swambast

All, just curious to get some perspectives. I understand that IL-2 is still considered a World War 2 masterpiece and "go to" sim. And I know there is a separate but rather calm forum here. But I'm just sincerely wondering what specific reasons and limitations exist as to why that genre never really took off under the SF2 game engine?

Yes, that designation references a "Chief Warrant Officer." Here is one source definition that should be helpful: "Warrant Officers are recognized as the most technically and tactically competent soldiers of differing certain specialties in the Army. The base rank for Warrant Officers is Warrant Officer 1 (WO1). Still recognized as technical and tactical experts at this rank, WO1's serve from the team level (7 to 25 soldiers, depending on the type of team) thru the battalion level (around 800 soldiers)." And each subsequent rank of course has more expertise and governing authority up to CW5.

Keep at it Russ, will be great in the end. And get advice from @yakarov79 - he is the absolute best helo expert out there.

Not quite. You still need to make the proper selections in 3ds Max which includes exporting the model with decal support.

Erik, that is seriously some of the funniest shit I've seen in ages - cracks me up everytime, absolutely hilarious and great find...

Wilches, what are you talking about? There's no such thing as a "copywrite" law. I assume you meant "copyright"; but besides almost all of these are subject to licensing agreements - LOL - these are different. In almost all cases the licensing agreements declare and uphold protection of the copyright laws. How do I know? Because I was subject to software code and intellectual property piracy in the past both personally and professionally where lawyers had to get involved. I'm not going to say anything more on this topic - good luck.

Hi All, I think I started this very low-poly, "photoreal" fort years ago but it's somewhere stashed on one of my old hard drives. Are you guys all set on Forts? I thought Geezer put out a bunch of them and his stuff is of the highest quality already. Anyway, if there's still a need or interest I can try to hunt it down but if not that's perfectly fine too, just thought I'd check!

That's absolutely ridiculous, I hope you are joking...

Ha, ha - that's great. Thank you for the nice suggestion, I'll be sure to remove that as it will allow more diversity.

Thanks Wrench, glad you like them - it was actually pretty fun so thought I'd keep the momentum going... Well now that you said that, how about having a choice? Thought I'd start with the Mid-East variant. I did some research and came up with this low-poly highly optimized design with modeling time about 2 minutes, and texture time in hours...LOL Anyway, hope it is another upgrade option for your Mid East "Falfael King"...

Gkabs, I mean it's cool and all but don't forget like many often do - this isn't a DCS Game Engine. I can't imagine what the performance hit is going to be on this between the poly/tris/texture maps but best of luck and have fun anyway. So that being said, would encourage you to try and optimize the mesh the best you possibly can.

…will have to send in this fire support vehicle! Always wanted to do a proper USAF Fire Dept Support Jeep as I'm especially not aware something like this has been done before, and finally got around to nearly completing it. And don’t worry, she’s a fully optimized low poly creation leveraging just a main 1024x1024 texture map so should be nice and easy on frame rates. As many know I’m a total sucker for details, so even decided to toss in the Fire Helmet and dash details. I still have a few tweaks I need to finish up but think it’s looking good, more to come later...

Ok, great job Wrench and sounds like you got what you needed then! I'm going to stop my PSP runway work then as I have plenty of other things on the "to do" list - best of luck to you on this project!

Quick update - saw often times there would be deep skid marks along these, so made a shot at that and updated panel connectors...

Thank you Nightshade, appreciate that consideration but I always prefer to scratch build. I'm still waiting for some reference info, but thought I'd mock something up so the team can react to before I return next week. Here was an initial pass - of course eventually I would still need to adjust speculars/lighting and optimize the bump maps but you get a general idea of the initial form, colors, etc. It is a single strip about 90m wide and ~1345m long so need guidance on those dimensions and welcome any other changes needed.

Wilches, that dirt air strip is not designed for this terrain - it's for another project. But the info you shared here is good to know, for when I create the dirt air strip for what you guys need here. Same request, please send me some reference pics if you'd like, thanks.

Sounds good. When you get a chance, please send me some reference images via PM and let me know if there is a specific style/reference photo you're going after - I'll take it from there!

Wrench, if you can wait for a while until after the Thanksgiving Holiday I'm sure I could build you what you need if you're interested. I'm already working on an improved dirt airstrip (still work in progress) as a special request so wouldn't be that much trouble.

Sorry for the confusion. I really meant what Wrench is referring to...actual modding of World War 2 era. Are there other limitations of the game engine though? For example, can a B-17 fire from all turret positions? How are the prop plane flight models? Any other "showstopper" issues that made it particularly challenging to mod for this era? Or was it more a lack of content and interest?

Easy enough to get it started... LOL @Mue, so under the GPL if I made this available I or anyone else can then subsequently take it and sell it? Or am I totally misunderstanding...

In my opinion, I could not disagree more and hate the way this is heading...The Developer of this Sim created an encrypted .LOD file format for a reason - to prevent theft and unauthorized distribution. I have never seen a post where the Developer has made a claim about not caring about reverse engineering - why do you think he ended up locking certain .LODs and other game components away then if he didn't care? Anyone can justify anything if they want, but it doesn't make it right. I'd personally prefer to see Thirdwire continue to go on it's own way and FlightGear do the same - I don't see what benefit Thirdwire or the community has in this arrangement - for example, do we suddenly get access to FlightGear assets? But I'm sure I'm again in the minority - seems to be just a free for all these days.

No - the game engine does NOT support Multi-Sub object texturing.

Hi Russ, don't forget this important tip as maybe it could be an issue as well...? As many of the models become higher and higher poly (digress to say some even overkill), you're going to have to think about slicing mesh components down to lower poly counts. Beyond a certain single mesh threshold, the game engine will simply not cast shadows (and same applies if you're using .tga transparencies and/or double-sided materials). I think it's something around 3000-4000 polys but can't recall exact count - so check that mesh piece! Otherwise another thing to try as a hack / workaround: place a small 1-sided cylinder/square/whatever directly in the engine innard and use a partially shaded/dark .tga texture to make the inside "look" darker (not ideal but could be quick fix).

Thanks Russ, much appreciated - that was about right...!

I can't recall, does anyone remember what the max poly/tri count is for a single mesh piece when exporting? There is an upper limit that if exceeded will crash 3ds Max...