Stwa

OK, now for the Commonwealth PTO and Commonwealth SEA regs. PTO = Pacific Theater of Operation, or it might mean just Australia, or it might be an early attempt at a regulation by SEAC. Basically the red is painted over with white. The Wiki states that the fin flash red is retained, but I didn't do that. SEA = South East Asia Command, in this case those in SEA and CBI, but not SWP? Anyway as PTO except the white has been replaced with a lighter blue color mixed with 50% white and 50% blue. Wiki says about mid 1942. Note: The under wing surface roundel, in both cases, is the same as the fuselage roundel.

So, now I have already entered the new decal names in all the ini files for Commonwealth birds. I will need to scale the upper roundels larger than the lower roundels on the wing surfaces. But I think I now have the correct colors and roundel proportions.

So, I must confess, the RAF roundel thingy is eating my lunch. However, I finally went with the Wiki source that shows all 15 roundels over time. The RAF roundels in WoX are using brighter colors, the ones in use since 1947. I am now paying attention to the type value, and assigning that to the decal name, so I can understand what I am using in the decal.ini file. So for WW2 I need 3 different types. And in the game RAFWW2 is nation 081. So here are the three decals I need; InsigniaA081 - goes on underside wing surfaces InsigniaA1081 - goes on the fuselage sides InsigniaB081 - goes on upper wing surface

Where have all the Spitfires gone, long time passing. Where have all the Spitfires gone, long time ago. Where have all the Spitfires gone, gone to Messerschmitts, everyone. When will they ever learn. When will they ever learn.

So, is this a BoB era skin? Dunno?

OK! These Brits sure are roundel happy. I was looking at a few pics of Tomahawks in North Africa. And they were using the upper surface roundel. [slaps forehead] So, in the decal.ini file, I had to specify the low visibility insignia. Of course, that makes one wonder what the PTO or SEA upper surface roundels looked like. Duh? So for those nation/services I just cloned the normal insignia to make a low visibility insignia.

Earlier in this topic, I alluded to the fact that I was not going to support Commonwealth Air Forces SEA. You must admit these "Commonwealth" designations are neither nations or services. And when subdividing one category with others, you cannot use a squadron with more than one nation/service. The only other solution, is to have more than one paint scheme, one that anticipates SEA or PTO roundels. In those cases only the decal.ini file changes. You might as well be back to the approach where the skin maker paints the roundels onto the skin. So, I will now provide the nation service Commonwealth Air Forces SEA. I have little knowledge of all the RAF roundel variations. But not only do they have different colors, the concentric circles can change in size as well. So I simply made a SEA roundel from a PTO roundel, by just changing its color, not its proportions.

The new nations that have been added to support this add-on are listed below. Commonwealth = Great Britain, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, or anyone else I forgot. All these nations, of course, have their own insignia. I am not sure of the PTO fin flash. (see attachment below) 1. American Volunteer Group 2. United States Army Air Corps 3. United States Army Air Force 4. United States Navy Early 5. Commonwealth Air Forces 6. Commonwealth Air Forces PTO 7. Commonwealth Navies

The Commonwealth birds have finished up one by one. So, for total non-experts like myself, I find using decals to way to go for all aircraft markings. It allows you to maximize the utility of the loadout screen. In so doing, the basic elements are all selectable, and you can even select the aircraft itself from this screen. TK is one smart cookie. And you can even fix it where the squadron id letters (on a RAF bird), can function like a SqBadgeXXX decal by using the decal name SqNameXXX. For, me I like the birds to look tidy, with minimal markings.

OK, After some deliberation, this is all I am going to do with Commonwealth markings.The letter to the right of the fuselage roundel, is the aircraft identifier (a letter), from A-Z. Normally, to the left of the roundel would be a two letter squadron code that names the squadron. But there could also be a squadron crest or badge (of sorts), beneath the canopy, adjacent to the pilot. The aircraft identifier character can be selected in the load-out screen. In real life all these characters formed a call sign for the pilot's aircraft. Per model mesh, this one is fuselage, you can only have 3 decals. So, 1 for roundel, 2 for aircraft identifier, and me thinks I will add 3, the squadron crest at some time in the future, when I can find some that I like. Oh, and I am not going to do Kill Markings for Commonwealth birds.

It may seem weird, but I do consider the add-on complete. All the birds work, the terrains are complete, and I have great air battles everyday. There has been good progress decorating the US birds, and they now have kill markings, squadron badges, a common numeral set, and selectable insignia for the various services. However, the commonwealth birds are lagging behind, and to make them appear more "commonwealth" I suggest the following decorations. 1. Get some Fin Flash on the vertical tail of each bird. (see below) 2. Get rid of all numerals on the birds. 3. Add some beeg honking letters onto the fuselage of each bird. Maybe these can change per squadron.

So, according to the Wiki a P-51A = Mustang Mk.II. Oui? Again, trying to constrain the limits of this add-on. I have decided that the nation/service Commonwealth Air Forces SEAC, will not be supported. SEAC did not come into existence until mid 1943. I wanted to limit everything to 1942 at the latest. I am allowing an exception with the P-51A, which starts in 1943.

