I've never added this to one of my own aircraft, since tail numbers come in all sorts of colors and sizes, sometimes on different areas of the aircraft.

But from what I remember, you need to create a small plane on the outer hull, and give it a specific name.  That will then become the "tail number" and whatever is in the "atc_id=" slot in the aircraft.cfg will be what is printed on the side.

Because the part is specifically named.  Very similar to how "R_Aileron" lets the model converter know that the part should move when the right aileron is supposed to move.  Although I'm fairly sure that the tail number plane must be preceded by "$", just like the parts for the VC.

BrandonF wrote on May 19^th, 2009 at 4:23pm:


You are correct, sir.  And I'm now thinking that you don't have to name the PART, but the texture for the part must be named as you mentioned above.  I'm not really sure, it's been so long since I even thought about it.  Try checking the MakeMDL SDK . . .