Following your leader through the low European clouds

[pagsab 15]

The two things which have always frustrated me most about the Third Wire sims are the unrealistically high altitude of the clouds and the inability to swap into a wingman’s plane as in European Air War.  I found a way of doing the latter a few weeks ago (as I explain in https://combatace.com/forums/topic/100042-flying-as-a-wingman), and together with a beefed up version of Stary’s tweak which I just discovered at https://combatace.com/forums/topic/97376-clouds-altitude-hack/, I am now in virtual heaven as I practise prolonged formation flying through and above the 3D broken clouds, which look especially lovely at dawn and dusk.  Menvra is right that Stary’s hack produces greater cloud popping, but for my money the gains far outweigh the costs.

 

I was dismayed to find that the cloud hack failed to work over the EuroWW2 terrain, despite most of this terrain containing exactly the flat plains it suits best.  After a week of frustrated investigation and attempted remedies which caused as many problems as they solved, I have at last discovered the reason and how to address it.  I will share my findings here for the benefit of others who wish to use Stary’s wonderful tweak.

The difference between EuroWW2 and all the other terrains on which I have applied the cloud hack successfully is that the Alps reach much greater heights.  Even though they almost never come into view, there is clearly something in the programme which invalidates Stary’s tweak if such high mountains are present anywhere in the terrain.  More Google searching eventually led me to the old thread at https://combatace.com/forums/topic/80880-te-question-height-map-to-hfd/, in which Baltika’s hints on using the Third Wire terrain editor finally helped me to solve the problem.

First, you need to cut the HeightScale in the Bitmap Import section of the TerrainEditor.ini from the default 10 to 5.  Then, use the terrain editor to export a copy of the EuroWW2.HFD file as a bitmap, create a new 1500x1500 km terrain in the editor, and reimport the bitmap.  As Baltika explains, this will cap the Alps at 1280 metres, and you can save the result as a new EuroWW2.HFD file, replace your backed up original, and ditch the accompanying files generated by the save.  A similar process should work for any other terrain containing distant high mountains.  Obviously this is undesirable if the mountains actually come into play, but in that case Stary’s hack is inappropriate in any case.

I cannot believe my good fortune in belatedly finding the solutions to both of my greatest bugbears about the Third Wire sims.  For me, they have just gained a wonderful new lease of life.

[Wrench 10,448]

You're leaving all the important stuff out. Like, 99.0% of all end users haven't got a clue on how to set up, let alone use the 3W TE. To say nothing that WW2 modding died 10 years ago. I should know ... 

[pagsab 15]

The terrain editor is indeed a pain, as I just found during further testing of my process.  (I found that exporting and reimporting the bitmap without changing the default TerrainEditor.ini HeightScales should be enough in itself, since this cuts the Alps from their original 4000 metres to 2500 metres or so.)  You are right that few users still take advantage of the amazing work which you and others have put into the sim over the years, but there are some of us left, and the kind of tweaks I have mentioned are even harder without someone else sharing their experience as in the threads I have noted.  Better late than never!  If anyone would like a fuller walk through of any of the processes, let me know and I will do my best to help.

[Wrench 10,448]

If you want to write out a full description, with step-by-step instructions, I'll see to it that is gets placed in Knowledge Base, for all to see :)

[pagsab 15]

OK, many thanks.  Here is a step by step guide to both of the procedures I have just discovered.

 

TO FLY AS A WINGMAN IN SINGLE MISSIONS

- Start the sim, and open Options - Gameplay to ensure that you will start on the airfield.

- Exit to the main menu and click on Single Mission and then on Create Mission.

- Choose your plane type, year, mission type, map, time of day, weather and enemy activity as usual.

- If you have the SF2 mission editor installed, click on the pen button to open it, and make any desired changes to the month and to individual flights (for instance, you could delete all other flights and shift the position and altitude of your own waypoints to create a formation training flight entirely over friendly territory).

- If you are playing FE2, or SF2 without the mission editor, click Accept and then Fly, let the mission load, and then press Escape to abort on the runway.

