Aircraft

An aircraft in the AeroflySimulators is a collection of files. They are loaded by the simulator if the user selects the aircraft file from the aircraft selection menu. The aerofly uses the following file extensions for aircrafts: TGC or TGB for the 3D Model, TTX for the textures, TMC for the description texts, etc. TMD for the the physics, graphics and sound definition, .wav or TSB for the sound and TPS for a repaint definition. Generally speaking: an aircraft consists of a 3D model, a modification, a repaint and optionally a collection of Sound-Files.

Aircraft Names (File Names)

Valid aircraft names are all in small letters [a-z] and numbers [0-9]! No spaces ” “, no underscores _, no dashes -, no points ., no umlauts

Folder structure

DirectoryPath:
UserFolder\aircraft\aircraftname

repaint_name/ // folder that stores a repaint (optional)
aircraftname.tgc                  // 3D model
aircraftname.tmc                  // description texts, etc...
aircraftname.tmd                  // physics definition
preview.ttx                       // preview image
aircraftname_part1_color.ttx      // color texture
aircraftname_part1_normal.ttx     // normal map of texture
aircraftname_part1_reflection.ttx // reflection or gloss map

Optional for repaints

Liveries or Repaints are located inside the aircraft’s folder in a sub directory named after the repaint.

Here is an example for a DirectoryPath:
UserFolder\aircraft\aircraftname\repaint_name

Note: The first letter of the repaint_name has to be capital for the aerofly 5, but mustn’t be for the Aerofly FS 2.

preview.ttx                      // replacement preview image
repaintname.tps                   // repaint definition - the name has to be exactly the same as the name of the folder it is in.
aircraftname_part1_color.ttx      // replacement color texture
aircraftname_part1_normal.ttx     // replacement normal map of texture
aircraftname_part1_reflection.ttx // replacement reflection or gloss map

The preview.ttx is the PreviewImage of the Repaint. The .tps file specifies the name of the repaint in the selection menu. The remaining .ttx files replace textures (with the identical name) for the 3D model one folder higher.

Optional for sound

The sound of an aircraft can either be located in the InstallationFolder\sound or
inside a subfolder (e.g. UserFolder\aircraft\aircraftname\sound) which makes the file structure a lot simpler.
All required files of an aircraft are called in the tmd file.

Aircraft development

A good guide for creating own aircraft for the newer AeroflySimulators can be found in the topic AircraftDevelopment.

Copying an aircraft

  1. Open the InstallationFolder and copy the folder of a simple aircraft such as the Cessna 172 or the PT 40.
  2. Paste the folder into the UserFolder\aircraft directory. If this sub-folder aircraft does not exist yet, create it.
  3. Rename the folder to helloworld and enter it.
  4. Rename the *.tmd, *.tmc, *.tgc (also *_easy.tmd and *_easy.tmc) to helloworld.tmd respectively.
  5. Read about the TMC file
  6. Open the helloworld.tmc file with the text editor and modify the DisplayName attribute from Cessna 172 or PT-40 to Hello World.
  7. Also modify the DescriptionTextEN to fit the new name of the aircraft.
  8. Remove the lines with and DescritionText language other than English (EN).
  9. Save the helloworld.tmc
  10. Open the aerofly and find the Hello World aircraft and load it

If each step was completed successfully the aircraft should load without any problem. If the aircraft does not show on the list then something with the file structure is wrong and the aerofly does not find the new aircraft. If the aerofly crashes when loading the new aircraft then the .tmc file was not edited correctly. Copy the .tmd file from the original aircraft again and try not to delete any text, only rename the attributes between the last two opening and closing brackets [ and ] of a line.