Adding a 3rd Party Aircraft, where a Stock One Already Exists

[Wrench 9,851]

Ok, so you've downloaded a 3rd Party (ie: Non-Stock) version of an aircraft that already exists in-game.

What to do to eliminate confusion, and/or picking the wrong one on the 'Select Aircraft' tab? Or, to simply make sure you're adding that new skin to the right aircraft....????

 

Well, all it really takes is a little renaming.

The following works the same in ALL of the 3rd Wire Sims Series; First Eagles, Strike Fighters, Wings Over Vietnam, Wings Over Europe and Wings Over Isreal.

 

In our example below, we're using Wings Over Isreal, and we want to add a bunch of NEW MiG-23 Flogger variants.

Now, the game already comes with 3 variants of the Flogger: MiG-23BN, MiG-23MF and MiG-23MS.

 

Open you WoI's /Aircraft folder, and RENAME the 3 stock Floggers folders just as below:

 

MiG-23BN_3W

MiG-23MF_3W

MiG-23MS_3W

 

In this case, the "3W" stands for "3rdWire", designating the aircraft as a STOCK one.

 

Then, open EACH of the newly renamed aircraft folders, and RENAME the main ini to match the folder name. That is to say;

 

MiG-23BN_3W.ini

MiG-23MF_3W.ini

MiG-23MS_3W.ini

 

THEN, open each of the newly renamed inis and add the '3W' tagline to the "AircarftFullName=" line, as below:

 

AircraftFullName=MiG-23BN Flogger-H (3W)

 

AircraftFullName=MiG-23MF Flogger-B (3W)

 

AircraftFullName=MiG-23MS Flogger-E (3W)

 

You don't have to change anything else, unless you're making them Player Flyable, and that the subject is covered in another post, somewhere above.

 

This way, when you're in-game, you'll see the "3W" callout to indicate that it's a stock aircraft. This will completly remove ANY possibility of confusion with add-on aircraft. One of the good things is, as the stock aircraft do NOT have seperate decals folders, is you don't have to do anything to adjust the decal ini's "FileFormatName=" lines, and all your stock decals will still work on these stock aircraft.

 

This very same fix can be used for add on aircraft, where such aircraft already exist as "stock'. Things like The Mirage Factory's Mirage IIICJ/Shahak, Nesher, EricGen's SMBD, etc. You'd just add the new suffix designator for the 'manufactuer' (TMF, EG, etc) or just do the "3W" fix for the stock birds. It's a '6 of one, half a dozen of another' kind of thing. Just keep your naming conventions consistent, to eliminate confusion

 

This is one of those quicke fix mods that almost everyone knows about, but never seems to mention.

 

Happy Landings!

 

Wrench

kevin stein