My next terrain project

[Wrench 9,811]

"I'd gladly pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today"

[+daddyairplanes 10,178]

On 2/22/2024 at 3:40 PM, Gepard said:

Jimbib sent me some static planes for populating the airfields:

Here the DC-9

where'e he get them from?  that model and even more so that bare metal looks mighter familiar

not trying to start a pissing contest,  that just looks like one of v2k's last projects. unless im misunderstanding and jimbib transformed that into a static via ini

Edited May 19 by daddyairplanes

[+Gepard 11,243]

I'm not sure, but i think jimbib made this static planes by himself. It's not just an ini edited already existing plane.

[+Gepard 11,243]

15 hours ago, swambast said:

Tough crowd...

The irony of your post, is it's quite interesting and your eye for detail to pick up on that fact quite impressive indeed.  And I like the fact that you proposed a more proper option.   

OK,  let's try to make it better!  I did some historical research and settled on this;  hopefully a more accurate improvement...  

 

Looks good!

[+Jimbib 741]

The static aircraft I've made so far are all conversions of existing models, some of them from open source models on the web, others are from here at CA... e.g. I have converted YEYEYE's Mi-24 from the Modders Repository into a static that can be placed onto a terrain - I wanted one for my MCAS Yuma and Tonopah Test Range airfields.

For a lot of the airliners I have manually re-mapped them to aircraft mods here at CA to take advantage of the great skins that already exist and as the eagle-eyed @daddyairplanes spotted, this is why my static DC-9 looks like Veltro's as it shares the texture, but is in fact a far lower poly model.

18 hours ago, daddyairplanes said:

unless im misunderstanding and jimbib transformed that into a static via ini

That would be the dream, but alas I don't think there is a way to do it with the gear animation extended etc. placed as terrain objects. The LOD can be referenced as a terrain object but they appear half sunked in the ground. Alternatively, I seem to recall it's possible to make 'engine-less' duplicate aircraft and place them as static flights in single missions, but that's a very long-winded way of just wanting to see some eye candy around airfields.

I much prefer the hybrid option of terrain object method (for specific aircraft in specific locations - think 737s on the Janet ramp at Groom Lake) combined with airfield parking for generic statics placed by the sim engine.

Edited May 20 by Jimbib

[+Gepard 11,243]

Sit rep. I'm still working on BoB2 1960th terrain. But progress is slow. This has to do with the fitting of the tiles for Guernsey island. It's a fiddling work. I'm looking for mismatches.

As example this screenshot. On the bottom you see at the reservoir that the tiles are not 100% fitting together.

This mistakes i'm looking for and try to correct them.

 

[+daddyairplanes 10,178]

3 hours ago, Jimbib said:

That would be the dream, but alas I don't think there is a way to do it with the gear animation extended etc. placed as terrain objects. The LOD can be referenced as a terrain object but they appear half sunked in the ground. Alternatively, I seem to recall it's possible to make 'engine-less' duplicate aircraft and place them as static flights in single missions, but that's a very long-winded way of just wanting to see some eye candy around airfields.

i dont have the bit in messenger anymore, but the frontman for YAP-RW figured out a way to do decals on statics. i forget the specifics but the general idea was that he made them as ships rather than airfield objects

last i saw he had different numbers on C-17s on the ramp but that was the extent.  could be useful in the same fashion that my tga based airliner skins are (when they are whats parked on ramp) for airliners, tankers and cargo planes (the last two rarely deploying as a whole unit in theater)

again thank you. wasnt trying to start nothin, but i did put some time in on that one there, working with Ed from the beginning on it.  heworked me out on skin and tga placement, and i reciprocated with model fix requests!

[+Gepard 11,243]

Sitrep: I'm still on debugging of Guernsey tiles.

[+Gepard 11,243]

Sitrep:  coastline tiles are now blended with sea tiles. Still they are jpg, thatswhy no waves, what cause the difference in the blue between coast tiles and sea tiles. It will change after converting to tga tiles.

[+Gepard 11,243]

I have started to place TOD objects (trees, houses) on Guernsey tiles. Two tiles are done, many others have to be done.

On the right side, the TOD's are already set, on the left side you see the "empty" tiles.

 

[+Gepard 11,243]

Slow progress. Placing hundreds of trees and buildings is boring!

 

[+yakarov79 11,007]

thought you have 7 days to create the world...

[+daddyairplanes 10,178]

he's a modder, not God

he gets 14 days to do it

[+Gepard 11,243]

I'm still on placing the TOD objects on the map. It's a boring job, progress is slow.

Unexpected and very rare thing happend during a testflight. 40 mm Bofors Flak really hit a plane.

 

[+Gepard 11,243]

Slow but steady progress, while placing TOD objects on Guernsey. To set up to 800 trees and up to 500 buildings per tile on the map needs time.

Edited August 10 by Gepard

[+Gepard 11,243]

Today i was able to finish the TOD objects placement on Guernsey island. I dont know how many trees and houses i placed on the 34 tiles. It must be thousands. The result looks so:

 

The next step will be to convert the tiles from jpg to tga format. So i will get the waves.

BTW waves. They were defined by waternormal.bmp file. I have tried to replace it with a jpg file, but i had no success. Does someone know in which ini file the waternormal.bmp can be found?

 

 

[+Menrva 4,197]

1 hour ago, Gepard said:

BTW waves. They were defined by waternormal.bmp file. I have tried to replace it with a jpg file, but i had no success. Does someone know in which ini file the waternormal.bmp can be found?

No ini file, the texture is called inside the FX shader for water. You cannot change the format for the waternormal texture file that the shader wants, unless you unpack the FX shader with Mue's extractor, edit it and include it in the package.

[Wrench 9,811]

LOVE those harbor tiles!!! Great work!!!

[+Gepard 11,243]

At the moment i'm converting jpg to tga tiles, so that the waves and reflections of the sea are visible now.

But i have a problem, that drives me crazy. I get a slight color contrast between the coastal tiles of Guernsey and the sea tiles. It is not very big, but visible. To show you the problem i post this screenshot.

If you look over the tail of the Phantom you can see a slight contrast line between two tiles, which goes from the back of the plane to the right upper corner of the screenshot.

And i dont know, how to fix it. Surely it is only a small error, which can easily corrected. But what error?

[+Sundowner 4,813]

Looks like a small alpha channel mismatch to me.

[+Gepard 11,243]

Ups, small mistake while making TGA tiles.

[+daddyairplanes 10,178]

not a mistake

its part of 74 Squadron, flying under the alien mothership in the UKs response to their arrival....

[Wrench 9,811]

or, just a large shoal

[+Gepard 11,243]

When i was watching the US elections, saw and heared the hate between the two political partys, i was thinking" How about a "Trump vs Harris terrain"?" Located around the big lakes in the USA, lets say Michigan.

Only such an idea.

Okay, wrong nation markings on the Phantom. My fault.

 

 

Edited Friday at 09:05 PM by Gepard

[+Gepard 11,243]

Now some screenshots with the correct Phantom for that terrain.