- In either case, you should now have a button to save the mission.  Press this, amend the filename if desired, and accept the save.

- Press Exit twice to return to the main menu, and a third time to leave the sim.

- Navigate to your Missions folder, which should be in Desktop – [your name] – Saved Games – Third Wire – [the name of the version you are playing].

- Open the Missions folder, find the file you just saved, and open it with Notepad.

- Scroll down to the [Aircraft Mission 001] block, select the entire block from the title to the numbers assigned to individual planes, and copy it (Ctrl-C).

- Scroll down to just past the last Aircraft Mission block, widen slightly the gap before the next section, and paste the copied block into the gap (Ctrl-V).

- Amend the number of the copied Aircraft Mission to one more than that of the Aircraft Mission preceding it (so you would put 002 if there are no other missions besides your own).

- Reduce the Size of the copied Aircraft Mission by one, and cut the Size of the original Aircraft Mission 001 to 1.

- If you wish, amend the Name of the copied Aircraft Mission and the Number assigned to its first plane so that they differ from your own.

- Close the mission file, and agree to save your changes.

- Restart the sim, and click on Single Mission – Load Mission.

- Check that the selected filename matches, and click on Accept and then Fly.

- In FE2, your leader should start superimposed with you – momentarily disorienting, but not a problem unless your Collision setting is Hard.  In SF2, your leader starts flying above the airfield.  In either case, once airborne you can press Ctrl-Y to target the nearest friendly plane, and then use F4 to toggle the padlock view on and off to help you locate and track your leader (who may be a subordinate leader in larger formations).

- Leaders generally fly at a stately pace, so at full throttle it should not take too long even in SF2 for you to catch up.  A greater risk if you do not throttle back in good time (or use speedbrakes if you have them) is that you will overshoot your leader and face a difficult recovery.

- You are now ready for prolonged practice of formation flying skills, which are hard to master especially if flying fast, close, off to the side or with multiple aircraft.  The key technique is anticipation, moving your throttle and joystick before a problem becomes evident so that you are not always ‘porpoising’ back and forth due to successive belated over-corrections.

- Once you achieve tolerable stability, you may risk a quick glance at your map with Alt-M, using W if need be to delete any waypoints you just missed.

- You will lose formation if you use the Autopilot, time compression or time jumps, so flying as a wingman is best suited to shorter missions in which you can simulate the entire flight from takeoff to landing in real time, perhaps with a brief flurry of combat in the middle.

 

TO LOWER THE ALTITUDE OF CLOUDS IN SF2

- Read the full thread at https://combatace.com/forums/topic/97376-clouds-altitude-hack/ to understand the potential and side-effects of Stary’s ingenious tweak.

- Save the ENVCLOUDS.FX file from Stary’s opening post of the thread.

- Navigate to your Flight folder, which should be in Desktop – [your name] – Saved Games – Third Wire – [the name of the version you are playing].

- Open the Flight folder, and paste a copy of Stary’s file there.

- Open the file with Notepad, scroll down to the Vertex Shader section, and find the active line of code (without the preceding //) in which Stary inserts a deduction of 1900.  If desired, you may increase his deduction to make clouds even lower over flat terrain, or reduce it to keep the cloudbase above hilly terrain.  Deductions from 1000 to 3000 should work.

- Close the file, and agree to save any change you have made.

- Start the sim and press Single Mission – Create Mission to test the results.  Select Scattered or Broken clouds (the only ones affected), and note that modifying cloud height in the mission editor has little if any effect.

- Accept and Fly the mission, and climb up to see the results.  The change should affect Scattered or Broken clouds in all missions including saved and Campaign missions, and can be tweaked by exiting the sim and amending Stary’s deduction or removing his file before restarting the game.

 

Stary’s tweak does not work in a few terrains such as EuroWW2, apparently because they contain higher mountains than normal.  If you wish to lower the clouds for missions over flatter parts of the terrain, you will need to cut the mountains temporarily down to size.

