Installing liveries

[MrGoodnight]

Good evening.

I am new to DCS world but I know my way around a computer.  I have been trying to use "skins" that DCS gives us to change the livery on the Jet.  I unzip the file that way instructed but I have downloaded 4 skins on the F14 Tomcat, the exact same way.  BUT only one of the 4 skins appears in my game.  It really puzzles me because I did them the same exact way but only one i can see in the game.  Any suggestions?

 

Richard

[silverdevil]

hello @MrGoodnight and welcome. the folder would be placed in "saved games". put this in your file explorer URL box %UserProfile%\Saved Games\ within that folder is DCS or DCS.openbeta. then look for the following folder. \Liveries\F-14B\ (or A) extract the skins in its folder here. C:\Users\MyUsername\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Liveries\F-14B\F14B-Ghost of Razgriz as an example. keep in mind the folder structure is very specific and if something is misspelled you will not see the skin. 

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3303954/

Edited November 6, 2021 by silverdevil

[Akula]

I wish it was this easy... It's not with me but it might be because I have a bunch of my Squadron mods along with 2 saved games folders (the native one in C drive can't be deleted). I followed the instructions and it still doesn't work. 

[Rudel_chw]

11 minutes ago, Akula said:

along with 2 saved games folders (the native one in C drive can't be deleted).

 

The "Saved Games" folder is a special Windows folder, it can't be created by the user like the normal folders: you end up with a normal folder that happens to be named "Saved Games" but lack all of its special attributes. 

 

DCS can only use the native Windows-created "Saved Games" folder, so you must place your liveries there.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

Make sure there's nothing else in those folders that doesn't need to be there. If you have zipped files of the liveries still there for example, that will mess things up.

[Akula]

2 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

 

The "Saved Games" folder is a special Windows folder, it can't be created by the user like the normal folders: you end up with a normal folder that happens to be named "Saved Games" but lack all of its special attributes. 

 

DCS can only use the native Windows-created "Saved Games" folder, so you must place your liveries there.

 

2 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Make sure there's nothing else in those folders that doesn't need to be there. If you have zipped files of the liveries still there for example, that will mess things up.

 

 

Thanks guys,

So here is where I'm a bit confused;

There's a discussion somewhere here that describes a step by step process to successfully move the saved games folder from C drive to a dedicated DCS drive which I thought I had *successfully* done. So despite this, are you all saying that Windows will never allow this?

Secondly I tried placing the livery I want into every freiking F-18 folder i could respectively following other instructions thinking that sooner or later it would appear in the mission editor loadout screen or the in flight loadout screen. So far nothing. Why does DCS have so many livery folders for just one plane? So much confusion lol.

[Rudel_chw]

2 minutes ago, Akula said:

There's a discussion somewhere here that describes a step by step process to successfully move the saved games folder from C drive to a dedicated DCS drive which I thought I had *successfully* done. So despite this, are you all saying that Windows will never allow this?

 

I didn't say that. What I meant is that there is only a single valid "Saved Games" folder, and that is the one that Windows creates when your Windows user account is created. You said that you had two "Saved Games" folder, wich cant be right.

 

Of course, you can Move this special folder to another part of your Windows file system, for example if the default location is short on space. The "Saved Games" folder properties includes a tool to move the folder to another place. This is the correct procedure for doing this move:

 

[Rudel_chw]

15 minutes ago, Akula said:

 Why does DCS have so many livery folders for just one plane? 

 

Not so, there is a single folder for each DCS aircraft type ... but please note that DCS has several models of F-18: the F/A-18A and F/A-18C are old aircrafts that are only flyable by the AI of DCS, the user can't fly them. The "F/A-18C Lot 20" is the flyable aircraft that DCS offers (for a price, of course).

 

For the latter, the liveries folder should be named "FA-18C_hornet". Inside it, each liverie goes onto its own sub-folder, like this:

Edited December 24, 2021 by Rudel_chw

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

56 minutes ago, Akula said:

Why does DCS have so many livery folders for just one plane?

As Rudel said, there's only 1 folder you need to worry about. But you need to make sure the subfolders have the correct name or DCS won't recognise them as livery folders. You can check the DCS\mods\ or \coremods\ folders in your main installation to check how they are supposed to be called.

My Liveries folder looks like this:

 

[Akula]

Thank you everyone for the replies,

 

This DCS install is 2 years old and has been switched from one folder to another so I think it's high time for a wipe and a complete reinstall. Not looking forward to it lol.

[Ironhand]

On 11/5/2021 at 9:13 PM, MrGoodnight said:

 …I unzip the file that way instructed but I have downloaded 4 skins on the F14 Tomcat, the exact same way.  BUT only one of the 4 skins appears in my game…

Stupid question, perhaps, but what nationality are the skins? Depending on how the creator set them up, a French skin, for example, will only show up when France is selected as the airframe’s owner.