Bullethead

Howdy All- In case you all don't look at the "Photoshop and Paintshop Pro Help for Skinning and 3D Modeling" forum very often, some days ago I posted up a thread there saying I have the power to convert to and from Munsell, RGB, CMYK, L*a*b*, and CIE XYZ values. For reasons not worth repeating here, until the end of this year I'm making myself available to do such conversion work for the benefit of any OFF community member who needs it, the results to be shared by all at the end of the year. I haven't had but 1 taker so far which isn't enough, so read my thread there and PM me if you need such work. Don't reply to this thread as it's OT for this forum. Replies in the modding forum are OK, however. Don't reply to this thread. It's a

Howdy All- As you might know, one of my jobs is making video games. As such, yesterday I suddenly had a need to convert Munsell paint colors to computer-friendly values. After an exhaustive search, I finally managed to get a program to do this. First annoyance was that up until a few years ago, there were such things available for free, but since X-Rite bought Munsell, that's gone away :(. The 2nd annoyance was that the program I got (the only one at a reasonable price) has a death clock in it. A new version comes out on 1 Jan and it stops working on 31 Dec, but you pay full price regardless of when in the year you buy it. There is NO WARNING of this policy before you buy it, so I'm quite miffed. Because I bought it yesterday, I only have 49 days left to use it. Therefore, in order to get what I feel is my fair value for the money I spent, I'm asking everybody to send me your Munsell numbers (and the paint's official name). I'll convert them all to computer-friendly formats and upload the resulting palette at the end of the program's life as a skinner's resource. Either reply to this thread or PM me. The program converts between Munsell, RGB, L*a*b*, and CMYK. I'll list all these in the file I'll eventually upload. The program in question is called CMC. You can get it at http://www.wallkill.com. It's only $10 for the basic package, so it's really not that big a wallet hit (the only similar programs cost like $100!). However, it's the principle of the thing. BTW, for them as don't know, an important note about converting colors...... I'm no expert on this myself, having just learned about it yesterday while briefly scanning wiki, but I think I have the general idea down, so here goes. The Munsell color system is based on how the human eye perceives colors of light reflected off real objects, which is quite different from how computer monitors display colors. Thus, lighting effects will give different computer values for the same Munsell description. As such, you have to specify one of the standard CIE illuminants when doing conversion. I'll be using D65, which apparently is the standard one used these days for daylight conditions. You might not know it, but RGB also contains a gamma component. Even with the same illuminant, a change in the gamma will give different RGB values for a given Munsell. Gamma, however, has no effect on CMYK values. So, when converting to RGB, I'll be using the default gamma of 2.2, which is apparently the standard that goes along with daylight conditions.

I like the late-model Aviatik D.I. You should also make an early-model version with no forward visibility and a gun shooting up at an angle ;).

I dunno. I think more and bloodier wars have been fought between kinsmen than foreigners. From an ethnocentric POV, foreigners can be forgiven for not knowing the local customs, so wars with them can often be dismissed or at least forgiven as based in part on ignorance. But between cultural brothers, any slight is seen as a deliberate insult, and trying to introduce different ideologies is seen as biological warfare. Hence civil wars are the worst, and you also have blood feuds lasting for centuries. This goes back to the roots of modern civilization. The Mesopotamians, the Classical Greeks, the pre-Roman (and current) Celtic peoples, the Warring Kingdoms of China, the Central and South American Indian cultures, the Pueblo Indians, the various Muslim and Christian denominations, you name it. All of them were constantly at each others' throats for centuries, even millennia, until one of them finally won or (more often) some external invader came along and imposed peace on them at the point of the sword or bayonet. This is about the only case I can think of that makes "cultural diversity" seem like a good idea. But it's a strong one. Amen to that.

I drink to their shades.

In my own experience with making forced landings in cow pastures, all you can hear is the wind and all the cows hear is the gases bubbling in their several stomachs. It's alwatys been a complete surprise to them that I've landed in their midst, and to me that they didn't hear my approach. I guess that's why the cow got brained by the Tigermoth wing in that vid a while back.

They actually flew? You mean that wasn't some figment of my wishful thinking in OFF? DH2 and DH5 had the same wing, motor, and approximately the same weight, so you'd expect similar performance. Your vid seemed to show that. What I thought most interesting was how, when seen in silouhette, the back-stagger of the DH5 could confuse you so easily as to which way it was really going.

To all Jarheads wherever ye may be, happy 235th Birthday! Hope you all are as drunk as I am (can't take those Dress Blues off any other way, right?) :drinks: So, here's to us, to those before, to those behind, to friends not present, and also to our various enemies no longer present, without whom we wouldn't have a job outside of a prison license plate shop! Semper homicide!

Mine is a scene from the night action at the Battle of Jutland, as portrayed in my game. This is HMS Black Prince illuminated and being pounded after stumbling into the main line of the High Seas Fleet

Don't you fly that already? It came out in the HITR expansion. Quite an interesting ride. The views and performance of an uber-DH2 with the durability of a nickel-iron meteorite :). The terrain and clouds impress me most, a big improvement over what I see now. I also look forward to "fliegen gegen England" again :) Oh yeah, and as an old cannoncocker, I love the "Néry Gun" which I have actually touched myself in the IWM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_(N%C3%A9ry)_Battery_Royal_Horse_Artillery

You have far more patience than I do for that. sort of work. I'm of the "let's get 1 area lined up between side and top, then put a solid band around the fuselage elsewhere" school ;). Salute!

