Geezer

Yes. Mostly it was psychological - you want a .45 in your hand if you are going down a dark alley. Also, some Communist pilots weren't trained well enough to use their range advantage, and would close on the B-52, allowing the tail guns to get some hits.

Apologies for not answering sooner. Sure, some medals would be greatly appreciated.

Gterl has not been able to work on the mod recently, but may resume work soon. Meanwhile, I am working on ground objects. You can track progress at the SCW thread: http://combatace.com/topic/86464-spanish-civil-war/

Thanks. It will be a while before the Spanish Civil War mod is complete, but I assume Gterl would not object to someone borrowing his tile art. Should ask him to be certain. Meanwhile, I hope to tinker with 2048 size tile art for SF. They won't look as good as FE tiles, but they should look a bit better than current SF tiles.

Shot below shows same colors used late-war in a kind of splinter camo.

OK - send me everything you can. I am already up to my eyeballs in work for Gterl's Spanish Civil War mod, but I'll tinker with the Range once in a while. Gterl is making dynamite 1024 terrain art for Spain - sample below.

The above map is Gterl's WW1 Italian Front map running in FE2, using Jan Tuma's 512x512 artwork (with occasional higher res art showing better furrows, fields, etc). Desert shots below show really large experimental 2048x2048 artwork applied to SF2-sized ground tiles. The "problem" is SF and FE have different sized ground tiles. So artwork that looks pretty good in FE does not look so good in SF because it must be stretched across a ground tile sixteen times larger than the FE tile. Larger artwork, such as the 2048x2048 desert art, looks like it is the only workable way to improve SF2 terrain at low altitude. Assuming several dozen examples of 2048 art were to get made, the problem becomes one of frame rate performance. Has anyone ever tried using 2048 art in a large SF map? I am busy with lots of other stuff, but if someone was willing to make an experimental map I would be willing to donate a few 2048x2048 examples of desert art.

Steve - Looking good, especially the cockpit.

More shots...

Progress shot of BoB camo, plus first stab at hi-res ground tiles.

My hitch in the USAF was spent maintaining B-52 tail gun systems. All B-52s through (and including) the G-model were equipped with MD-9/ASG-15 fire control systems, armed with four .50 machine guns. Only the H-model was equipped with the ASG-21 fire control system, armed with a 20mm Vulcan rotary cannon. Early radar-directed gunnery systems had difficulty getting enough 20mm cannon hits to destroy a target quickly. A .50 machine gun had a higher rate of fire than a 20mm cannon, so closely concentrating four of them in a turret created a kind of flying shotgun that would get more hits than a slower firing 20mm cannon. Eventually two things happened to change this: - Airborne radar gradually improved to where it could precisely, and continuously, track and hit a target - The Vulcan Gatling gun had a higher rate of fire than conventional 20mm canons or .50 machine guns The two combined to guarantee enough hits in a short engagement time. At about the same time, improvements in air-to-air missiles extended their effective range beyond a 20mm cannon's range, so the cannons were eventually removed to save weight. The flying shotgun:

Stephen1918: your samples above look really promising. You're going in a good direction! I was wondering how many different kinds of smoke columns there are. Most photos generally show smoke going up much higher before dissipating. Are there some already existing smoke effects that rise up much higher, or are new smoke effects needed?

The terrain is gterl's excellent WW1 Italian front map for FE/FE2. Click link below and DL "Italian terrain." http://combatace.com/files/category/363-first-eagles-wwi-and-early-years-terrain-and-environmental-mods/

Yes, I finished it in a hurry. I was tired of looking at it. I still am, so don't expect an update anytime soon.

Quick shots of the same art but running in Galicia. Much better. Finally getting decent pixel density. Shots of city/buildings show the 4096 airfield tile, all others are 2048 tiles.

Thanks. I'm gonna start all over again. When TK was making FE, he developed the smaller terrain tiles to improve the appearance of TW maps at low altitude. I'll fool around with existing FE maps that use 500 meter tiles to exploit that potential.

Yikes! That invalidates my testing, because I assumed the "normal" 500 meter FE terrain tiles. Is your Galicia map 500 meters, or something larger? Thanks. I'm still fooling around and don't really know what I'm doing - yet. I'm going to alternate between aircraft and maps for a while. I should figure out maps eventually. I hope.

Done enough testing to draw some preliminary conclusions. Looks like really hi-res tile art for airfields just aren't worth the effort - unfortunately. Previous airfield shots are of 4096 tile art, and the details still aren't large enough to look realistic. If the colors are well-chosen, a few simple colors will work OK. Maybe a TOD with a few small rocks and some thorn bushes will be a good way to add the missing detail? It also looks like there should be several micro-systems of terrain features. Beaches, cliffs, dry washes, rock fields, etc often extend for miles/kilometers so a collection of roughly half-a-dozen tiles will be needed to realistically simulate each terrain feature. Also, a number of intermediate tiles will be needed to smoothly link the terrain features together into something that looks realistic from the air.