Pilot Clutter

[FastCargo 412]

Who here has noticed that their aircraft folder is a little cluttered with all your aircraft...but all your pilot files are just 'out there'. Kind of like the old Bunyap's Weapons folder back in the day.

 

Well, guess what? The same principles that worked in newer versions of the Weapons Packs that are out there also will work with pilot models.

 

Lets look at an example with my cockpit photo mod.

 

Originally, you had put the following files directly into the Objects/Aircraft folder:

 

Photo.ini

Photo.bmp

Photo.LOD

Photo.TGA

 

This is not true (maybe it hasn't been true for a while...I'm not sure) anymore.

 

Instead, create a new folder called 'Photo' in the Objects/Aircraft directory and move those files into it. Guess what...it still works normally.

 

The critical thing is that the name of the folder AND the name of the ini within the folder MUST match exactly...otherwise the sim will not 'see' the LOD.

 

Now, some of you are thinking...hey, some of these models don't have ini files...if I need to make one, what should it say?

 

Well, taking a cue from the stock TW models, here is what is in a typical one:

 

[LOD001]

Filename=PilotN1.LOD

Distance=40

 

[LOD002]

Filename=PilotN1_lod002.lod

Distance=200

 

[shadow]

CastShadow=TRUE

ShadowCastDist=10000

MaxVisibleDistance=50

 

Pretty easy...all you really need is the name of the LOD file the ini needs to reference. If some models only have one LOD file, just change it to look like this:

 

[LOD001]

Filename=PilotN1.lod

Distance=200

 

[shadow]

CastShadow=TRUE

ShadowCastDist=10000

MaxVisibleDistance=50

 

Easy as pie. Now you can neaten up your Aircraft folder. Of course, it may not be as easy to tell what is a pilot directory vs an aircraft directory. A solution would be to have all your Pilot models start with 'Pilot' as a name (like PilotF35, PilotSu27, etc). All you have to do is ensure the ini and directory name match...the LOD can be a totally different name.

 

Now, the more clever among you may ask 'Hey, does this mean with simple ini edits, I could have different skins for the same model?' In other words, say you have directories Pilot1 and Pilot2, where everything is the same except the name of the ini files (the content of the bmp skins would be different...duh).

 

Sorry to say...no. The sim isn't that flexible. You'll still need to do a hex edit of the LOD to reference a different .bmp file.

 

Give it a shot!

 

FC

[Wrench 9,662]

So, this works post-08 patches only? Or post 2006 patch??

 

(runs off the redo WW2 games, as they have the least amount of junk...)

 

Wrench

kevin stein

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

SF 2006: Photo thing not working. I guess its one of those 2008 deals.

 

Anyways, for the 2008 crowd, I suggest "z"-ing the folders...

 

z B58Pilot

z WW2Pilot

z Canberraseat

 

...so they are all listed after the last aircraft folder, well for alphabet sorted folders.