Waldemar Kurtz

the Albatros and Fee are awesome. naturally the other guys are cool too-- but those two are my faves. too bad about the weather-- but better to have them grounded for future generations to enjoy. :/ good pictures

I used the stock Fokker E.III skins from OBD Software to cut-and-paste my way into a camoflage Fokker Eindecker. if the color wasn't quite what I wanted I would change the gamma or brightness on specific color ranges to get the variations that I wanted (red, blue, green for MS Paint). then using cut-and-paste on the transparent settings (so I don't over-write all the adjacent skin with white block) I got the camo-Fokkers here. not very historically accurate, but lots of fun to make. then I thought "what if I invert all of the colors?". check it out... the highlights get turned into shadows and the shadows become highlights: which is a bit of a nuisance! so if you're having trouble getting the right colors you want-- you might be able to 'invert' the color of an existing skin to help you get closer to the right look. the Albatros fuselage skins with their plywood finishes become a nice blue-ish color. the plain linen wings of early SPADs, BE2s, and Nieuports becomes a dark medium blue (looks cool-- obviously NEVER gonna get used for the Brits, but for a French pilot, it might work out well). the Pfalz D.IIIa skins become an even darker version of gray (and it looks cool, but you obviously need to alter the instrument panels and the detail-work to keep it from looking too alien! once you've inverted the colors there is still the matter of turning those high-lights back into shadows... and unfortunately I don't have the programs to do that with yet. (just Paint and the MS Photo Editor, so that sort of thing would take a long time). but if you play around you can still come up with some interesting material with the bare-bones software that comes with Windows.

thanks for the link. I've tried it out this morning and thus far it helps out a lot. I can probably crank out skin variations 10 times faster with this tool.

indeedy, this looks nice. I'm looking forward to grabbing a copy as well. thanks, in advance, for all of the hard work! :)

my guess is that there will be more ground traffic (aka little green men, tanks, trains, and things like that) coordinated with major battles. as it stands the battles produce artillery barrages in certain sectors, but that's about it. I could, of course, be totally wrong!

will it have a larger range of French names?

that's a good idea-- I hadn't even thought of editing the kills of new AI pilot arrivals! I usually manually edit and replace the names when flying for the Lafayette Escadrille.

in Phase II the most common discrepency was because of warping. with Phase III the most common discrepency is because of mission objectives. case in point: while flying a artillery spotting sortie with the DFW C.V everybody else in my flight got wiped out about 20 minutes into the mission. I got the purple words "mission objective failed". I found myself in the middle of a big fight and shot down an enemy fighter. I then flew off on my assigned patrol and shot down a pair of FE2b's. even though I was airborne for a good 50 minutes. it only counted the time from take-off until the "mission objective failed". in the same manner when I was on a recon patrol I went through the whole mission successfully and after my patrol was given the purple words "mission objective complete" I figured I would go out and start looking for trouble. I shot down three FE2bs over the next 40 minutes. even after I factored in the warp-time, the 'live' flight time-- everything should have ended up at about 115 minutes. thing is, even though the mission briefing credited me for all of that flight time the FLIGHT LOG only credited me for about 45 minutes! because once I finished my mission the rest didn't count. the worst example is, after successfully completing a ground-target attack with a Sopwith Camel late in the war, I found myself in a big dofgiht with D.VIIs. I got one fellow before my Sopwith Camel burst into flames and went into a flat spin at 5,000 ft. oddly enough, it jumped back to the campaign menu and it said "good job, keep up the good work". (more or less) so I deleted that pilot-- cuz he most certainly bought the farm! it's a glitch in the game. the flight log, for whatever reason, didn't count any of the time after you finished your main objective... and that was probably the time it took to get back home and land. my solution to this has (depending on my mood) been one of the following: 1. don't fullfill the mission objectives, thereby preventing the clock from stopping. 2. manually editing my pilot's log afterwards to reflect the actual flight time. (the latter obviously relies heavily on 'honor' and honesty to be credible... but I find that if I'm going to be denied multiple aerial victories I should AT LEAST get the flight time!)

I, like a few other folks out there, only have Paint and the MS Photo editor. thse programs can't work with .dds files. this means that the file needs to be converted into something that those programs can recognize. Photoshop, I'm told, can handle .dds files with a simple plugin. since I didn't know what sort of software you had to work with. I wanted to make sure I covered all of my 'bases'. if you don't need to convert the .dds files then I certainly wouldn't spend any extra time doing so. just work with the files directly and it'll all be fine. best of luck Kurtz

oops, I never play MP so I don't know what folder it goes into/from. but it's probably Squad No.1 as the British are the first people to use the Strutter-- and the RNAS seems to be the earliest exponent of the type in OFF.

