HomeFries

View File 2/17 Cavalry Vietnam Skin Pack This is a collection of five skins representing the Second Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam (1969). The skins included represent five Troops (the cavalry name for "companies"): Headquarters Troop (has a guidon by the pilot's door) A Troop (Identified by the red band on the tail boom) B Troop (White band) C Troop (Blue Band) F Troop (Orange Band) Note: The B Troop skin in this pack is slightly different from the 2/17 B Troop skin in my Medal of Honor Skin Pack. Be sure to get that pack as well if you want even more varied skins for the 101st Airborne Division. All reference imagery was taken from http://vietnam-hueys.tripod.com/2-17th%20Cav%20page.htm Skinner's Philosophy: Because the 3D models used for the aircrew utilize modern flight gear I have chosen to model the skins as "modern aircraft with nostalgic patterns", as opposed to actual Vietnam era skins.. The significance of this is that I have chosen to skin the aircrew in contemporary flight uniforms, including ACUs for the door gunners. I felt that this was more fitting in a setting that involves modern orders of battle, and is also less of an immersion-killer than seeing Vietnam era "uniforms" on clearly modern equipment. A note about the Crew Chiefs & Door Gunners: Since enlisted US troops don't wear rank/rate insignia on flightsuits, their rank/rate is displayed on their nametag. Since there are no specific nametag textures for the crew chief/door gunner texture, I have added a nametag to the velcro on the chest armor (as is standard practice). In choosing names for the textures, I opted for US servicemembers who received the Medal of Honor. SFC Paul Smith received the Medal of Honor posthumously in the Global War on Terror, and represents the United States Army in these skins. Here is his Medal of Honor Citation: Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with an armed enemy near Baghdad International Airport, Baghdad, Iraq on April 4, 2003. On that day, Sergeant First Class Smith was engaged in the construction of a prisoner of war holding area when his Task Force was violently attacked by a company-sized enemy force. Realizing the vulnerability of over 100 soldiers, Sergeant First Class Smith quickly organized a hasty defense consisting of two platoons of soldiers, one Bradley Fighting Vehicle and three armored personnel carriers. As the fight developed, Sergeant First Class Smith braved hostile enemy fire to personally engage the enemy with hand grenades and anti-tank weapons, and organized the evacuation of three wounded soldiers from an armored personnel carrier struck by a rocket propelled grenade and a 60 mm mortar round. Fearing the enemy would overrun their defenses, Sergeant First Class Smith moved under withering enemy fire to man a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a damaged armored personnel carrier. In total disregard for his own life, he maintained his exposed position in order to engage the attacking enemy force. During this action, he was mortally wounded. His courageous actions helped defeat the enemy attack, and resulted in as many as 50 enemy soldiers killed, while allowing the safe withdrawal of numerous wounded soldiers. Sergeant First Class Smith's extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the Third Infantry Division 'Rock of the Marne,' and the United States Army. Updating from Version 1.01 or earlier: DCS World 1.2.7 changes the pilot and gunner texture files, so the textures have been updated accordingly in this file. In order to clear out the obsolete files, go to the individual folders and remove the following files: Gunner_UH1_*.dds Installation Instructions: Copy the folders (except for TempTextures; see below) to your Liveries\uh-1h folder (either in DCS World\Bazar or Saved Games\DCS). Optional: I have included files that have (IMHO) improved the textures of the pilots and door gunners. They now wear the standard green and grey nomex flight gloves and have pencil pockets on their left sleeves, similar to my USN and USMC uniform textures. To enable these textures, just copy the contents of the _Optional\TempTextures folder to your DCS World\Bazar\TempTextures folder. To disable the textures, just delete them from TempTextures and the default textures will be used instead. Optional: The release of DCS World 1.2.4 added the ability to add texture paths using the file "autoexec.cfg" in your Saved Games\DCS\Config folder. This will allow you to save hard drive space as long as the skin filenames are unique. My skins support this, so any DDS file with the same name will be identical. In order to enable this feature, add the following line to autoexec.cfg (be sure to create the file if it doesn't exist): table.insert(options.graphics.VFSTexturePaths, "C:/Users/<username>/Saved Games/DCS/Textures") You can use any path (even a different drive), but you must use forward slashes for your path. Backslashes won't work here. Then, you can move all of the DDS files from each of the skin folders to this new folder you've added to your path. Allowing overwrites is not a problem, as I use unique names for each file. Finally, be sure to go into each description.lua file and change all "false" entries to "true." Special thanks to upuaut for assistance with the more "exotic" material names, as well as the assistance with custom rotor colors. You are free to use any of the textures (e.g. 101st door gunner) in other skins or projects as long as proper credit is provided in the readme file. -Home Fries Submitter HomeFries Submitted 10/15/2013 Category Misc/AI Aircraft Skins

