Makai

Hello Elephant Thanks for the great images. There are some real treasures there. I am sending you a well lighted image of an unstained Alb DII that shows off the wood grain panels well. The stained Alb DII skins I made show the wood grain but it is less defined. It took me two months to redo all the old Alb DII's and make the new ones with the new model. WM has been waiting patiently for the skinners to get all their skins done, but if there is time I will see if there is a quick way I can tone down the wood grain if the general feeling it is too much. I am working on the Fok DVII now but I will see where we stand when I get those done. Cheers Makai

Hello Elephant You caught me on travel so I can't post any historic images right now but I will when I get back to my home computer in about a week. The wood patterns for the Alb DII's was pretty prominent. It was less so in the later DV's. I wanted to capture that but I didn't want every Alb DII to have the same pattern so I not only made a different pattern for each panel, I also made several different patterns in my layered DII template so the patterns would be different from aircraft to aircraft. A lot of work but worth it when they are finally done. I did the same thing with the DR1. I made about 5 different streak patterns for each wing, fuselage, and tail surface so the streak patterns would be different with each aircraft. Something few would probably notice but was important to the OFF skinners. I am on the move right now but will be checking in when I can and will get some historic Alb DII shots to you to show you what I was using as an example. Cheers Makai

Like the Shredder says the DR1 model has changed. It is much improved and I have been redoing all the DR1 skins I made for Phase3. A big job but it is nearly complete and I think the new ones look a lot better. So far no other skin models have been changed but new improved skins are being made on all fronts.

Lou, I can fully understand the strain of trying to balance your time. If I spent the time on this forum I would like to I would not get any skins done not to mention the other demands on my time. It is a good balance that you will be away but not gone. We are a small special group. Take care. Makai

Hello Old Navy I also preordered and prepaid for SH5 and AC2 from Gamestop. When I went to pick up SH5 and saw the constant internet connection requirement I gave it right back to them for a refund and canceled AC2 and got refunded for that as well. Gamestop should be giving people fair warning that this is an issue. I doubt very many customers would purchase it. When the retailers start sending these games back to Ubisoft maybe they will get the message. Good luck trying to get your money back from Gamestop. They may just give you another game as an exchange. Regards Makai

I agree FlybyPC. There should be no mention of piracy. We lose our credibility. The message that should have the greatest impact is that we are over 9000 loyal customers that would happily buy these products if it weren't for the DRM, and will not buy any Ubisoft games that have it.

James The Pisces subs have their own natural torpedoes in the form of large predatory fish that cruise along with us behind the lights and wait for some unsuspecting little bottom dweller to stray too far away from their burrow then they rocket out like a fired torpedo and nail said bottom dweller and casually take up station behind the lights again. I have only used SH3 at sea on a five month trip to New Zealand in 2005. It definitely adds a degree of realism playing it on a rolling ship. I have not done it since then of course because I have been skinning for OFF ever since. SH5 looked like it might be a nice replacement, but there are no internet connections out there so it is not worth getting. I wonder how many hundreds of young submariners that spend months on patrol and don't always have to be on watch would have enjoyed SH5. The signatures are up to 8250 now. If everyone who signed cancelled purchasing both AC2 and SH5 like I did that is 16,508 lost sales. I don't think everyone was probably paying the Gamestop price I did of about $60 bucks each, but if they did it would be a total loss in sales of about $990,480. I wonder if Ubisoft can just shrug that off and make do with the customers that are willing to put up with the DRM. Really bad idea.

You have touched a chord here Widowmaker. I think every skin is like a seperate work of art for the OFF skinners. When I read the thread a few jumped into my head right away. The Shredder was right when he answered Dej about the diamond wonder. The Sachsenberg skin has to be right up on the top with one of my favorites and one that cost me a lot of time. All the Udet DVII's are amongst my favorites, but the one with connecting banding on top and under the top wing was one of my first and most difficult and still as remains one of those I felt I hit the mark on. I think one of the ones I put an extra amount of care into was Voss's DR1. I read Barry Diggens "September Evening" before I even started it. I experimented quite a bit with the streak color until I got what was closest to what many eye witnesses described which meant something between blue gray, dirty gray, green, blue green etc. I wanted the Voss DR1 in OFF to be the most accurate one I could make. The banded Fok DVII wonders of Ulrich Neckel and Josef Mai are up there too which brought up a painful reminder that I still have not completed Hans Kirschsteins DVII optical illusion which was taking way too much time away from my ever growing project list. (nice fishing Widow) When I started thinking of some of the other DR1's, and DVII's, then the Pfalz's, Alb DII's, Hannovers, DFW's and Rolands I realized how hard it was to pick just 1 or even 5 favorites. As I said each skinner puts the same tender loving care into each skin and when there are over 4000, that is a lot of tender loving care.

Good thread Widowmaker. Have signed with comment. I had to cancel my order and get refunded for AC2 and SH5 because of this. Looks like no more Ubisoft games for me unless this changes.

