Dej

'No Parachute' covers eight months, from May '17 to January '18 and is effectively a diary of that period. 'Open Cockpit' covers a longer period, from AGL's training in 1916 through to his training others to fly Camels up to and just after the Armistice. It's maybe more of a true WW1 service memoir, but is nevertheless, essentially more of what you have in 'No Parachute' but without the diary element. Some people consider 'Open Cockpit' to be the better book, I prefer 'No Parachute'... chacun á son gôut.

Anyone here who's a subscriber to Cross & Cockade will have seen this but for those as aren't, the Royal Air Force Museum has released a whole bunch of WW1 aviation-related photographs on Flickr and are inviting people to add such information as they can or wish to, whether it be identifying an aircraft type, or a person... anything that adds to the knowledge basically. Here's a link to the Cross & Cockade page which will tell you more... http://www.crossandc....asp?Display=79 It's worth a look just for the photos, anyway.

Wikipaedia will give you all the gen, Olham. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM

I'm with you there BH, One of the greatest games of all time. I've been eagerly awaiting this new one and have it on pre-order. Meantime I've had some fun with Aliens vs. Humans on the iPhone which is just the combat bit but faithfully implemented nonetheless.

Yes, I've been visiting 2A for quite some time now. The members are, so far as I can tell, sticklers for accuracy and when they say an aerodrome was at X, it pretty much was.

I supply below what I have for Italian and Austro-Hungarian units and aerodrome assignments. But as you correctly recognise, there is little detail in respect of precisely where the aerodromes were located (find the town that shares the aerodrome's name and pick a likely looking field) and precisely when a unit arrived and when it left. As I've mostly concentrated on the Western Front in this area of historical collation the below is an even less detailed WiP. But you're welcome to it if it's of any use. I'm working my way painfully slowly through 'I reparti dell'aviazione italiana nella Grande Guerra' and may be able to provide more later. Italian Campaign Units.doc

Haven't seen this posted here yet. Those as don't frequent The Aerodrome may like to know that the first volume of the Esc. Lafayette's daily operating journal is up at the Internet Archive in facsimile and text form. Link Here (facsimile version) . A fascinating document... on a besoin de français, naturellement!

In case you've not checked, Volume 2 10/09/1917 - 26/02/1918 now available... http://archive.org/d...cadrilleN124j00

Iti, as a fellow amateur in the matter of 3D rendered artwork I appreciate how demoralising it is to the artistic Muse to be urged to change art for the sake of historical accuracy. But history has equal validity with art and you are giving your work an historical context by your caption in which you state "On 25th of July, around 19:50, Lothar Freiherr von Richthofen shot down a Camel somewhere over Fismes, France. It was his 30th victory! I have no idea if this is anywhere near to how it could look..." It is that last point that I draw your attention to... it is a real event you are depicting and you DO have an idea, LvR wasn't flying a DR.1, thus your depiction cannot therefore be LvR's 30th victory. When I posted my first rendered artwork here, 'Fateful Morn I', I used a stock hangar model I had and in my caption stated that the image was set at Bertangles aerodrome in November 1916. JFM pointed out that the hangar models were inaccurate and kindly sent me reference photographs. In later correspondence on the subject as I laboriously built more accurate 3D hangar models Jim said he thought he might best have 'kept his mouth shut' as the image had merit on its own. But I'm glad he didn't, because, let me assure you, it is MUCH, MUCH more satisfying to produce an image that imagines a scene in a correct historical setting, than not. If you look at the work of any artist who depicts historic scenes with aircraft or sailing ships or trains: Robert Taylor, Nicholas Trudgian, Mark Postlethwaite, Roy Cross, Geoff Hunt et al. they ALL strive for historical accuracy, markings, rigging, livery etc. By all means keep this artwork unchanged, it IS very good indeed, and you can say that it shows an imagined but unrecorded victory of LvR in a Dr.1 over a Camel and no one can dispute that.

Best of Luck, BH. Keep Safe.

Nice iti. As BH says, a bit of work on the reflection channel of the material would be worth it. I generaly create a copy of the texture and block out wings, fuselage empennage etc in shades of balck through white depending on how refelctive they seem to be in old photos. I use a Multiply mix on the channel set initially to 15% and the Brightness set initially to 25% (these need tweaking for different textures). Lighting will give you problems trying to do a composite of a 3d model over a 2d image of another machine, but you've done a very good job here. You might consider projecting your 2d image onto a plane in your scene, positioned so the camera sees exactly what you have above, it may help blend it in. Experiment with Global Illumination and Ambiant Occlusion in your render settings too... depending on your version of C4D. Also Lothar seems a tad high in the cockpit, but that may be my error.

Very nice, iti. I have a slight reservation about the depth of bump mapping on the propeller... maybe less deep? The engine also looks a bit too clean and glossy and uniformly black. When using 2D figures in 3D scenes (and it's a handy thing to do because there are a great many out there) I find it advantaqgeous to set up the 3D scene lighting to match that of the 2D image first. It makes a huge disfference to how well the 2D image blends in. The above presumes that you are using the 2D image as a texture on a plane primitive, rather than PSing it in after rendering.

Well, I dare say a dumbell is highly appropriate when one's kite is done up like a god-damn big top! What's wrong with PC-10? My fiancée liked the colour so much we're getting married in it... goes with her eyes and does, luckily, detract from her moustache. NOTE TO SELF: Beer Goggles. Main point of issue, les Estaminets...

Grub Street appear to have reprinted Arthur Gould Lee's companion work to the seminal 'No Parachute'. There are copies available on Amazon and eBay.

Your recommendation and summary are good enough for me, BH. Ordered,

Crazy, because it's BARMY OFFers, not BOOZY OFFers. Although...

I think he'll need a variation on the standard OFF badge... [EDIT]Revised Image... forgot the pin.[/EDIT]

I checked against my mapping project data... It's map 062WW1 in Sector 51b... should anyone ask.

Well, Pink Camels were a matter of controversy, HW. Especially No. 9. LINK

HouseHobbit's not alone, you know... For polka dots consider Georg Noth's D.III while in Jasta 2, par example. And then there's Rudolf Stark's lilac-painted D.VII while in Jasta 35b. Can't recall ever seeing a pink Camel though ... Mind you, now I come to think about it I may have seen one overhead when I was lying face down in the grass outside my tent after the last BOC Mess party.

You linked a link, not a graphic, Olham. This is the code you should be using, I think: [img=http://combatace.com/uploads/gallery/album_796/tn_gallery_46143_796_162740.jpg] Previewed okay for me, anyway To be properly scholarly about it, you should probably provide the links for the maps you used over at McMasters too, or at least give the map sector and name.

I know a song about this... The fella's definitely BARMY!

Nice work, Olham! I hope you're posting this over at The Aerodrome too. I think Mike O'Connor visits there and your detective work provides a more definitive position for the aerodrome than he attempts in 'In The Footsteps Of The Red Baron'.