In GE, you'll see a folder called Verdun. Expand that and you'll see a bunch of things with check boxes, once of which is the map. Right-click on that and select Properties. Then you can wiggle the opacity slider back and forth however you want. Yup, you can upload photos to various sites like Panaramio which GE is linked to. You put a lat/lon tag on your photo and GE will show it as a little blue square at that point in the world. Thus, in GE you can often get ground-level views of your place of interest as well as the satellite view.

Thanks for the link! Much excellent stuff there.

Not all the files on that page have overlays. I think I'm the only contributor who has done much of that, and not all of mine have them. I've refined my technique over time ;). IIRC, from the top of the list of GE files, there are overlays for Przemysl, Paris, Verdun, Antwerp, Copenhagen, US Coast Defense, Port Arthur, and Verona. The overlays aren't photos, they're maps. Many of them are actual period military maps or even the plans of specific forts, although a few are modern schematics.

But it's easier in Google Earth. Get that if you don't have it already. Then download some of my KMZ files from here: http://www.palmerstonforts.org.uk/rese.htm Most of these have images pasted over the terrain. You can adjust their opacity in Google Earth. Once you've got it how you want, just take a screenshot.

That's pretty cool. The roads are the same but everything else is different. I like to play with Google Earth like this (except I mostly look for 19th Century forts). GE has a nice feature where you can paste images over the earth's surface and then make them somewhat transparent to see the current terrain. Ever do that?

Good thing. Tiger Moths seem to have been dying like flies lately :(

Never, never, never get tangled up in a melee. That's what you have cannonfodder wingmen for :). Stay on the periphery blindsiding fixated enemies :). Just don't collide with them. That's what gets me more than anything else, with a close second being landing accidents when I'm too drunk :D

I beg to differ. We demolished the culture of Nazism, and what sane and decent human being misses them in the least bit? Do we not celebrate our achievement there every year, to the point where historical wargames can't even have swastikas on Nazi units? I'm an easy-going guy, really. I'm courteous to all until they step on my toes, then I retaliate but only in kind. I don't escalate, because the inevitable conclusion of escalation is blood. I'm all about deterrence, but I if it's war you want, then you've got it. I follow the Golden Rule; I do unto others as I would have them do unto me, and also its flip-side. I do unto others as they do unto me. Islam doens't play by my gentlemanly rules. Islam says that its followers must either kill or convert (but still enslave) everybody else in the world. Period. And they're not much for the conversion thing, at least as regards today's population groups. Islam denies the legitimacy of ALL other religions, creeds, cultures, etc., etc., etc. other than its own, and uses that as justification for genocide. It's a totally barbaric. As I said before, the only Muslims fit to co-exist in civilization are the apostates who are willing to live and let live with us "infidels". But they are the distinct minority over the whole Muslim world, and are ruthlessly persecuted by their own co-religionists. So, Islam having declared a fight to the death on me and mine, with no negotiation, I have no problem at all with exterminating every one of its followers. That's what they want to do to the rest of the world, and I do unto others as they do to me. They started it, not me, but I'll damn sure finish it. If you can't deal with this, then prepare yourself for life as a eunich in some sheik's harem. It's attitudes like that which let Hitler get going.

Anybody who regards Islam as a peaceful religion, and who thinks that the bastards behind the 9/11 attacks were "extremists", have obviously never read the Koran, have never been to their parts of the world, and are highly skilled in the arts of self-delusion. There is a vast difference between actual religious intolerance and shooting a rabid dog, although todays moral relativists would try to convince you otherwise. Islam, as it is practiced on its home turf, is a rabid dog and needs to be shot. The only Muslims fit to be part of the civilized world are Westernized apostates, who are no more Muslims than I am Christian. 9/11 was forgotten a couple days after it happened, when the political correctness goons erased the above from public consciousness. And even today, they're promoting building a friggin' MOSQUE around the corner from Ground Zero, and stopping guys from burning Korans in protest. All I needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/'11. We died, they rejoiced. End of friggin story. Or course, I knew that already, having been fighting them since the 1980s. But surely everybody else in the world should have seen it by then, if not at the Munich Olympics, Locherby, and all the other atrocities committed in the name of Islam. I"m just glad I killed several hundred of those bastards when I had the chance. I wished I'd killed more of them.

Very interesting. Thanks.

Congratulations! Drinks all around And thanks for the cigar

I fly scouts (the Fee IS a scout, dammit!) almost exclusively because I'm a fighterpilot, not a mud-mover. I do the occasional non-scout career but usually don't find them very enjoyable due to the way mission type is picked randomly and how most mission types boil down to the same thing: follow the waypoints. I only fly in the northern part of of the front (the Brit areas) because that's the only sector that's really "finished". The dearth of French and lack of US 2-seaters gives those parts of the front a very unfinished feel. I also only fly in 1917 and 1918. First off, 1915-1916 is even less-finished than 1918 over the Argonne. But that doesn't bother me much because I really don't enjoy flying the early birds anyway. I much prefer planes with at least early 1917 performance. I enjoy being the underdog so I usually fly only in early 1917 and late 1918, for King and Kaiser, respectively.

Yeah, damn shame. Hurt 30 or so other people, too. That was in my newspaper this morning.