gerwin

The stock objects have low detail distance lods which make all the difference. Compare having an entire airfield in view with parked aircraft and groundobjects all in full detail LODs, or in low detail LODs because they are too far to see details anyways. Edit: This guy does a great job with Il-2 1946 distance Lods, as seen in the illustrations: http://patrulla-azul.com/FreeIL2modding/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1682 But it sure is tedious, I know....

No such ambitions really. TK's auto-tiling function and the TOD object generator are way too much work. The user interface part of the programming library that I use, also crashes on modern systems. That is one reason for the minimal user interface in TFDtool. But I will just keep on adding to TFDtool whatever seems fun at the time. Version 1.03 is up now. Changes are: - Target Successor procedure, to automate the process of groundobject changeovers after a certain date: Like USJeep becomes USJeep2 (Humvee) in 1983. See also the topic linked below. This means that TFDtool got the functionality to write a complete targets.ini file. It was tested to recreate all stock targets ini files with complete accuracy, From SFP1 Desert up to SF2NA Iceland. It does not overwrite the original targets-file. It is advised to keep backups and check the results yourself. - Shows ground targets with a successor, with the changeover year. As pointed out by the red arrow in the screenshot. - A new F2 options dialog, with buttons for functions that were formerly only accesable by hotkeys. (I started to lose track of all these functions and buttons.) - Tweaked target file reading so it does not crap out on all the trees in SF2NA iceland. - Improved the tile info dialog with a bigger preview picture and TOD statistics. Moved the texture reload function to this dialog. - Clip-paste of tiles with the N-key: the keys [ and ] can now be used to adjust the size of the painting area. (Requested by Menrva)

I don't think I even had a signature before, But it is a good idea so I added it just now. Adding these things to the terrains is tedious: InActiveYear does not work as such in the terrain types.ini. Fortunately ActiveYear=1983 does work there. The rest is to be done in the Targets file: Edit existing targets by adding an InActiveYear=1982 to them, Then copy them over to the end of the targetarea and change them to the new type, with a new sequential target number of course. TFDtool will need an update to do such a thing automatically for a loaded Targets file, for any specified old Type + new Type + InActiveYear. For example: Type 'BRDM' becomes 'BRDM2' after 1982. Type 'USTruck' becomes 'USTruck2' (M977_HEMTT) after 1982. Type 'USFuelTruck' becomes 'USFuelTruck2' (M978_HEMTT) after 1982. Type 'USJeep' becomes 'USJeep2' (M1025 HMMWV) after 1982. Or any such groundobject mod from this site.

I finished the M978 HEMTT Fuel truck past weekend. At least up to Beta level, as the texturing of the fuel-trailer is still rather plain. This groundobject can now be downloaded from my website. It makes these airfields look so much more modern. In addition these three models were updated: The M977 HEMTT, BRDM-2 and BRDM-2-SA-9.

Waybackmachine can't retrieve all, but yes $29.99 it was in 2017. Wings over Vietnam used to be $14.99 (50% off!) years ago. Some DLCs used to be cheaper then others ones, at $2,99. Now the DLCs are all the same price. I bought another four DLCs this month anyways. https://web.archive.org/web/20170723220239/https://store.thirdwire.com/store_w7_all.htm

Thanks, Well no problem on the ETA of new aircraft, I am sure the existing ones will offer plenty of challenges already. Achievements unlocked so far: 1) Ka-50 manual startup completed. 2) A-10A Maverick fired. 3) Emptied all rounds in an M1A2 Abrams tank. Two other differences between DCS and Strike Fighters I forgot to mention: DCS has proper helicopters and a summer sale. Strike Fighters only has hacky support for helicopters and the games+DLCs just got more expensive.

