DCS Skin Viewer

See your paint
in 3D and UV at once.

A 3D and UV viewer that runs on your own PC to help with DCS World livery painting. Save a livery image in your image editor and it reloads automatically, highlighting what changed on both the 2D image and the 3D aircraft.

Download for Windows

v0.1.0 trial. For Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit). ZIP about 29 MB. No Python install needed. Requires a local DCS World install and a WebGL2 browser (latest Chrome or Edge). The app interface and the bundled guide are in Japanese.

How to startChecksum

Files in your DCS install and Saved Games are only read, never written. All traffic stays on your PC (127.0.0.1).

This is an unofficial tool. THIS MATERIAL IS NOT MADE OR SUPPORTED BY EAGLE DYNAMICS SA.

What happens when you save

1Save in your editor
2Reloads automatically
3Changes highlighted

Areas that also appear on a 3D surface turn pink; areas no surface uses turn orange. A save that repaints part of a DDS shows up within a second.

What it looks like

Real screens of the app showing an original demo aircraft and livery. Both the shape and the image were made for this page; no DCS data is used. The 3D view is on the left and the livery image (UV) on the right. The interface is in Japanese.

After a save, the wing stripes and the changed number are marked with pink hatching on both the 3D aircraft and the UV image
Save, and the changes appear in 3D and UV. White stripes were painted on the wing and the number recoloured, then saved. Both wings use the same image area mirrored, so stripes painted once show up pink on both wings.
Paint added to an image area that no surface uses is marked in orange
Changes off the aircraft show up too. No surface uses the lower-right part of the image. Paint added there is marked orange, with a count of pixels that have no matching surface.
Clicking the number on the right side marks the same spot on the UV image in yellow
Find on the image what you clicked in 3D. Click the number on the right side and a yellow circle marks the same spot on the image, so you can see where to paint.
A brush stroke drawn on the 3D fuselage also appears on the UV image
Try a brush on the preview. A stroke drawn on the 3D fuselage appears at the matching place on the UV image. Your image files are not changed.
The whole app screen, with controls and save-watch status at the top and the demo aircraft in 3D and UV below
The whole screen. The top rows switch views, brush, how differences are compared and noise suppression, and show the save-watch status.

Check the paint every time you save.

Load aircraft from your DCS

Pick an aircraft and livery from 87 aircraft profiles. The installed model and images are converted read-only and shown. The first conversion takes from tens of seconds to a few minutes; after that it opens at once.

3D and UV side by side

The 3D aircraft and the livery image (UV) share one screen. Clicking the 3D model shows the matching spot on the image, and you can try a brush on the preview (your image files are not changed).

Watches saves and shows the difference

Supports DDS (BC1, BC3, BC7, uncompressed 32-bit) and PNG. Turn on noise suppression to ignore the small differences that DDS recompression causes.

How to start

  1. Extract the ZIP anywhere and double-click DCSSkinViewer.cmd. A black window opens and the settings screen appears in your browser.
  2. Your DCS install and the DCS folder in Saved Games are found automatically. If they are wrong, choose them with 「別のフォルダを選ぶ…」 (choose another folder).
  3. Choose the aircraft and livery, then press 「開く」 (Open). To paint your own, copy the livery folder you start from into Saved Games\DCS\Liveries\<aircraft> first.
  4. Overwrite a livery image in your image editor and the view updates. To quit, close the black window.
This is a trial version.

The rendering is simplified and does not match how DCS looks (no Normal, RoughMet or damage). Board numbers and moving parts may differ from DCS. The F-16C was compared with DCS's own ModelViewer2 for cell label positions, text orientation and seams. Other aircraft were checked in this viewer only and are partially supported. Some aircraft, such as the Mi-8, MiG-23, Su-30 and Tu-160, cannot be selected because their model files cannot be read.

BC2 (DXT3), BC4, BC5, BC6H and RGB of 24 bits or less cannot be read (the reason is shown on screen). Saves that change the whole image, and PNG saves, can take a few seconds. Converted data grows in %LOCALAPPDATA%\DCSSkinViewer with every livery you open (about 100 MB per F-16C livery) and is never deleted automatically. Watching a dozen 4K images can use about 5 GB of memory in the browser.

Tested on one Windows 11 PC with integrated graphics. Windows 10, other PCs and GPUs, and the security warnings shown for a downloaded ZIP have not been checked.

Checked with automated tests (109 browser-side, 58 save-watch, 55 scene-conversion and more), measured save-to-display times on a real F-16C, and an end-to-end run of the distribution ZIP extracted to a folder with Japanese characters and spaces: start, conversion, display and difference. The ZIP includes the guide, full license texts and notices for bundled libraries. It contains no DCS World or aircraft data. The program is under the MIT License.

Download details and SHA-256

Released: 23 October 2026.

DCSSkinViewer-0.1.0-win64.zip

SHA-256
891e9f65d5a9bc1899d0772af5437c4c5a83ebc4379ff3895df73aa2003a267a

Guide (Japanese text) / Bundled library notices / License