Bandy

Hello! This is a simple touch up job of some tiles from Edward’s Photorealistic tile set for Flanders, although surprise yourself and definitely try these tiles in the Vogesen and other terrains as well. Thank you Gepard, Vogesen continues to be a favorite single mission destination for me. While the new tile sets are certainly welcome (thank you gentlemen!), they come at a cost for some people with old(er) systems. The photorealistic tile set still looks great with the new atmospheric mods and consistently runs superbly. If your system can take the extra load make sure you try Stary’s Flightengine.ini mod to push the horizon out and greatly reduce the ugly gray band. Thank you Stary, those few simple lines of code have rejuvenated FE for me, and I am sure for others as well. Included are two versions of Flanders coastal tiles (redone for consistent sea colour) that have: 1) a turquoise drop shadow to fake depth to the beach, and 2) coastal tiles without drop shadow. Also retouched are coast trench tiles, airfield tile to blend in more with surroundings, all the river tiles for consistent colour, and miscellaneous touch ups to various ground bmp tiles. Also included are Rhein river photoreal tiles for Vogesen. If there is any interest I'll touchup photorealistic winter coastal tiles. Thank you Edward, TK, Mike Dora for putting me on the idea and your feedback, and all 3rd party modders who make this a great community.

Hi don246, Oops! Yes, a little voice was nagging me that I had missed something/forgot to include something in the zip. A readme! The upload is now revised... Basically if you have installed Flanders terrain drop all the Coast files into that folder BUT choose between either the drop shadow or non-drop shadow coastal tiles. The other Photorealisitc tiles (river, airfield, etc.) also drop into the Flanders folder. The Rhein tiles go into Vogesen terrain folder, but would work only if you replace your current Vogesen tiles with the photorealistic tiles from Flanders. Back up before you replace! HERE is where many people diverge in their terrain folder setup and so it is impossible to provide a single install path. You'll have to figure out what tile sets you like visually. You can consolidate various seasonal terrain tile options within the Cambrai terrain folder. There is no need to duplicate these tile sets between terrains, so save HD space and just have the various terrain.ini's reference the Cambrai folder. That said, however, there are no photorealistic 'rough' tiles yet specifically for the Cambrai terrain. A way to consolidate the terrain folder and tile sets is explained in an earlier readme HERE Hope this helps.

From the look of Jan's wondrous screen shots he is painstakingly adding trees (both alive and dead), buildings, telephone posts, even cows (!), and who knows what else... to each terrain tile, and there are lots of them. My guess is that there are many tiles yet to go before release, and it isn't surprising that the project has been going since June. This is attention to detail (if I may humbly say) we have not seen before and cannot -- should not-- be rushed, though I do sympathize with all those who wait patiently. Let's give him another 2 weeks... Keep up the awesome work Jan!

File Name: Photorealisitic Tiles touch up File Submitter: B Bandy RFC File Submitted: 09 Nov 2009 File Updated: 09 Nov 2009 File Category: First Eagles Terrain and Environmental Mods Hello! This is a simple touch up job of some tiles from Edward’s Photorealistic tile set for Flanders [http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=4424], although surprise yourself and definitely try these tiles in Gepard's Vogesen terrain [http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=5933], and other terrains as well. Thank you Edward and all those who contributed to the Flanders environment and campaigns, TK and those unnamed at Thirdwire, and thank you Mike Dora for your original idea to redo the coastal tiles for consistency and your feedback and encouragement. Apologies if I have inadvertently forgotten to thank somebody, but thank you to all 3rd party moddders. While the new tile sets are certainly welcome (thank you gentlemen!), they come at a cost for some people with old(er) systems. The photorealistic tile set still looks great with the new atmospheric mods and consistently runs superbly. If your system can take the extra load make sure you try Stary’s Flightengine.ini mod to push the horizon out and greatly reduce the ugly gray band. Thank you Stary, those few simple lines of code have rejuvenated FE for me, and I am sure for others as well. Included are two versions of Flanders coastal tiles (redone for consistent sea colour) that have: 1) a subtle turquoise drop shadow to add visual interest and fake depth to the beach, and 2) coastal tiles without drop shadow for those who've seen the channel coast! Also retouched are coast trench tiles, Frairfield tile to blend in more with surroundings, all the river tiles for consistent colour, and miscellaneous touch ups to various ground bmp tiles. Also included are Rhein river photoreal tiles for Vogensen. Copy to backup your Flanders and Vogesen terrain folder (to return to if you don’t like, or something ugly happens) and simply overwrite the old tiles. Any problems please PM me here, but remember, in life nothing is perfect... Click here to download this file

