Aircraft Mod 1- Re-Painting Aircraft By Text Editor

The default aircraft in YSFLIGHT come with bright blue canopies and basic color schemes. If you want to change these colors, there is an easy way to accomplish this using just a text editor. The more complicated method is to used Blender (2.49 is recommended) and possibly a third program such as WINGS 3D (Version 1.4) , but this takes time and effort. For beginners, it may be worthwhile experimenting with colors schemes using the text editor.

Example 1: A4 Skyhawk

To accomplish a repaint by text, first locate the .dnm file in the YSLFIGHT folder on your computer. The folder contains all the default aircraft with their .dnm files (3D object) .dat files (configuration files) and some other files for the aircraft. At the moment we will look at the .dat file only.

Opening the .dat file in a text editor, we come across entries starting with the letter "C" as in this example:

C 98 123 131

This line defines the color of the part described at that point in the file. To change the color of the bright blue canopy, replace the RGB value (blue is 255 in this case) 0, 0, 255, find and replace all instances of this text with C 0, 0, 0, which is black. Save the file and re-start the YSFLIGHT program, and the A4 Skyhawk appears with a black canopy. The same can be done for other parts of the aircraft, in this case, the entire fuselage and wing color was changed to white, 255, 255, 255 but this shows up as a very light grey.

Example 1: Mig 21

The standard Mig-21 comes with a brown and grey camouflage. The .dnm file should then contain entries with RGB values of brown and grey. The C 131, 131, 131 entry denotes grey. It is possible to find the RGB values of colors and vise versa at at ( https://rgbcolorcode.com/color/converter/ ) and at https://www.ginifab.com/feeds/pms/color_picker_from_image.php.

There is another color listed which is C 131 65 65 , which is the brown color seen here. If we want to turn the color to green we use 0, 128, 85, the color of a tropical rain forest. This color value can be found by using the above site. Replace the brown color with green, and the canopy with black: 0, 0, 255 with 0, 0, 0.

The next two items to color are the underside of the aircraft, which is a blue, so we should expect a high value in the final number of the text entry for color, and also the canopy. The nose cone which is a dark blue, could also be colored red for effect.

C 16 255 255 is the setting for the existing blue underside. I prefer light grey such as 230, 220, 255. The nose cone seems to be a dark blue. C 0 0 65 is dark blue, so changing that to 153, 25, 0 red, or green should be a good change.

There is a file named mig21_coarse.dnm , this file has to be modified as well. This file is used for modelling at long distances where the detailing is not really important. Simply change the RGB values as for the main .dnm model. In some cases this file is not very different from the main dnm file, so a copy of the dnm file can be used as the coarse.dnm.

The color scheme does not represent any particular air force livery, and in any case, the markings are missing. Markings can be added using the 3D modelling program by adding the markings as thin, solid 3d objects, however that will be covered in another page.

Other modifications - weapons, performance and so on will be addressed separately - these are done through the modification of the .dat file.

The final version of the Mig 21 with the black canopy, green camouflage replacing the brown camouflage.

Canopy Transparencies

Canopy transparencies can also be added using a text editor only.

The first thing is to locate the canopy object or .srf file. The canopy is painted blue in the original, C 0 0 255 , so we search for this line in the .dnm file that has this value. Under this section, add ZA values that specify the face number and the transparency value. It is difficult with some of the models to find the faces that are make up the canopy, so trial and error has to be used, at present. See the section on creating new aircraft II that has a section on a simple transparency modification.

It is best to create a separate canopy object and make the faces of that object transparent. See other sections for that,