- First, read the full thread at https://combatace.com/forums/topic/80880-te-question-height-map-to-hfd/, especially Baltika’s helpful comments on using the Third Wire terrain editor for height map editing.

- Download the terrain editor from  http://www.thirdwire.com/downloads_tools.htm, and extract the zipped files to a folder in a location of your choice.

- Open the folder, and open the TerrainEditor.ini file with Notepad.  Check that the HeightScales for BitmapExport and BitmapImport are set at the default 10.  Close the file and accept any change that was required.

- Double click on TerrainEditor.exe to start the programme.

- In the File menu of the resulting window, click on Open, and browse to the folder of the terrain concerned, which should be in Desktop – [your name] – Saved Games – Third Wire – [the name of the version you are playing] – Terrains.

- Select the terrain folder (such as EuroWW2) without opening it, and click on Open at the bottom of the programme window.  This should create a window showing any sub-folders within the folder, and any HFD files in the folder (such as EuroWW2.HFD).  HFD files whose name does not exactly match the name of the Terrain folder will not be opened by the Editor, so if need be you will have to rename the file before continuing.

-Select the HFD file without opening it, and click again on Open at the bottom of the programme window.  In the View menu, select View Height Field and select a zoom level of 100%.  If all is well, you should now see a coloured square map showing the terrain.

- Move your cursor across the map, and note how the height of each point is displayed at the bottom right of the programme window.

- In the File menu, click on Export Height Map as Bitmap.  Change the save location to your desktop, and choose a file name such as EuroWW2mod.bmp.  Press Save to export the bitmap.

- Minimise the Editor window if need be, right click on the saved bitmap, and select Properties – Details to find its size in pixels.

- Return to the Editor window, and click on New in the File menu.  If the Terrain Map Size in the resulting dialogue box is not exactly half the width of the bitmap in pixels, modify it accordingly.  (The EuroWW2mod.bmp should be 3000 pixels square, matching the default Terrain Map Size of 1500.)

- Clicking OK should replace the terrain map with a completely blue square, representing a new blank ocean map.

- In the File menu, click on Import Height Map from Bitmap.  Navigate to point the programme to the saved bitmap on your desktop, highlight it, and click on Open at the bottom of the programme window.

- You should now see the coloured terrain map again, but with the crucial difference that moving your cursor over it should show that the highest mountains have been capped at 2550 metres.  (Baltika explained the reason in the thread which you read at the outset.)

- In the File menu, click on Save As, and again choose to save on your desktop and to name the saved file EuroWW2mod.HFD or the equivalent.

- Clicking on Save at the bottom should create several new files on your desktop.  The only one you need is the HFD file, so you can delete all the rest and close the terrain editor.

- Navigate to your terrain folder (such as EuroWW2) in Desktop – [your name] – Saved Games – Third Wire – [the name of the version you are playing] – Terrains.  Open the folder, find the original HFD file such as EuroWW2.HFD, and rename it to something like EuroWW2real.HFD.  Now rename the modded file on your desktop EuroWW2.HFD or the equivalent, and move it into the folder so that it becomes the active HFD file for the terrain.

- Start the sim and fly a test mission as explained above, to see if Stary’s cloud tweak now works as it does elsewhere.  You may rename and swap the HFD files to choose between low clouds or uncapped mountains, depending on where missions are flown.  You should make backups of both the original and the amended HFD files and store them safely just in case.

 

The terrain editor may also be used to increase or decrease all heights in proportion, so as to exaggerate relief as in Sundowner’s Photo Real UK Terrain or to tone it down to a more realistic level (helpful in stopping lowered clouds colliding with beefed-up hills).  This is a more advanced process involving divergent Height Scales for bitmap export and import, and you will need to experiment for yourself once you have got the hang of the basic functionality covered here.

 

[pagsab 15]

And here is the payoff of the tweaks, as our squadron of Blenheim IVs leaves the flak of Le Havre behind and heads gratefully back across the Channel at 12,000 feet.