Whats the receipe for today, Jim? Are you still looking at that FSX splash screen whenever you start FSX to go fly? You know, the picture of the blue sky with some clouds at the bottom and
Microsoft Flight Simulator X in black writing accross the middle? Time to change it to one that you want. Take any of the great pictures on this site, note that you will be using it for your personal use, and you should ask for permission to use it, however You MUST ask for permission to use it, if you are going to put it on your website. So find a picture that you really like, the one screen shot that took hours to set up, and copy it to your desktop. Now we have to do 3 things to it: change the format to .bmp, resize it and do a rename. But first....copy your picture to a safe place coz we are going to mess with the original.
Changing the format to .bmp, what on earth is that and how do I do it? The picture that you want to use is probably named splurge.jpg or splurge.gif or splurge.png and because you are
reading this, you will probably know the difference in picture formats. But .bmp? This is the old MS format for FS aircraft paintjobs, scenery files and texture files but it is still being
used in FSX today. You cannot just rename the picture to splurge.bmp because that will not work, it has to be re-coded as a bmp file. You will need a paint editor for this, Photoshop,
Paint Shop Pro or your default paint program [for Windows XP users and probably Vista it is found in this path: Start\All Programs\Accessories\Paint]. So open your paint editor and drag
and drop your chosen picture into it.
Is the picture now showing in your paint editor? Good. Now we can do all 3 tasks in one fell swoop well, 3 swoops. Lets change the size of it first of all. Use the the tool in the tool bar called resize or Image\Stretch,skew if you are using paint. Resize the picture to 820 pixels accross by 620 pixels high. This will give you a slight overlap which is no bad thing for a splash screen. Your chosen picture will get the blurries if you have to increase its size to
these measurements - best chuck it away and find another.
Now to the next bit. From the tool bar at the top, choose File\Save as - save this picture as dlgsplash [all in lower case]. Underneath that box is the "save as type" box. Click the drop down arrow, and find .bmp which will be near the top [because it starts with B!!] and save the picture as dlgsplash.bmp - There all done. Umm, not quite yet. We have to put it in the right folder.
Open your FSX root directory [c:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X] and open the folder called "Uires". About 1/3 of the way down, you will find a picture called
"dlgsplash.bmp" which you might not be able to "see" because it is a .bmp file. Right click this picture and rename it as "dlgsplash1.bmp". Now drag your "dlgsplash.bmp" picture from your desktop and pop it into the Uires folder. That is it, done. Close it all up and open FSX to admire your new handywork.
I hope that this helps someone! It works in FS9 as well. If you want to be really swarmey, put a picture of your partner in as the splash screen - not as daft as it sounds!!
CeeGee.
