• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

MSFS20 Getting Started with Dev Mode for Aircraft Mod

P72endragon

P72endragon

Messages
6
Country
unitedkingdom
I've made some tweaks to an add-on aircraft by modifying the .cfg files in the aircraft's folder. These changes work fine and do what I need. However, what I would like to do is extract my changes into their own "aircraft improvement" mod, so I can leave the original files untouched.

I'm having a hard time getting started with Dev Mode to achieve this. I've seen lots of guides for creating scenery, one or two for creating new aircraft, but not much for modding an existing aircraft. Given how many "aircraft improvement" mods there seem to be, I can't help but feel I'm missing something obvious somewhere!

Please can someone help point me in the right direction?
 
It is very simple

The whole msfs file system supports file overriding
Basically,
Packages with the same files name and directory structure will override the same files loaded before them in the virtual file system ,according to the fixed order decided by Asobo : fs-base / Official / Community, in alphabetical order

A easy example

I want to override the default extra300 model behaviours

Original file is in

Official/One store/Asobo_E330/SimObjects/Airplanes/Asobo_E330_Livery_MicrosoftWindows11/model.W11/E330.xml

The mod file structure will be:

Community/mamu330/SimObjects/Airplanes/Asobo_E330_Livery_MicrosoftWindows11/model.W11/E330.xml


Observe the bold part, that is loaded into the virtual file system. Because Community is loaded after Official, the mod will override that file

You just need a layout and manifest.json
 
Ah, so are you saying I don't actually need to use Dev Mode to do this, I can do it just by re-creating the right folder structure manually? How do I generate the layout and manifest please (well, I suppose the manifest.json should be straight forward to create manually, but the layout.json looks a bit trickier)?
 
Sorry if I intrude on the discussion but knowing how to create a mod of an existing aircraft is a problem that I had too and luckily I found this discussion.

Mamu, I followed what you wrote about the directory structure, so far so good except that in the sim I only find the mod and not the original plane (it is an enhancement of a pay plane)
am I doing something wrong or is it some sort of developer protection?

Thanks
 
@Jazz82 , I would like to hopefully intrude on the discussion as well; continuing along the same line I hope to add to the helpful content here...

@P72endragon or @mamu is there a way to set up a project in dev mode to accomplish this, or is it only done by hand-coding (or using the tool referenced above on github) the file(s) necessary? For example, I'd like to just make some mods to the flight_model.cfg file to a default aircraft, but I can't figure out how to set up a dev mode project to accomplish this so that I'm able to use the dev tools to check my mod?

Thank you!
 
Jazz82 said:
am I doing something wrong or is it some sort of developer protection?
Click to expand...
Some planes are protected, I know that DeimoS Inc and some Asobo planes are encrypted and you can tell if they are by finding .fsarchive extension files inside the SimObjects folder of the package.
 
=rk= said:
Some planes are protected, I know that DeimoS Inc and some Asobo planes are encrypted and you can tell if they are by finding .fsarchive extension files inside the SimObjects folder of the package.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your answer.
Yes, I noticed this and indeed, Asobo's Husky is encrypted.
In addition to the files you mention, the aircraft.cfg file is not present in the aircraft folder.

I'm trying to create a mod to use the Blackbox Simulations Cessna L-19 as a towplane.
Initially I had created my own livery and consequently I wanted to use it as a towplane by editing the ai.cfg, aircraft.cfg files and making some changes to the flight_model.cfg file.
In the aircraft.cfg file I had inserted the string
[VARIATION]
base_container = "..\blackbox-aircraft-cessna-birddog-basic"
However, I had named the folder not keeping the original structure.
So far so good, in game I saw the three versions of the L19, my livery and selecting a glider I also found my mod among the towplanes but the problem was that the plane didn't do what I had set in the files.
Today, seeing this discussion, I named the folder following the original structure only that in game I find that the mod completely cancels the original plane but this time behaving as set in the modified flight model.
I've been going crazy for days about this thing and there is no information of any kind
 
P72endragon said:
I've made some tweaks to an add-on aircraft by modifying the .cfg files in the aircraft's folder. These changes work fine and do what I need. However, what I would like to do is extract my changes into their own "aircraft improvement" mod, so I can leave the original files untouched.

I'm having a hard time getting started with Dev Mode to achieve this. I've seen lots of guides for creating scenery, one or two for creating new aircraft, but not much for modding an existing aircraft. Given how many "aircraft improvement" mods there seem to be, I can't help but feel I'm missing something obvious somewhere!

Please can someone help point me in the right direction?
Click to expand...
I'm having the same issue.

I'm flight-testing changes to the flight dynamics of an existing 3rd party aircraft (with dev permission), so I'm only interested in altering parts of the flight_model.cfg. I see three options:

1) I can make the changes in the file and restart the sim each time (super inefficient)

2) I can create my own aircraft project using the new project wizard, open that in the aircraft editor, but make changes directly to the flight_model.cfg of the test aircraft where it sits in the community folder and apply them through a resynch action in the aircraft editor. This is the current method I'm using. Much more efficient, but I'm not sure that then opens up the debug/testing tools: as I assume the editor is only seeing the basic template aircraft project I've created.

3) Bring the aircraft into the editor as a project. This would be my preferred option, but I can see no way of doing this - the aircraft is a published package so there is no .xml to import the aircraft packages.

I'm guessing there might be IP reasons why this is not easy to do and that for option 3 I'm going to have to ask the dev for a copy of the aircraft as a project, not as a published package?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top