Introduction
So you have gotten bored with the default aircraft thumbnails and want to change it to something new? Well, look no further! This quick and easy guide will show you how to do that in just 2 minutes.
Changing the Default Aircraft Thumbnail
1.) Locate your aircraft’s texture folder.
Note: Base aircraft like the 747-8 can be found in the Official folder.
Locate the aircraft folder of the aircraft that you want to update the thumbnail for and locate the Texture folder. The path will be something like this:
<Aircraft Name>\SimObjects\Airplanes\<Aircraft Name>\Texture
You’ll see many .DDS file inside of the folder. We won’t worry about those. You will want to worry about the thumbnail.jpg and thumbnail_small.jpg files (These are almost always at the very bottom of the file list)
2.) Replace the Thumbnail files
You will now replace the thumbnail.jpg and thumbnail_small.jpg files. The best way to do this is to open your pre-saved image with the Windows Photos app, click “Save As”, and click on the thumbnail.jpg and thumbnail_small.jpg files when you save it.
It is very important that you save the thumbnail files as a .JPG, else, it will not appear in the simulator.
Double-check that the photo saved properly.
3.) Load up MSFS
Assuming you did the above steps correctly, you should see your updated thumbnail present inside of the aircraft list!
Explanation Video
This video below will walk through steps 1 & 2.