CONTENT CONFIGURATION
Creating assets like aircraft or buildings is only one part of creating add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator, with the other part being the Content Configuration. As mentioned in the introduction to this document, add-ons are comprised of a combination of creative assets and configuration files, and these files are used to tell Microsoft Flight Simulator details about how your add-on should be integrated into the game world. This section is dedicated to explaining the formatting of these files and how they should be used, depending on the asset they are linked to or the goal you want to achieve with the add-on.
Before continuing, if you have never worked with *.cfg files before, or have never used XML, it may be worth looking over the following pages before continuing, as they briefly outline how these files are formatted:
It is important to note that many of the files listed in the different sections here can actually be created and edited in Developer Mode within Microsoft Flight Simulator. Many of the editors that are available within the sim when this mode is active will generate the required files for you, and in general we recommend that you use the editors where possible rather than creating or editing the actual files themselves (which can be error prone and more complicated). The sections below will link any to the specific editors that can be used as required, but you can also find an overview of all of them here:
The following sections give details on the different asset configuration files that are available:
- Cameras
- Environment (Airports, Scenery, etc...)
- SimObjects (Aircraft, Ground Vehicles, Humans, etc...)
- Flights And Missions
- Localization
- Checklists
- Instruments
- Models
- Sounds
- Textures
- Visual Effects
Note that if you want to know more about the creation of the actual assets themselves (models, materials, sounds, etc...) you can find that information in the following section:
Programming APIs
To get even more advanced features into your add-on, it may not be enough to tweak the configuration files, and so you have available a set of different programming tools that can be used to get complete control over every aspect of the simulation. You can find more details here: