The new X-Plane 11 UI includes aircraft icons arranged in a grid on the Flight Configuration screen. The new icon style is a simple picture of the aircraft, seen from a particular angle, over a transparent background. By keeping your icons consistent with the X-Plane 11 default icons, your aircraft will both look professional and be identifiable at a glance.

Generate Icons

You have two options for creating X-Plane 11 icons for your aircraft:

  • X-Plane can automatically generate an icon for each livery of your aircraft. This is the preferred method. To do so, start a flight in your aircraft, then, in the menu bar, click Developer > Regenerate icons for current aircraft (shift + R by default).
    • Note that we control for some variables in generating these images by moving the aircraft to PMDY and changing the window size.
  • Alternatively, you can use your own 3-D modeling tool to generate the icons, following the specifications below.

X-Plane 11 aircraft icons are stored as follows within your aircraft folder:

  • [Your aircraft directory]
    • [your ACF name].acf
    • [your ACF name]_icon11.png
    • [your ACF name]_icon11_thumb.png
      liveries

      • [your livery name]
        • [your ACF name]_icon11.png
        • [your ACF name]_icon11_thumb.png
      • [another livery name]
        • [your ACF name]_icon11.png
        • [your ACF name]_icon11_thumb.png

Note that there are actually two images on disk for each livery: the normal “_icon11.png” and the “_thumb” version. The former is an 800×450 image used when you click “Customize” for an aircraft; the latter is a 174×107 image used in the aircraft grid view. (The smaller size gives you both a better image quality and improved performance when scrolling through the grid.)

10 comments on “Generating Icons for Aircraft

  1. “Alternatively, you can use your own 3-D modeling tool to generate the icons”

    An image editor and screenshots will do it also.
    It is a really welcome feature.

  2. Hello,
    What about the category? The generated thumbnail says “unclassified” and I would like to change this.
    Thank u for your answer.

  3. aaa man you Guys at Laminar Research are dangerously clever hehehehe
    Thx soo much for this piece of advise..

    Long live X Plane !!!

  4. this shows updated Oct 2021, but when I regenerate icons X-Plane just hangs, is this accurate for current? Older forum posts indicate the feature is broken.

  5. I had a CTD also. Xplane v11.53. But after a restart it worked. It seems important to use the Developer menu to intiate, and also not to touch the sim while it is cycling through the different liveries.

  6. When I regenerate or try to update icons all I get is a mash of colour for thumbnails which is totally unusable.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please do not report bugs in the blog comments.
Only bugs reported via the X-Plane Bug Reporter are tracked.

Meta

Topic:

  • Aircraft Development

Article type:

  • Guide

Version:

  • X-Plane 11