Ok, removing the painted on roundels is too easy on a USAAF bird. You just make a copy of each wingtip where there IS NOT a roundel. Then flip the copy horizontally and paste it over the wingtip where there IS a roundel. Be careful to line it up, usually using some rivet pattern. But what are these white stripes. Are these invasion stripes? Because this bird was easy to make operational, and because I like it so much, I am going to allow it into the add-on, but with a few caveats. It can retain its 1943 start date, but this is the only bird to be allowed to start this late. I will use the initial USAAF roundels. And I have decided for all USAAF birds these roundels will be applied to both wings, top and bottom surfaces.

A-36As had also served with the 311th Fighter Bomber Group in the China-Burma-India theater. The 311th had arrived in Dinjan, India by late summer 1943 after being shipped across the Pacific via Australia. Two squadrons were equipped with the A-36A while the third flew P-51As. -Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_A-36_Apache So going forward into 1943 with this add-on, me thinks a P-51A would be a lot of fun. And Wolf just happens to have a model of this bird. And Stary just happens to have a A-36 cockpit. Close enough for government work! I will ditch the white stripes, and of course paint out the roundels, and substitute decals, etc.

The squadron badges are rolling in. I have got a method using Gimp and they take just a few minutes each. Sometimes less! So, at the Patch site, I look for anything CBI or SWP, or ones identified to the birds I have added, or just ones that look cool to me.

So now, everything can be selected from the Loadout Screen.

So, I have been very diligent with one aspect of this add-on; the term or phrase "WW2" is never displayed in game.

I had no idea what to expect when it came to WW2 stuff using WoV/WoE. I found it to be completely smooth in operation and very enjoyable. You have a lot of moments, when you can fly within meters of an enemy aircraft and stare down the pilot "eye to eye". But, I found myself totally lacking in essential details. For instance, roundels. I needed to research simple things like; on what wing surfaces should I place a roundel. I would like to use all US roundels at some point. There are two others. But I am not sure if the P-40B Warhawk ever saw the 1943 roundels. And then I found that the P-40B was not equipped for bombs or fuel tanks. This all occurred with the P-40C (Tomahawk IIB) model? The cool thing about the CBI theater; it remained active throughout the war. Here is a link to an outstanding site. Everyone should consider donating to this site. http://wwiisquadronpatches.com/NationalInsigniaHistoryUSAircraft.html

At this point I really should point out that most of the screenshots in this topic were taken using Edward's Burma terrain. I would like to thank Edward for this terrain. It is top notch. There was some issue with the underlying index values in the HFD. I am not sure if that was done on purpose, because the mountains look way cool. I typically like to smooth the terrains. But here Edward has achieved a nice balance. I was able to take a 400 km square from this HFD to make the Rangoon terrain. In my experience, when you do that, you must perform your own auto-texture which changes the appearance slightly. In addition, the Rangoon terrain is mostly south Burma and relevant to early 1942 pitting the AVG and the Japanese Empire. Also, I would like to thank Jim Farmer aka Wolf257. I do not know this person, or anything about his saga with the WW2 birds, some of which are featured in this topic. Like Edward's terrain, I found these aircraft top notch. And if they were built to a different standard, because of their age, I would remind everyone that they superseded the original game. Jim was listed as a tester way back when. And note Dave on this list as well. Anyone that founds something that succeeds, could be determined to be visionary.

OK, I scaled them down about 20% and me thinks all four rows can fit between the wing root and the canopy. So its 10 kill markings, but that means 50 kills in pilot record. The max is 20 kill markings.

I thought I would show a few pics that illustrate how the kill marks work in my WW2 stuff. So, for every 5 kills you record in your pilot record, you will be awarded 1 kill mark on your aircraft. The kill marks are painted on 5 to a row, and a maximum of 4 rows, for a total of 20 kill marks, or 100 kills on your pilot record.

There is one skin in what I collected so far that does require black numbers. I used USMCNum(s) already resident in the Object.cat. Check out the USAAC Silver P-36. And it also gets a squadron badge.

There is one thing that I just had to correct in the aircraft decals. That is the black 3 number scheme. As it turns out, after checking out many images on-line, most birds from this era were using mainly white numbers. I had applied the GermanNum(s) from the game. But white letter schemes are rare even in WoX, so I took the AVGNum(s) from one of the downloaded birds, and changed each one to use a centerline approach, i.e. not a justified approach. That decal set I placed in the Decals folder in the Object folder. This way decals could be specified without having to apply a directory tree prefix to each decal entry in the paint scheme's decal ini file. I had already done the same thing with all the WW2 nation/service insignia. So I could really just pitch all the decals that came with any downloaded aircraft or skin. Then I made sure this white number set was used by all WW2 allied aircraft; P-36, P-39, P-40, and F4F. This method saves a ton of decal file space, and it centralizes decals so they may be reused by many birds. If something needs to be changed it is in only one file in only one folder.