... Everyone has been getting a good view of some great looking Nieups so the Hun skinners are going to post a few upcoming Hun skins as well. The skinners have accumulated over 900 new and improved ace and squad skins so far for the addon. As CountShred mentioned in an earlier post that puts us over 4000. Like Olham pointed out, there are plenty of researched skins in the skin file to check out. We have been working hard to get as many ace and squad skins in as possible to fill in the blanks. Now when you are in the lineup in your PERSONALIZED kite you will be able to look down the line and see more ace skins where ace skins are supposed to be. You will note in some of the images I posted that there are some views of the new railyards. WM has added even more detail but we have not seen it yet. We will all have to wait for the addon. I will be away until early Dec but will still be cranking out skins for the addon when I have a spare minute just in case there is time to get them in when I get back. I went through this before with the Pfalz when Pol got the model to me just before I left and I was able to get the first round done in time for Phase 2. For those who have tried skinning you can appreciate doing it in a small stateroom that is always on the move. The labor of love has turned into a way of life for us. We can't stop, and OFF just keeps getting better and better. Cheers all until I get back. Makai

Hello Fro I just caught this thread and assumed since you mentioned the DVII's you must have been referring to my skins. I wanted to assure you we have not used your skins. We have been adding new Jasta's and ace skins for the addon for months now so you will see some of the schemes you have been working on. We are continually adding skins and trying to improve existing skins as we get more information, for example the Jasta 17 Fok DVII squad skin I made that you used to make Alfred Fleischers skin was not as accurate as I could have made it. I made the white nose band a little too wide and made it with a 4 colored lozenge pattern I created instead of a 5 color lozenge. The Jasta 17 Alfred Fleischer skin I made for the addon is more accurate. I also made a new squad skin. You will also see the Hermann Pritsch DVII nose face was made to resemble the photo as much as possible. The skins are for all to use and enjoy, thats why we are doing it. You have probably gathered that this is a sensitive matter for the OFF skinners. I just wanted to assure you all of our skins are original and take us a bit of time to create. You are doing a great job with your skins. Keep it up, and like OVS says quality is better than quantity. I am off to sea so the next time I will be able to check in will be sometime in December. Cheers Makai

Hello Pol and Sandbagger The Nieups look fantastic. Beautiful work. Cheers Makai

Hello Rob good to hear from you. What an interesting and diverse group we have here. I always had a strong magnetic pull to the sea and started my seagoing career in the US Coast Guard on a 180ft cutter in Alaska where I quickly learned a healthy respect for the merciless power of the sea and a very strong appreciation for a stout ship. After nearly 5 years on ships in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean I got out and like most young chaps just out of the service was pretty much pennyless with all kinds of great plans for higher education in marine science or some other kind of ocean related career. I still had not learned my lesson after 5 years of sea time. I ended up working in a brick factory for several months to make enough to pay for tuition, books and equipment to attend a Deep Sea Diving school. I was living a pretty Spartan existance but made it through and after I graduated was doing commercial diving jobs and going to college at night. After about a year of diving in cold no visibility water a trip to Hawaii found me driving around Oahu when I spotted a submersible in a shop on the pier where I work now. Submersibles were always the object of my greatest fascination (besides WWI aviation history). I went in to check it out and walked out with a new job. I worked with that operation for 3 years starting in 1976 and started piloting in 1978. They shut down the operation in 1979 and I went back to commercial diving work and worked on such projects as the underwater sequences of the James Bond movie "For Your Eyes Only" where I was managing construction on an underwater set (Greek Temple) off of South New Providence Island in the Bahamas where I did stunt doubling, sub piloting, and Tiger Shark wrangling. I also worked on the movie "The Abyss" where I was a rigger, safety diver, and stunt double. (no sharks on that one) I started as operations director and chief pilot with the Hawaii Undersea Research Lab and NOAA in 1981 and have been piloting submersibles for research and exploration ever since. Now you know way more about me than you ever wanted to.

Hello Catfish Once these documentaries are released they usually make the international circuit. I have had friends in Ireland tell me they saw some documentary on Pisces dives, so it might make it your way at some point. Cheers Makai

Thank you all for the kind remarks, and thanks to my friend and team member James for posting the Nat Geo TV information. I apologize for not being very active on the forum but we are about to go to sea again and our crew are working nights and weekends to get the subs ready for dives in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands starting in November. It has not stopped me from working with the rest of the OFF team to get hundreds of new and improved skins and other goodies ready for future OFF enhancements. These giant subs were exciting discoveries for us and I think Nat Geo put some good effort into covering the dives and the little known history of these unique WWII Japanese monster subs. I hope you all get a chance to check it out. Cheers Makai

Hello Widowmaker Thats correct. We have not stopped. I did not mark some of my earlier skins but starting putting a small red TK on them to keep track of what I had completed. You will see it on the Alb DII's, Pfalz's, Fok DR1's, Fok DVII's, Hannovers, DFW's, and Rolands. We have been working hard to fill in the blanks for all the aces and squad skins that are listed in the data files. Cheers Makai

Hello OlPaint01 That is a question for WM. I just scouted for appropriate sections of track to put the railyards on, WM created the new rail depots and painstakingly placed them on my positions. I can't speak for WM, but after the hours of effort he has put into this I would say the rail yards are fixed for now. Cheers Makai

Hello Uncleal This was a very tedious and time consuming project. First WM gave me the Lat-Long of all the wayward Railyards out in fields and forest, some miles from any tracks. There were about 53 of them. I would start at the nearest airfield and locate the railyard then fly around until I found a suitable rail line then I would have to line up as strait as possible and touch down to get a Lat-Long, altitude, and heading. I then gave the list to WM and he nearly drove himself to the loonie bin placeing a Railyard on each position then making multiple visits the line them up perfectly with the tracks. You will now be able to embark on a Railyard attack mission and follow the tracks to the target. Makai