this sounds like a carry-over from CFS1 and 2 (and 3?). since this is an add-on I think you can bypass that whole frustrating procedure and move straight to the pre-existing skins. I never open up the skins in the aircraft folders. they are usually duplicates of something already existing in the "skins" folder. besides, it would then save me the trouble of having to move them back. I just use DXTBMP and make a bitmap version of the file-- then edit the thing as I see fit. I might move it to my skinning folder (in My Documents) to keep it from endangering the other skins. but apart from that. this is where you could look. OBD/campaigns/CampaignData/skins off_Strutter_B1_t_RNAS-3 1916 off_Strutter_B1_t_RNAS-3 1917 (or any of the corresponding "off_Strutter_B1_ace_t_" files "off_Strutter_t_RNAS-3 1916" or the "...1917" once you find one of those you convert it into a bitmap using DXTBMP or Photoshop (some people prefer using this program directly with the appropriate plugin. I've never used that program-- so I can't say. but once you open it up, you can convert the file into a 24 bitmap and start having fun. I'd rename the file or "save as" something different, but easily identifiable. I usually just add an "_a" or "-1" at the end. that way I can ID the squad skin I most want to work on and go from there. if you feel like posting some of the skins online I've found that Polovski's signature is on virtually ever Strutter skin I could find. (I'm only now starting to skin, so I readily admit I don't know who made what yet) I would suggest editing all of them and hope for a long and prosperous career! or you can simply edit the skins as you move along in the campaign. eventually you might even live long enough to need to change the skin.

the strutter is a difficult one-- so don't be afraid to ask for help! I still haven't quite mastered how to skin that specific bird. the top wing is especially gruesome! speaking of which, any tips or suggestions about the upper surface on the top wing? I was trying to get the some stripes to align in the middle of the top wing-- but it just hasn't worked out for me.

File Name: FE2b 6994 File Submitter: Waldemar Kurtz File Submitted: 25 Oct 2009 File Category: Aircraft Skins this skin is an attempt to depict FE2b 6994. it was while flying this machine that Captain Stephen Price (pilot) and 2nd Lt Frederick Libby (observer) made 5 (possibly 6) claims during August and September of 1916. this rendering is based on a photograph dated September 23rd (possibly the day after their final victory in this machine. although it's questionable whether that photo depicts this specific machine, there is "wiggle room" enough that I think this skin might be feasible. Frederick Libby became the first American ace in history while serving as an observer in this machine. this skin is based on the stock FE2b skin with extensive (albeit poor) retouching that was done with Paint and the basic Microsoft Photo Editor bundled with Windows. if somebody else wants to improve the skin and post a better version later-- be my guest. this is as good as I'll probably get with the resources I have. Click here to download this file

File Name: camo-Fokker E.III File Submitter: Waldemar Kurtz File Submitted: 25 Oct 2009 File Category: Aircraft Skins this is a fictitious camouflage for the Fokker E.III that was created through cut-and-pasting and altering the stock Fokker skins from the game. Click here to download this file

probably shooting down a Arthur Rhys-Davids on a scramble mission. the devil is in the details, though, I shot down his SE5 while piloting a DFW C.V. the other contender is using a DFW C.V to shoot down a Sopwith Triplane from RNAS 8 even though I was being attacked by two aces at the same time. the most 'glorious' battles are probably single-handedly destroying 7 Bristol Scouts with a Fokker E.III in Phase II (I wanted to run away, but they just wouldn't leave me alone!) the biggest haul I got in Phase III was for sending three FE2b and a BE2c down in flames with a Roland C.II. unfortunately my mission objectives were "completed" about half way through that battle-- so I only got a claim form for the first victory. the other three were treated as though they never happened. kind of a bummer, given that the last three victories all fell some 20-30 miles behind the front lines and I was the only person to fire a shot at them (the AA didn't even bother with them, for some odd reason)

Wels, would you please be so kind as to cite some sources for post #102? it's not that I don't believe the material there-- but I'd like to double-check it for myself through the sources. I know, for instance, that some of the French generals advocated invading Germany through Belgium before the war (in the book "Phyrric Victory: French Strategy in the Great War")... but I didn't know that there was a conscious effort between the Russians and the Serbians to destabilize the Austrian empire.

File Name: Charles Gordon Bell File Submitter: Waldemar Kurtz File Submitted: 18 Oct 2009 File Category: Aircraft Skins Charles Gordon Bell of No. 10 Squadron RFC was the only pilot to make 5 victory claims while flying the Bristol Scout D. Four claims were made on this machine during October and November of 1915. this is a basic skin with an altered serial number to represent a historical ace. Click here to download this file

File Name: Semper Aggressus File Submitter: Waldemar Kurtz File Submitted: 18 Oct 2009 File Category: Aircraft Skins this is the basic RFC 23 skin with the squadron motto "Semper Aggressus" on the fuselage. Click here to download this file

this sounds very cynical... but the most impressive Victoria Cross citations I've read have generally been about aviators. I read through most of the VC citations in 1915 and nearly every single one of them involved rescuing a wounded CO. I mean, that's all well and good-- but over half of them seemed to be some impoverished bullet-catcher grabbing some wounded guy with a commission and taking him to safety. but I guess it doesn't help that the first VC citation I read was for McLeod

yes. all of the same keyboard and joystick commands to alter your viewpoint (zoom in or out) work the same for the observer's cockpit as it would in the pilot's seat. I'm always side-shifting the viewpoint over as far as I can-- so that I can get a better look at ground targets (aka, looking over the side of the fuselage). I also use that to look for enemy aircraft-- that way I don't have the gun obstructing part of my field of view.

hah, good clip. I haven't gotten around to watching that season of Blackadder yet. will have to add on my list of things to do. that's worth posting over and over again. rotfl