Hello guys, I am curious if it's possible to merge Aerosoft A330's cockpit into Thomas Ruth's A330 models. I'm on P3D V4. I know its a bit dated now, but aerosoft only limiting the A330 to the 300 RR model is kinda boring, I'd like to merge Thomas Ruth's A330 models (200, Freighter and other engine variants and so on) to Aerosoft A330's cockpit. Since Thomas Ruth's A330 model is been around a while there's a lot of repaints for it too 🙂 anyways if someone can tell me how to do it it'll be really helpful. Thank you!

On 2/9/2025 at 6:46 PM, silverr240 said:

Hello guys, I am curious if it's possible to merge Aerosoft A330's cockpit into Thomas Ruth's A330 models.

I don't think that is something you'll be able to do as gauges and models tend to be intertwined especially via their use of LVARs and animations.

Where even minor editing of a cockpit can mess up a lot of functions in unexpected ways, now if you had access to the actual 3D source models and the xml/C++ code you might be able to build from there, assuming you're a coder who's familiar with what you're doing but... that said if you have to ask...

Cheers

First would be the basics: editing the Aerosoft aircraft.cfg with the visual elements of the Thomas Ruth one (lights, door positions, contact points and fltsim.x sections pointed to the correct airfile), so that it keeps systems and FDE. Also, you'll need to edit model.cfg. But that is the easiest part.

Then it's making the TR animations work. Apparently, the MCDU2 (the one that controls fuel, payload, ground services and animations) is written in XML, which means that can be easily edited for (if you can find out which variables need to be edited)...but you'll need to create a specific version for the Thomas Ruth birds (so that you don't ruin the stock Aerosoft one).

Fuel, it's a very different issue: the A332 has a central tank, which the Aerosoft A333 has not. Last year I tried simply enabling the central tank for the A333. Despite cheating and increasing wing tank capacities instead (half of central tank added to each wing tank) in aircraft.cfg, there's something in the XML code that doesn't allow me to add the additional fuel using the MCDU2. I never found out what did prevent me from loading enough fuel for a Europe-South America flight. At least I managed to re-enable in-flight defueling (for skipping cruise).

Let's hope the lights work, i.e, the TR lights work when using the controls in the Aerosoft VC. Obviously, don't expect Aerosoft to support you. Anyway, these changes are nothing a backup (or in the worst case, a reinstall) can't fix.

I did it with the freeware Fokker 27 from Benoit Gaurant for FSX. The model is FSX, that's important. But the gauges from Benoit do not work in P3D5. First I put the FSX model into P3D5 in Simobjects. Then add the Justflight Fokker 27 cockpit .mdl, JF_F27_Friendship-300_interior.MDL into the model folder and change this accordingly in model.cfg.

The difficult part then was to find which textures are needed for the cockpit. ModelconverterX can help you with this task. As I have seen now, I only have textures copied for the cockpit but not the engine nacelles, wings etc. That makes no sense anyway, cause the wanted livery is not on these parts, since it comes from the Justflight plane. Having the same livery is not an option I think and then the whole Frankenstein Experiment is not necessary.

Of course also gauges and cockpit sounds need to be copied from one plane to the other. All togehter not an easy task and as said before, a more complex plane like A330 maybe much more difficult to combine. Maybe the other way round, adding the other outside model and paintjob to a copy of the Aerosoft A330, which need to be give a new directory name and then in the aircraft.cfg [flightsim.n] entries have to be removed to avoid double names. Only the paintjobs you want to add to the Tom Airbus outside model may be listed there and you also need to avoid these entries in the probably existing TOM A330 aircraft.cfg. Best is to give it new names adding a "merged" behind. 

I'd only try to do this if you know what you're doing. I can harm your sim in the way, that your A330 planes need to be deleted and reinstalled, if you loose control over your edits. I think it is easier to paint the livery you want for the Aerosoft airbus or search it on the net.

Forgot to say: all the gauges will be of an A330 with RR engines and no central tank, and there's no way around it (unless you make your own gauges).