I've just downloaded a freeware A380 my question is that when i got two other paint schemes for this, the folders seem to contain the same data as the original (other than the airline paint scheme) do you install as seperate aircraft or just extract the texture folder into the original aircraft folder, can someone advise please as im a complete novice in most things in fs2002 including phraseology
                                    thank you.

Go to SIMVIATION HOME PAGE .  On the left side click on HELP . It will carry you to the Tutorial Page  (GRUMPYs LAIR ). Great TUTORIAL with Visual DIRECTIONS.  
THis is where I LEARNED .
He explains  Aircraft Install and Repaints (TEXTURE) Install.

Hi,

To create more than one paint of an aircraft, paste the new texture in the origional aircraft CFG file, just above the [general] heading. The first part of the origional will look something like this:

[fltsim.0]
title=Boeing 737-400
sim=Boeing737-400
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=
...

Edit the second texture to look something like this:

[fltsim.1]
title=Boeing 737-400 Paint1
sim=Boeing737-400
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=1
...

Notice the fltsim.0 is now fltsim.1 and texture now equals 1. This means that FS will look for a file called texture.1 for the second paint scheme. Call the folder texture.1 and FS should recognise it. You should be able to repeat the above procedure as many times as you want (fltsim.0,fltsim.1,fltsim.2... texture,texture.1,texture.2...)

They should appear in the 'variation' drop-down box in FS. Hope this answers your question.

Just to point out that you can use any folder names you wish providing you stick to the FS folder-naming convention with a period in the folder name. For example: Texture.red - Texture.green - Texture.myrepaint etc. The corresponding texture= entry in Aircraft.cfg would point to the part of the folder name following the period, texture=red & so on. Sample Aircraft.cfg entries are included with most repaints. Simply copy/paste these into the correct place in Aircraft.cfg & renumber the x in the [fltsim.x] entry to the next number in sequence. Providing the new textures are installed with their existing folder names it should work.