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How to Repaint Aircraft in Flight Simulator X

"Microsoft Flight Simulator X" is the tenth installment in the popular flight sim series for the PC. While the game features 18 different aircrafts, players are unable to readily customize the appearance of planes by repainting them. However, by downloading free content packages that include new texture skins, it's possible to change the paint job of a particular aircraft in the game. All you need to do is copy the textures to the "Microsoft Flight Simulator X" root directory and then add some information to the corresponding "aircraft.cfg" file.

Things You'll Need

Downloaded texture skin
File compression tool

Instructions

- 1
  Download a new texture skin for a specific aircraft. Additional texture skins can be found on websites like Flight Sim World, FilePlanet and FlightSim.com. Most texture skins will be in a zip file and require a file compression tool (WinZip, 7-Zip, WinRAR or other) to open.
- 2
  Create a temporary folder. To create a new folder, right click on an empty space on your desktop, highlight the option "New" and then click "Folder." Name the folder after it has been created.
- 3
  Open the downloaded zip file containing the new texture skin and extract the file contents to the temporary folder you created.
- 4
  Open the temporary folder. It should now contain a texture sub-folder and a text file. The texture folder will be specific to a particular aircraft.
- 5
  Copy the texture folder and paste it in the corresponding root directory of "Microsoft Flight Simulator X." The default root directory is Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\SimObjects\Airplanes\(name of aircraft).
- 6
  Open the text file in the temporary folder and copy the text (omit any instructional information).
- 7
  Open the aircraft folder where you just pasted the texture folder. Scroll down and find the file called "aircraft.cfg." Double click the file to open a text page with program information for the aircraft. The information is divided into sections. The first sections will have headings like "fltsm.0," "fltsm.1," "fltsm.3," etc. Scroll down to the last "fltsm.xx" section, press enter twice to make some space and then paste in the information you copied from the text file in the temporary folder. Replace the "xx" in the heading with the next number that would follow in the sequence.
- 8
  Save the changes you made to the "aircraft.cfg" file and then close all open files and folders.
- 9
  Load "Microsoft Flight Simulator X" and check out the paint job for the aircraft.

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