Thanks for the info Jan, and glad to hear it won't hurt too much. I'm really looking forward to hedge-hopping those beautiful forests!!! Now, if only hitting those trees meant something in-game, ah to dream... edit: Jan, from your screen shots I just noticed how you have integrated deciduous trees (with leaves) into the edges of larger coniferous forests (needles). This is exactly how these forests grow. I am SUPER impressed by your attention to detail, I'm loving it!!!

Jan the screenies do look great, please keep up the great work! But I have to ask the hard question some of us are thinking, what system specs are you using? Looks like a fps killer

Good luck, sorry to hear of your misfortune...

Hi, Been flying in the N17 off and on for a month now, especially in Peter01's winter campaign (Thanks Peter!), and am finding my AI pilots to be at a distinct disadvantage in late 1916. An anecdote. While leading a flight of 6 x N17's to intercept some bombers, we engaged I think it was 2 Fok DIII's. We had some altitude advantage so I set my wingmates after the Fokkers, while I left to go after the 2 Walfisch (who are just nasty bad at fighting back and generally maneuvering their crates like scouts...great fun to engage them!!!). I came back to find none of my AI N17's had survived and the two Fokkers came after me. They were named aces if I remember correctly. The bottom line is that I flew the SPAD VII in that same campaign just before, and managed to finish it. The N17 was not a bad aircraft at that time, it was super maneuverable. So I started to fly that campaign as German and discovered that the AI N17's seem to just "give up" and fly off in random directions (not always 'home') only to be chased down and finished off by German AI. I followed one N17 for miles occassionally holing his canvas to see if I could get him to fight back, and no go. Perhaps the AI N17's are not pushing their buses to outfly their opponents because of the G-restrictions and loosing wings (the N17 does loose them very easily in tight turns, when historically it was pulling out of a dive that was deadly). Maybe they are also running out of ammo and leaving, or perhaps they are not reloading (if lewis N17) or unjamming their guns. I'll look into it a bit and report, but thought I'd throw this observation out there to see if anyone concurs.

Sounds interesting, and so looked in that location mentioned, but nothing. Have you uploaded elsewhere? What does the mod do BTW??? EDIT: oops saw the other thread and screenies, thanks!

As far as I know, there is no way to NOT be the flight leader. I think there was a thread a few years back. However, you can change the order of the flight roster in the 'loadout' section when preparing for a mission. Just delete all the pilots the game assigned to your mission on the 'roster screen', then click to choose the order and who you want to be in your flight. You are 1-1, then 1-2 ... I always put a ranking officer behind me as 1-2, then some junior pilots up to aircraft 1-4, then another ranking officer as 2-1 etc... It doesn't make much difference since the commands to attack etc. affect everyone instead of by flight. However, when in campaign, choosing who goes out and who needs a rest can make a difference. You have to manage your resources (pilots) to last through the campaign. In campaigns where you fly in disadvantaged aircraft (ie where the enemy has the technology advantage) then you need to put more aircraft in the sky to even things out. But basically your AI flight gets smoked most of the time... Flying this way and nursing pilots to ace status, watching over them, can be more rewarding than getting multiple kills.

Hey Don246, Where are you flying?

