Installing a Freeware Plane into FSX

A lot of freeware planes are available to download on the Internet to use in FSX. Here we explain the logics into installing such a plane into your FS version, even if freeware designers often accompany their plane with Instructions of Use

First, planes in FSX are installed in a folder usually at path C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\SimObjects\Airplanes. In the Airplanes folder, each plane is represented by its own folder like, for example the Beechcraft Baron 58 is found in the 'beech_baron_58' folder. In the beech_baron_58 folder, four types of folders are found: model, panel, sound, texture. More than one iteration of each may be found, which match variants. Those folders allows for the plane's informatic model, its panel, its sounds and textures respectively. The soundai folder -- which is rarely found -- with freeware airplane is a sound folder dedicated to when a plane is used like a ai in the FSX-generated traffic. Then also come four files: cfg, air, check and ref. It's all those files and folders which make that FSX recognizes a plane and makes it fly. The cfg file holds the name, type, and technical data for the plane, the air file also, the check file contains the plane's checklist as the ref one is for the plane's specs

Thence back to your downloaded zip! Put it from the download place -- usually at ThatPC/Downloads to somewhere practical, like your PC desktop. Unzip it. In the unzipped folder, you should find that the freeware designer organized his plane's folders and files in the accustomed way like described above. You should find a folder holding those, and named according to the plane inside. Within there thus, just check you have a model, panel, sound, texture folder (one or more of each if the plane features variants), and a cfg, air, check and ref files. The check and ref files might be missing which won't forbid your plane to work. Idem inside the one -- or more -- texture folder(s), you should find a 'thumbnail' pic file helping to display the plane in the FSX Select Aircraft menu. That file neither is not mandatory as FSX will display a interrogation mark instead. A most usual error of installation is to unzip the freeware and install like is into FSX. One has in fact to install just the plane's folder which is inside the zip folder!

That constitutes the most usual way you should find, and install a freeware plane into FSX. Some freewares may display otherwise, which could oblige you to re-constitute the plane folder's structure like it should be!