Combat Flight Simulator 3

Repainting the Pilot textures

CFS3 has many different types of image files used for various aspects of the program. Often these are rather strange to the average user.

The images used to display the visual of the Pilot when you are making your selection when starting a campaign are an example of this.

They need to be 81x118 and in Bmp 16 bit 444 format to display correctly. This poses a problem if you are trying to edit them using DXTBmp as this program is designed for in-game textures and will automatically stretch the image to a valid size. This means your 81x118 image will come out as 128x128 and not work.

So how can you do it?

All my "normal" graphics programs support any size of image and also the required NT 16 bit 444 format.

Simply......

create your 81x118 image in any paint program.

Make sure that only the bits you want to be transparent are painted in pure black (RGB 0,0,0) and save as a normal Bmp. If you have any black areas in the visible image then make sure they are not pure black but very dark grey (RGB 16,16,16)

Open the image with my Show program

Select Save and select the "WindowsNT 16 bit bitmap (444)" format and save over the desired pilot image in the UIRES\Pilot folder.

Alternatively after creating your normal Bmp file use my ConvIm program to convert it to a WindowsNT 16 bit bitmap (444)