Flying Carpet's Flight Sim repaints...
Following up on my Hainan Group update, here comes Tianjin Airlines. China's largest regional carrier is a rather interesting subject as far as repaints are concerned, as they not only have quite a few livery variations currently flying (some in new colours, some still in former Grand China Express markings, and some hybrids), but also feature a few colourful 'logojets'.
What have my friends to do with this? Well, first of all, when painting the 'Yujiapu' logojet, I was faced with a challenge: There is a looong slogan in Chinese on the upper fuselage which was next to impossible for me to reproduce clearly on my repaint...So I contacted one of my friends who can read Chinese and he wrote that text down for me in a format I could use in my repaint.
Then, when I was almost through with that series, Maik Voigt contacted me and offered to use his own paintkit for the Embraer 190. I ported all the textures to his pk, but it was worth the effort as it makes for an even crisper and sharper looking model!
And of course, there is the brand new set of flightplans by Oliver Richter at Alpha India Group's flightplanning department that will take these birds to your virtual skies!
All 8 repaints are now available for download, check them here!
Donate!
Each repaint means long hours of research and hard work to make it look as close as possible to the real world original.
Although it is all available here for free, I will appreciate any contribution to keep me going maintaining this website and bringing you more flightsimming goodies!
You can use Paypal from wherever you are to send me any amount you feel like giving -hint: the more the merrier! ;-)
About my repaints
These textures are intended for use as AI traffic in Microsoft's Flight Simulator versions 9 and 10.
They have been thoroughly researched and painted based on actual pictures of the real aircraft, so that each individual aircraft is an exact replica of the real thing at the time of painting, down to the precise windows configuration and the stencils colours and locations.
To view them in your simulator, you need first to download and install the base aircraft models/packages available separately . Most of these models are available from the usual avsim and/or flightsim libraries, but I have provided a link to these base packages on this site for your easy reference. Check the links section.
You will also need adequate flightplans to take these birds into your virtual skies. Running a search on avsim and flightsim libraries will get you up to date flightplans for most of the world's airlines
About bitmap formats
Most of my repaints are provided in three textures formats: 32bits, dxt3 and dxt3 with mipmaps.
AI traffic can draw heavily on your computer resources and significantly reduce your sim's framerate. Using the right set of textures can improve your framerate and ensure smooth and
lifelike movements.
Basically, 32bits texture are larger and therefore having more pixels, will have sharper details and will look better in your sim, particularly at close range. Downside is they take up more HD
space and use more resources.
Mipped textures are supposed to be what fs is really looking for, and will ensure the best framerate and movement smoothness. However, if your graphic processor is an older or a lower end one,
with less than 1GB dedicated memory, mipped textures will look awfully blurred.
To keep things simple, if you run your sim on a new, powerful, high end computer, go for the 32bits or mipped textures, or use the 32bits only for intricate liveries where the quality of finer
details will make a difference.
On the other hand, if you are using an older less powerful machine, or if you are not sure or don't know what all this means, go for the non-mipped dxt3 format.
Write a comment
Ren Yihe (Wednesday, 29 February 2012 15:57)
They are great! By the way,that 3 Chinese words on the Tianjin Airlines B-3152 neams "harmony" in English.^_^
Dieter (Thursday, 01 March 2012)
Great job, Philippe, thanks for those. And also tnx to Maik for the paintkit - one can see that an enhanced paintkit makes the difference - and to Oliver for the flightplans.
@Ren: Your paints are fine too, but are looking to be painted by eye comparison, I suppose (cheatlines and sig positions are wrong e.g.).
Ren Yihe (Monday, 05 March 2012 17:34)
@Dieter:They did be painted by eye comparison,but they are as same as the real one,I think......I'm in China and I can get many pictures of it.^_^ In fact ,upper cheatlines on the right side of the aircraft doesn't reach the cut out mark.but Philippe's repaint reaches it :)