[BrassEm]

Interesting discussion,

If you’ve spent any sort of hours trying to paint up a good skin in the original IL-2, you should appreciate the effort put in by 1C into changing the texturing structure for COD. Long gone is the need to include all panel lines, weathering, stencils. Anyone who wants to make a skin can now make a simple texture without worrying about all the little details – they will be included automatically! The full effect will still not be realised until such time as we get aircraft with polished aluminium from the USAAF.

A comparison on the complexity...

Old IL-2 skin texture excluding damage and cockpit tga’s (1024x1024)

Historical Aircraft – Myskin.tga – User input –> All panel lines, weathering , stencils, lighting effects etc.

New IL-2 skin textures excluding damage and cockpit dds’s (2048x2048 )
– (And isn’t the cockpits and damage so much more defined in COD?);

Historical Aircraft – Myskin.jpg – User Input –> Paint scheme and individual markings.

Main – Diffuse, Normal, Overlay, Specular

Internals - Diffuse, Normal, Specular

Weathering – Diffuse, Specular

So finally we now have standard texture mapping as per any current fps game engine, but in a combat flight simulator.

For anyone to make a historical skin, all you have to do is create a jpg file with the basic colours and lettering, the rest is added in by the game engine. The jpg file format uses loss compression dependant on settings. That is why you see colour artefacts. I can understand the use of the jpg file format as the files go from 16MB down to around 500kb – a big factor in online skin synchronisation. Saving a jpg with no compression should reduce the corruption but increase the file size. (The Bright post processor created colour artefacts as well, if you look close enough).

I am sure that there will be copious amounts of excellent skins created. It just needs a place like the old IL2Skins.com to host them. I am far from disappointed with the progress 1c have made for skinners though.

Cheers,