This month I finally gave in and started messing around with flaming Cliffs 2 and then also DCS World. It seems like the opposite of Strike Fighters. Pro's: Modern Jets, Great packaging and documentation, Detailed systems. Cons: Not very Moddable /DRM / Limited flyables and planeset. What they share is the merging of all content in one game. My desktop computer is very lightweight and it seems best to stick to an older version of DCS world like 1.2.3. Which runs OK. So I was hoping for this summer sale to come up and immediately bought FC3, Ka-50, CA, P-51D yesterday. Besides A-10C these are already all supported modules in 1.2.3. Happy to say all these modules work very well. :) (In case someone got a backup of DCS 1.2.4 or 1.2.5 + Matching module installers, I would be interested in a copy)

Thanks for making this! The instructions are clear on how to make an specific nation for airliners, what I wonder about though; what is the reason (what are the benefits) of doing it this way. Because I really like all the possible varieties of these 707-300 skins, but wonder how to force the game to use as much variety as possible when generating missions. Either for parked planes or just random flights. Also the formations ini says something about 5 planes, but should they not fly solo? I guess I am not at all familiar with the formations ini...

This skin looks very nice. The panel lines are subtle and they do look realistic that way. Much detail there at the exhausts with the brakes. Hope you consider to add a distance lod as well.

TFDtool v1.01 is now available. Based on the constructive comments from Menrva and Krfrge it got these improvements: - New planning map airfield icons (and a slightly different icon inside the TFDtool view). Also changed color settings, so targets which are not 'ENEMY' will show in blue instead of red. - More planning map options. Comes with a dialog inside TFDtool (the settings there are not saved back to the ini.). - Hopefully fixed a bug where the keyboard input would no longer be read, and only the mouse would work. - Mouse scrollwheel zoom in / zoom out can now access all magnification levels, like keyboard zoom.

This is the topic that I maintained about the Classic IcelandNA Terrain. The download location is mentioned right at the top there. I host my own website with a humble Strike Fighters Downloads section. That may have confused you.

Nice Review! Early 2012 was an exciting time for fans of the series. I actually have to play around with the SF2NA campaign and such, since I was always too busy modding it instead. The Naval War features are really interesting and added welcome new gameplay to the game. PS. Stary's tileset you linked to requires and older version of my IcelandNA terrain mod. I don't think that version is available for download anywhere. The latest IcelandNA Classic terrain introduced brown rock transition tiles. A full tileset is included with the Terrain mod anyways, but it has a lower resolution compared to Stary's.

Yes, that is a nice idea. Please send me these airfield icons and I will try to get that working. The only difficulty is that I do have a bitmap rotation procedure in TFDtool, as to rotate the stock airport map overlays, but it gives a rather pixelated result. Instead of making some tricky weighed rotation, I want to paste these icons on a higher resolution internal planningmap (4096x4096) and then downscale that one weighed. That is actually how it works since this week already, so it should be a straightforward task.

You catched another bug there, thanks for pointing that out. I wont bore you with what caused it, but it is fixed in the new v1.00 of TFDtool. I made the planning map generation a little faster, and updated the manual a little.

TFDtool v0.99 was uploaded a minute ago. The errors you described are fixed now. Actually that was the only half the work. I had to improve the downscaling, since the planning map of the Bering Strait map had a bad moire pattern. There is a weighed downscaling of all planning maps now. See image. PS: Any future change of TFDtool will flip the version to 1.00. Which seems like it means something, but it is just a coincidence.

OK thanks for explaining. I can now see the bug with the emboss 4x function. It is indeed not smart enough to handle more exotic tilemap/heightmap ratios. I will try to improve the procedure in the coming week.

This is supposed to work, and tested to work with one example. But it may very well be in need of improvement. Manual: "...supports a few different tilemap to heightmap ratios: 1:1, 1:2, 1:4 (=stock) and 1:8. The ratio is automatically detected. Note that TFDtool has not been tested with all combinations." If targets are shown in the wrong place of because of a tile scale other then 2000m, then the "Tile_Scale=2000" parameter can be added to tfdtool.cfg, and set to the matching value. Is it possible to send me your terrain project? that is the fastest way to troubleshoot this.

May 2012 is the last non-cheating version. Edit: I use the above version, but I did replace MissionEditor.dll with the one from july 2012: "Mission Editor not saving out fleets with two or more carriers is fixed." The cheating I am talking about is IIRC increased damage from player missiles versus the damage of computer launched missiles