View File Integrated Nations for DCS World Switzerland by CHSubZero USN/USMC by Home Fries This mod allows your logbook pilot to fly for Switzerland, the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps in addition to the default nations. The USN and USMC "countries" have their own sets of insignia and share a set of medals. Additionally, the option is there to update the USAF medals from the default medals (three of which are incorrect) to the actual USAF medals that can be earned for valor in air combat. Regardless of whether you choose to update the USAF medals, the existing default USA medals will now include the "Combat V" as applicable.. Note: the default alliance matrix keeps the USN and USMC as "neutrals", so that you still only need to make a "USA" unit in the mission editor. This just keeps things simple, at least until the F-14 or F/A-18C is released. The mod also adds certain aircraft to different nations. Predominantly, the F-4 Phantom II has been added to nations who flew it historically (including USA, UK, Australia), most of the Eastern Bloc aircraft have been added to the USA inventory for scenario flexibility, and the MiG-29A has been added to Georgia and the Insurgents to provide more interesting scenarios. Finally, this mod is compatible with the Hellenic Air Force (HAF)mod version 1.05, though it requires that the HAF mod be installed first, and that this mod be disabled prior to reparing or removing the HAF mod. Installation: This assumes that you already have a working JSGME installation for DCS World. If you know just enough to spell JSGME, I recommend looking here for details on using JSGME with DCS World: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=98607 Big takeaway: don't create a folder called "MODS" within DCS World (this is already taken). Call your JSGME Mod folder something like "_MODS" or "GME_MODS". If you are updating the previous version of this mod, perform the following steps: In DCS World, set your default logbook to a pilot with a default nation. Create a new pilot if required (see "Disabling this mod" below). Exit DCS World and disable the old logbook mod. Delete the old mod, as the folder naming scheme has been updated for the new release. Extract the folders in this archive to your JSGME Mod folder. How you proceed with setting up the logbook mod is up to you. To install the logbook mod without the Hellenic Air Force Mod: Enable the "Logbook - Integrated Nations (Master)" mod. If you wish to use the Hellenic Air Force mod with this logbook mod, you must install the HAF mod first. Then you can proceed with the following steps: Enable the "Logbook - Integrated Nations (Master)" mod. Install either the "Logbook - Integrated Nations (HAF Compatibilty Patch)" or Install the "Logbook - Integrated Nations - Correction for US Air Force (optional) & HAF Compatibility Patch". If you have an existing USN or USMC pilot in your logbook from a previous install, then manually update your logbook (see below). Note that you will need to disable this mod in order to repair or uninstall the HAF mod. Manually Updating your Existing Logbook: If you use the USAF Correction or the HAF mod, it may be necessary to manually update the entries in your existing logbook. This section covers those eventualities. Either way, find your logbook file, which is located at: C:\Users\<user name>\Saved Games\DCS\MissionEditor\logbook.lua Be sure to back it up prior to making any edits. Next open it in a text editor such as Notepad++ (Windows Notepad is not recommended). Hellenic Air Force Compatibilty: If you have an existing USN or USMC pilot that you need to make compatible with the HAF mod, find the pilot that has a ["countryId"] of 22 or 23 and add 1 to the value (22 becomes 23 and 23 becomes 24). Note: this does not apply to a Greek pilot with a ["countryId"] = 22. Next, find the section called ["awards"]. If any of the subsections are [22] or [23] and one of the awards listed is [1] = "Navy & Marine Corps Achievement Medal", then add one to these subsections just like you did with ["countryId"] USAF Medals: If you have an experienced USA pilot who has the original medals by ED, and you wish to apply the correct medals with this logbook mod, then you will need to manually substitute the old default USAF medals with the proper entries so that they display properly. Under your pilot, in the section called ["awards"], you should find and replace the existing medals as follows (up to the number that you have): [2] = { [1] = "Air Force Achievement Medal", [2] = "Air Force Commendation Medal", [3] = "Air Medal", [4] = "Distinguished Flying Cross", [5] = "Legion of Merit", [6] = "Silver Star", [7] = "Air Force Cross", [8] = "Medal of Honor (Air Force)", }, -- end of [2] You should now see the appropriate USAF medals in your logbook. Australian Medals: The db_countries.lua file in DCS World 1.2.6 (and 1.2.8 at the time of this writing) lists the medals in the incorrect order, which makes it so you cannot see the medals in your logbook. If you have an Australian pilot and wish to see the medals, enable this mod, then go to your logbook.lua and find the ["awards"] section, as described above. Then on the lines indicating the medals earned, replace the following numbers: [5] should be [1] [4] should be [2] [2] should be [4] [1] should be [5] Then with this mod enabled, you should be able to see your Australian medals. Disabling this mod (for DCS World updates): Installing the logbook mod is the easy part. However, if you create a USN or USMC pilot, you will need to disable this mod whenever you update DCS World, so I highly recommending adding a "dummy" pilot with one of the default nations. Whenever you need to disable this mod, be sure to switch your logbook pilot to deFault prior to disabling this mod and applying the update. While you can often just re-enable this mod after updating (and then go back to your pilot), this extra step saveguards your pilot datafile in case the DCS update makes this version of this mod obsolete. Enjoy! Submitter HomeFries Submitted 10/11/2013 Category DCS Misc. Files

I own CA, but unfortunately for me its use is a non-starter until ED allows the F10 view to only display on the viewport with a multi-monitor setup.

