only need it once so there you are. :-) I have tested this method and it works.fbPS Request "sticky" status for this post as it is relevant to almost everyone who has AI aircraft.

What does all of this actually do?RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

AI aircraft have a standard set of textures. Since most of these aircraft come from FS9, these standard textures are in the *.bmp format. Most of the aircraft have a "t" file and an "l" file. The "t" file is the actual repaint while the "l" file is the light map for night lighting. In addition to these two textures, there are a number of AI aircraft that have additionial files. For example, some developers have separate files for tires, props, pilot figures, and other standard textures.The reason I call them "standard" files is because each texture (repaint) folder has a complete set of these files. So, instead of duplicating all of these files in each aircraft texture folder, there is a way to use just one set for all of the textures in the aircraft folder.You place a set of these standard files in the FSX/texture folder. Then you place a pointer (texture.cfg) file in each of these repaint folders. The texture.cfg file "points" to the standard files for that aircraft (called by the aircraft's model file). The space savings are enormous. For example, standard light map files can be anywhere from 256Kb to 1024Kb. Multiply that by the number of total texture sets (repaints) and you can see how much this technique saves you in disk space. After all, the texture.cfg file is tiny so replacing all those standard files with a config file makes this a very advantageous methodology.Now, you asked what does all this do. For one thing (besides the disk space savings), placing all the various light-map files provides night lighting for all AI aircraft. So, you see interior cabin lights, tail logo lights, and other assorted aircraft lighting. This adds to the emersion functionality of flight sim - especially at night.I hope that answers your question.Frank

Ah, thanks for elaborating. You are speaking of aliasing the lightmap textures. Gotcha.Do you find any performance benefit (i.e. texture loading) by aliasing the textures?RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

I've not done any specific testing do I don't have those figures. However, I would surmise that having a standard set of textures over multiple duplicates would increase the performance since FS would have to input all those duplicates into memory as opposed to just the one set in the texture folder.This is a total WAG so don't take it as gospel. From a management perspective I CAN say some positive. Get rid of all those duplicates and your storage requirements for FSX will be significantly reduced - and that's ALWAYS a good thing. :-)Frank

If we can get updated AI models that don't turn black at a distance, then we'll REALLY have something.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

I haven't seen any testing lately - but some a couple years back involved fleet repaints.The basic scenario was EGLL and 20 BAW A320 aircraft.Test #1 - 1 Texture folder, 2 texture files (_T & _L)Test #2 - 20 Texture folders, 40 texture files (_T & _L) different Reg # on each aircraft repaintText #3 - 20 Texture folders, 40 texture files (_T & _L) identical files in each folder.The test showed #2 a noticable, but not crippling, hit on performance. I never saw exact numbers but one was that each individual texture took up active memory space.Test #3 showed identical to #2.The assumption, and my memory may not be perfect, is that FS treats each file read from the HD as a separate entity.If you tell FS to real 20 'different' A320 lightmaps - it will keep track of where the 20 files go.If you tell FS to read 1 A320 lightmap and reuse it 20 times - less memory, less work, a little better performance.Oh - and something else - Frank has hit on something really big here.Use a folder for aircraft lightmap textures and only aircraft lightmap textures.We dumped them in the common folder in previous versions because that is what worked - and maintenance was horrible.We need to use the capability of FSX to cut down on the maintenance tasks / workload.