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
- [your livery name]
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.)
Excellent! Worked! So easy! WOW.
“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.
Nice, this is so easy, with a great result 🙂
Hello,
What about the category? The generated thumbnail says “unclassified” and I would like to change this.
Thank u for your answer.
This is configured in Plane Maker’s Standard > Author screen.
Thank you for your anwer.
aaa man you Guys at Laminar Research are dangerously clever hehehehe
Thx soo much for this piece of advise..
Long live X Plane !!!
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.
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.
When I regenerate or try to update icons all I get is a mash of colour for thumbnails which is totally unusable.