Livery over MP

The livery selection dialog of the Sikorsky S76C.

On this page we describe how you make use of a script to get a livery selection dialog for a plane in FlightGear. To get new liveries into FlightGear CVS, you need to have them availabe with this script.

The examples are based on the Robin DR400.

Files

There are a few files we need to make (or edit), namely:

• dr400-set.xml
• Models/dr400.xml
• Nasal/liveries.nas

We also have to make a new directory to store our liveries in. Let's make it Aircraft/DR400/Models/Liveries.

Models/Liveries

For every livery we need to make a file. Let's say we got a Rescue livery, we than need to make a file called Rescue.xml into our Models/Liveries directory.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<PropertyList>
 <sim>
  <model>
   <livery>
    <name type="string">Default</name>
    <texture>texture.rgb</texture>
   </livery>
  </model>
 </sim>
</PropertyList>

dr400.xml

The first part is related to the nasal script. ("Aircraft/DR400/Models/Liveries"); points FlightGear to the directory where we store our liveries. This is a different directory for every plane, but there should be only one folder for one plane, containing all the liveries for that plane.

<nasal>
 <load>
  var livery_update = aircraft.livery_update.new("Aircraft/DR400/Models/Liveries");
 </load>

 <unload>
  livery_update.stop();
 </unload>
</nasal>

The second part is very important and probably the hardest of all. We need to set which parts of the model should change when you select a new livery. To find the object-names, you could make use of software like Blender or AC3D. The <texture>S76livery.rgb</texture> part points FlightGear to the livery that should be shown on startup.

Warning: be sure you don't have a slash (/) in front of sim/model/livery in the <property-base> tag! Otherwise, all planes will get the same livery!

<animation>
 <type>material</type>
  <object-name>LHgeardoor</object-name>
  <object-name>RHgeardoor</object-name>
  <object-name>S76C</object-name>
  <object-name>RF.door</object-name>
  <object-name>LF.door</object-name>
  <object-name>Rr.Door</object-name>
  <object-name>Lr.Door</object-name>
  <object-name>RHbaggage</object-name>
  <object-name>LHbaggage</object-name>
  <object-name>RHfrtgeardoor</object-name>
  <object-name>LHfrtgeardoor</object-name>
  <property-base>sim/model/livery</property-base>
  <texture-prop>texture</texture-prop>
  <texture>texture.rgb</texture>
</animation>

liveries.nas

The only thing you might change in the nasal file is the directory of the liveries.

aircraft.livery.init("Aircraft/DR400/Models/Liveries");

s76c-set.xml

<model>
 <path>Aircraft/DR400/models/dr400.xml</path>
 <livery>
  <file type="string">default</file>
 </livery>
</model>

To make a nice button in the menubar we need to add the following code, just above the </sim> tag.

<menubar>
 <default>
  <menu n="100">
   <label>Robin DR 400</label>
   <enabled type="bool">true</enabled>
   <item>
    <label>Select Livery</label>
    <binding>
     <command>nasal</command>
     <script>aircraft.livery.dialog.toggle()</script>
    </binding>
   </item>
  </menu>
 </default>
</menubar>

Testing

To ensure that your livery setup works correctly over MP, start two instances of FlightGear locally, one with

fgfs --multiplay=out,10,localhost,5702 --multiplay=in,10,localhost,5701

and one with

fgfs --multiplay=out,10,localhost,5701 --multiplay=in,10,localhost,5702