The atmosphere for Yavin IV looks totally wrong in that screenshot! How can they possibly get the spaceflight model down if they can't even model the intra-atmosphere flight dynamics?

I think the classified issue is not as bad as people might think. The displays and information shown are already unclassified with the cockpit trainers at the trade shows. The real classified stuff is not so much what it can do, but how it does it. How can the aircraft detect and identify targets, and do air and ground radar tracking at the same time? For purposes of the sim, all you need to know is that it can be done. The sim already knows what's going on, so it's just a matter of what information it can feed the cockpit display. The ranges will need to be fudged a bit, as will anything with "numbers" (which will have to be approximated or use the unclassified approximations), but this is something simmers have always lived with and will gladly continue to live with.

The way the US Military evaluates its acquisition/development of systems is by capability, and more directly where there is an existing lack of capability that needs to be addressed. This is because too many acquisition professionals and politicians were getting sucked into the "gee-whiz" aspects of a system that it would get funded regardless of need. Now everything needs to be analyzed as to what it brings to the table, but more importantly, what gap in capability it fills. To this end, sensor-data fusion has been considered a capabilty gap since the capability-based acquisition model came into play. It's not just fighters, either. SDF is a big deal in every armed warfare component in the military, and just about every program coming online has to be net-centric.

View File Su-27 Fictional Skins: US Navy Fighter Squadrons (Volume I) Su-27 Fictional Skins: US Navy Fighter Squadrons (Volume I) for DCS World 1.2.14 and later This is a collection of eight skins representing three US Navy fighter squadrons using historical F-14 Tomcat liveries. The squadrons included are: VF-21 Freelancers (CAG, CO, Line birds) VF-103 Jolly Rogers (CAG, CO, Line birds) VF-124 Gunfighters (CO, Line birds) The VF-103 skins date from their 2000 deployment with CVW-17 on the USS George Washington. Included as the CO bird is the famous "Santa Cat", which has the jolly roger decked out in Christmas gear. Most markings have been westernized, and the pilots have been given USN flightsuits with Naval Aviator wings and squadron patches. The helmet remains Russian made. Note: this skin pack uses an EXE installer that creates common texture folders and an autoexec.cfg (if you already have one, you can make manual changes). I would like your feedback on this system; if it works I intend to apply it to my other skin packs. These skins were inspired by Clave's Deviant Art gallery: http://ws-clave.deviantart.com/gallery/6112394?offset=432 For Compact Installations - A Note About Autoexec.cfg: Rather than copying texture files to their respective livery folders, I prefer to use a series of common texture folders along with unique filenames. This allows a single instance of many of my common textures, and keeps the hard drive footprint to a minimum (especially nice if you run a SSD for your system drive). The installer will add a series of folders to the DCS Texture path; if you do not have these folders created, then it is no problem. The autoexec.cfg included will automatically point to the Texture folder in your Saved Games\DCS folder, and regardless of whether you run the Open Alpha, Open Beta, or Release version of DCS, the path will always point to your Saved Games\DCS\Texture folder. Again, this saves space on your hard drive. If you use your own Autoexec.cfg, then when prompted to overwrite you can click "no". This will create a file called autoexec.new, and you can manually make the updates as you like. Just don't modify the top line with the file date; this is used by the installer for version control. However, feel free to include it in your existing autoexec.cfg, so you don't get prompted to overwrite until there's another update to the autoexec.cfg. If you inadvertently overwrite your autoexec.cfg, it is actually backed up as autoexec.old. Just open it and copy the appropriate information to the new file. For Traditional Installations: If there is an issue with textures not displaying, it is likely a problem with the installer. Please let me know what textures are missing so that I can troubleshoot the issue. If you have any squadron requests, please PM me. If possible, provide top and profile views of the aircraft, preferably line art (much easier to extract color), and for CAG/CO birds, a close up of the tail fin is greatly appreciated. You are free to use any of these skins in other projects as long as proper credit is provided in the readme file. Fly Navy! Submitter HomeFries Submitted 06/26/2013 Category Su-27 Skins

The MiG-29 is based on the Flanker 2.5/Lock On model, and has a completely different set of templates. Besides, I'm not even sure if the MiG model supports the new livery format of DCS World. EDIT: And great work as always, Viper.