Actually water TGA's need to be saved as 32 bit versions. After futsing about trying to get the Vogesen Rhein tiles to be rendered at all (from other thread -- summer Rhein tiles need to be in Vogesen folder itself, not the summer seasonal folder in Cambrai. Other seasonal Rhein tiles need to be in their respective Cambrai seasons, of course ), I went back to my psd files and regenerated the Rhein tga's to discover that 24 bit does not mask the water effect, only 32 bit did.

I have an old version of Photoshop CS2, picked up at an educational price while taking some web courses at a local community college. It was still pricey, but a good deal considering the savings. Yes, need to save the tga's I believe at 24 bit. Interlaced is for web-based graphics, not for games. See your PM, I'll send my email...

Mike, From our PMs it sounds like adjusting the alpha channel is just not working because it affects all of the tile. Perhaps what needs to be done is to adjust just the painted layer, i.e. darken or brighten the land only and leave the sea alone if you managed to match it between tiles (no mean feat, I tried and gave up). It'll be a potentially painful process of trial and error to get the butting land tiles to match, but the results will be worth it. Not sure of the capabilities of the image adjusting program you are using, but your results look d@mn fine, so you should be able to do it. You might have to re-create the land layers within each of the tiles, but it looks/sounds like you already have made layered tiles so the battle is well over half done. best of luck, best regards!

Hello, I've encountered this problem with the two Rhine river tiles in Vogesen terrain, BUT only during the summer season. Turning your head or approaching closer to the problem will cause other river tga patterns to flash in and out. To trouble shoot I've started missions in all other seasons, and the Rhein is fine; it only appears in the summer. I've taken other seasonal Rhine tiles (i.e. same file name) that DO WORK in their respective seasons and put them in the summer season folder, and still get this problem below. As far as I can tell, it isn't the files themselves, but I'm at a loss to explain or resolve the problem.

Thanks Mike, Perhaps the only set of Rhine tiles I did not try was Gepard's originals, then again I may have, but just don't remember since it seemed I tried everything I could think of. To tell you the truth, I cannot say for certain whether I ever flew Vogesen in the summer before now. Since flying Vogesen means 'single mission', I usually fly in the winter to see the snow on the mountains... back to the drawing board!

FROM LINK HERE short answer, update your directX via M$... D3dx9_31.dll errors typically appear when a software program, usually a video game, is started. In non-game applications, a d3dx9_31.dll error might appear when the programs starts or before graphics features of the program are used. Cause of D3dx9_31.dll Errors All d3dx9_31.dll issues are caused in one way or another by a single issue - a problem with Microsoft DirectX. The d3dx9_31.dll file is one of many files contained in the DirectX software collection. Since DirectX is utilized by most Windows based games and other advanced graphics programs, d3dx9_31.dll errors usually show up only when using these programs. Resolution Important Note: Do not, under any circumstances, download the d3dx9_31.dll DLL file individually from any "DLL download site." There are a number of different reasons that downloading DLLs from these sites are never a good idea. Note: If you've already downloaded d3dx9_31.dll from a DLL download site, remove it from wherever you put it and continue with the following steps. 1. Restart your computer if you haven't already. The d3dx9_31.dll error might be a one-time issue and a simple restart could clear it up completely. It's unlikely this will fix the problem, but restarting is always a good first step with nearly any problem. 2. Install the latest version of Microsoft DirectX 9. Chances are, upgrading to the latest version of DirectX 9 will fix the d3dx9_31.dll not found error. EDIT: beat me bucky!

Yes, you can hide behind clouds, it works! But hard to get there, and then you really have a hard time finding the enemy again. No wind as far as I know, but sometimes it sure feels like it. No, AFAIK the AI do not use the same level of flight engine as player. If you are on hard flight model, the AI is normal flight model. But this doesn't make as much difference as you may think. The AI is amazing, but not as apt to take you out at long range... watch your 6 always! The 3rdwire (stock game) cockpits are much better, but few 3rd party mods are as good, however, many 3rd party planes use the stock cockpits. Get both, play both for different reasons. Enjoy.

Best make your response a sticky Wrench, as more folks will be asking as they find out more about propheads forum... I'm sensing some, shall we say, 'rawness' surrounding this topic?

