Be sure to backup your files before using any of these modifications!!!!
There is no guarantee that these will work for everyone or won’t do something bad to your computer. Use at your own risk.
Remove generic autogen, but keep special autogen. Here is a method of disabling the generic autogen buildings (such as small homes) but leaves the trees and special autogen (such as gas stations and factories). This is kind of the opposite of the rename the default.xml mod below. Thanks to Gerrit for this one.
Simply rename the RoofDescriptions.spb from the Autogen folder.
Texture Replacements
I have made simple to use batch files that will convert your own texture files automatically to versions that are 1/2 the resolution and 1/4 the file size. These will probably be of most use on lower end machines and those without 256 meg or larger video cards.
1) Backup the following folders if you haven’t already done so:
* ???\Flight Simulator\Scenery\World\Texture
* ???\Flight Simulator\Texture
* ???\Flight Simulator\Scenery\Global\Texture
2) Download NConvert at the XnView website. It’s freeware. You only need the nconvert.exe file from the zip.
3) You must have Imagetool.exe from the FS SDK. If you have Deluxe Edition of FSX, you’ve got it on your DVDs if you install the SDK. Otherwise you can get it from the FS2004 Terrain SDK.
4) Download and unzip the bat file collection (New version 2 added 11/5/2006)
5) Create a folder in your main Flight Simulator folder called “Texturetemp” or something similar. It doesn’t matter what the name is as long as it’s in your main FSX folder. Copy ImageTool.exe, nconvert.exe and the bat files into this folder.
6) Choose a bat file and double click on it. The bat files included so far are:
* Autogen Buildings - Resizes Autogen Buildings
* Autogen Ground - Resizes all of your autogen ground textures
* Blank Bump - Replaces most of the bump map textures with small blank textures. Do this instead of deleting them.
* Blank Specular - Replaces most of the specular textures with small blank textures. Do this instead of deleting them.
* Clouds - Resizes the cloud textures
* Runways - Resizes the runway textures
* Taxiways - Resizes the taxiway textures
* Trees - Resizes the tree textures
* Water - Resizes the water textures
There is a 50% and 25% version for most of the bat files. 50% will reduce the size of each texture in half. 25% will reduce the size of each texture by one fourth. Obviously you should only choose one of these. Most likely 50% will be fine for anyone with a halfway modern computer.
When you run the bat file, it will copy all of the original textures into the temporary folder you just created. NConvert will then go thru and resize every texture. Once that’s done, Imagetool will go thru and convert the texture back into it’s correct format (dds or bmp) and add mip maps. Then the files will be moved back to their original location. Feel free to open the bat file with Notepad to see what it’s doing.