Navy and Air Force flght training has been joint since the 1990s. We had AF officers coming through Aviation Indoctrination in Pensacola, and many of the WSOs get their advanced training at VT-86 in Pensacola as well. I did my advanced flight training at the 562nd FTS at Randolph AFB. You're absolutely right about the infrastructure as well. I'm sure the AF has depot-level support at Eglin, which will really help keep the C models FMC, as they will be flown hard at the FRS. Since the aircraft is new, the FRS has the responsibility of developing the tactics and procedures from scratch.

Good on you, Eric. That pattern was one I wanted to do for the Prowler before I jumped ship to DCS.

Ooh. I'm looking forward to seeing Jammin' Jihad. The camo generator will only do a conventional 3-color blob pattern right now, so that's no help, but I'd love to see you add it!

Zipping them up now so they get beneath the 1Gb enclosure limit. They're actually better organized than I remember, and apparently i've done everything I want to them, except I haven't integrated the Camouflage Generator into some of the templates (I originally had to split that into a separate template to keep file sizes down, else it would take a long time to save the file when i was finished). If you're doing USN/USMC prowlers it won't be an issue, but take a look at my fictional IDF & RAAF A-6 skins to see the potential. The only thing it really needs is to have many of the major markings (e.g. JET INTAKE) duplicated in the USN Stencil instead of the old-school stencil (which was used in the 60s-70s). If you're doing ICAP II and later, you'll want to do this, and I never got around to it.

As far as I'm concerned, Texture 6 is the only Prowler exclusive texture. There are differences with texture 3, but these can be easily switched with overlays. I'll be out of town for a week, Eric, so if you need the templates now I can PM them to you. I've cleaned them up some since I used them a year ago, but I pretty much put everything but the kitchen sink on different layers for maximum modularity, and it could take some exploring to understand it until I can make it more organized and presentable to others. That said, if you like my A-6/EA-6B superpacks, you'll like what's in the templates.

Love those MiG-29 shots, Dave! Obligatory screenshots of a CAS mission with JTAC sparkling the target. Screenshots taken using the ANVIS-9/OVN-1 NVG mod by nrgized.

I just did the ones that you have already done, though in my template I do have other squadrons as well. Let me know what you're planning next and I'll look up the organizational patches and helmet art (doing that for every squadron is just too much).

No need. I sent you mine!

I heavily modified Kevin's templates and added some details. I can organize them and upload them with his permission.

And they work great! Interestingly enough, I thought that if you were going with a new matname you had to make that skin under test the first in the sequence. With the Hornets, it was the last plane in the sequence (i.e. the -4) that had the visible custom textures, though I had no real way of discovering this until I knew the matnames. So here is a taste of what's been done so far and what is to come: VFA-103 Jolly Rogers line bird (by Jack). The pilot is the 2048x2048 texture built from my A-10/F-18 Pilot Template, with custom 1024x1024 helmets as well. For the generic USN helmet, I have a custom 1024x1024 helmet based on the reflective USN version of the HGU-55. For the CAG/CO birds, I have given the pilot skin Commander insignia. I realize that anybody flies the CO/CAG bird, but this is a symbolic gesture. @Jack, if you would like, I'd be happy to create a collection of USN pilot skins for you to distribute with your excellent Hornet skins. Helmets may take more work, so they're not as high on my priority list, but I can do the pilots pretty quickly.

Thanks, Skate. I'll give them a go. While I have your attention, do you know the mat name(s) for the Su-27 pilot?

Exactly, but considering it used to be hard for me to fly (or at least hover and land), it just shows how much flying the Huey has improved my flying in the easier helo. Even with the AP turned off.

Thanks, Jack, and sorry for taking so long to get back to you. Was contending with a family emergency for a month, then when I got back I got target fixated on the Huey. Just a little detail as well for testing mat names: be sure that the skin under test is the first skin of that type to be tested (i.e. make sure the F/A-18 skin you're testing is the first F/A-18 in the mission), or else the matname under test will be skipped altogether. That's what I was doing wrong, though to be honest I didn't have any better luck when I tested it right. So far I have tested the following mat names/combos: pilot_x_body and pilot_x_helmet where x is: f18c f-18c f18 a-18c f_a-18c fa18 fa18c I also tried pilot_f-18c and hgu55 for the pilot and helmet respectively. No luck with anything so far. Jack, I'd love to get the matnames for the pilot/helmet so I could hook you up with detailed pilots for your line of skins.

Or a cobra, though to be honest I'm still having a great time learning (and flailing) with the Huey. Point of comparison, though: after about 3 hours in the Huey, I could sort of hover for about 20 seconds before the PIO got the better of me. But when I went to give th Ka-50 a try I was smooth as silk in the hover, taxi, takeoff, and landing department. I used to flail at the Ka-50, so if you can fly the Huey you can fly anything else (right now).