OK, deactivating the ENB series files does seem to help with the fps and the horizon mod as outlined above. I was using a version of the ENB ini file posted over at 3rdWire that was supposidely specifically tweaked for 3rdWire games. There are many folks saying it does wonders for fps, best thing since sliced bread in fact , even without the bloom effect activated, but as others say not with XP... Enjoying the change in scenery, many thanks!!!

@ Stary, I've tried the flightengine.ini tweaks mentioned above (and is the same in the Gibraltar readme if not mistaken), but they cause my fps to drop to the teens while on/near the ground, and by half (from 40's to 20's) in the air with only an occasional rise to the 30's. It looks beautiful, but the performance hit is just too much. I've tried to dial some of these tweaks back a bit (the clip and farscenedetail so far) to between stock and your recommendations, and have recovered some fps. BUT if you happen to know, what variables in you mod have the biggest hit on performance??? Now, you mention turning off ENB series also, but do you mean the effect itself (shift-F12) or just remove the files? Some have posted that there appears to be a fps benefit by just having the files in the game folder, with the effect not activated, and from what I see this is may be true. I'm still on XP (for now) so not getting all the benefit from what I've heard... My rig is not top notch, but not a slouch either: XP Pro (looking forward to 64 bit...) 2.66 x 4 GHz Xeon processors 3 GB RAM 667 XFX 4870 1 GB

That is AWESOME!!! It just makes you wanna fly in it, without any objective! With this terrain FE will surpass the visual experience of any of the current WWI sims... Re-read your post Stary, what the heck are you apologizing for large images for???

Hello all, I am not sure when this FX problem arose in my game, but I've only recently noticed that in certain conditions burning aircraft smoke leaves some VERY UNSIGHTLY effects behind. Please see below. Has anyone else experienced this??? If not, some file or path is likely missing or broken in my game alone. I've tried to trouble shoot the issue as much as possible, and will continue to do so, but hopefully somebody can save me some time. By removing various 3rd party FX ini files one at time (and so forth) I've isolated it to the AircraftSmokeEffect.ini file, and the bug is repeatable --it is in THAT file. This file has a date of May 29, 2009 but apologies I am unsure who created it, and that isn't important for the most part. This is the first time I noticed the problem. I believe I just hit the Fokker in the engine as there was a belch of smoke, but no subsequent fire or trailing smoke to speak of. Then I saw that in other instances the damaged smoke trail was leaving funky squares behind as well. I believe this is in combination with Starey's recent mod, and I like the more thready look to his smoke trail rather than the thick "tail" that disappears a bit too quickly. So I disabled the smoke trail, [Emitter Type 004] I believe, and in the next test flight (at this point I was aiming to collide!) witnessed this bizarre effect. As mentioned, this is the effect of two aircraft colliding, so likely smoke and(?) fire emitters. To me it looks like a smoke material file is missing, or reference/directory path is broken, but I assure you I haven't monkeyed around in the FX folder or ini files until this started happening. I'll poke around in the AircraftSmokeEffect.INI file some more to try to narrow down which emitter is the culprit, but so far disabling the usual suspects has not resolved the unwanted effect. I have an ATI 4870 card, running with an aftermarket cooler, so I know it isn't overheating... Please post if something strikes you as a possibility, and most certainly if you've seen it before. Thank you!

Thanks for reply guys, I saw the Flaksmoke.tga reference in Emitter005 earlier yesterday, and that was the one I disabled first. It only got rid of the trailing smoke, not the blocks at aircraft engine and/or fuel tank explosion. I'll have to post the ini later on. At this point, since it looks like nobody else has seen this and is my problem alone, I'm thinking I'll just start from scratch with either a backup stock file (which works), and then introduce 3rd party emitter effects one by one. Later!

@ Veltro2k, That is great news! And a nice model by all appearances!!! Please keep going with the project, it is a very important addition for the early years. Always wanted to hammer out a Battle of France Campaign. Maybe some year. PS: who were the bandits? I can't read from the screen shot.