TweetyBird said:Give a draftsman the finest oils, inks, and canvases, and he will say he needs more to complete the picture. Give an artist a patch of sand and a stick and he will produce the most beautiful picture.
Well, what's got everybody riled up here is that we were expecting all of AH1's skinning problems to be gone in AH2. I mean, HTC had to do everything over from scratch anyway, and this time skinning was to be a real feature useable by everybody in the MA, instead of being restricted to guys making their own maps. And for several years now, those who've been making skins have been begging HTC to remove the limitations that many planes have to being reskinned.
But that didn't happen. Despite all the above, HTC kept things just like they were in AH1, so we still face all the same limitations we've had all along. Sure, so far I've noted a couple of minor improvements at the detail level, but those are very small potatoes compared to the major problems left untouched.
So those of us who've been doing skins for a while are extremely disappointed and bitter about it. You know, hopes dashed, the feeling of opportunity missed, constructive feedback ignored, etc. The skin feature was the 1 new thing I was really looking forward to in AH2. I mean, flight model improvements are great, but those are expected as the product evolves and are things you just take in stride as they happen. Oh well....
but there is a lot that can be done with the current setup.
Sure, you can do a lot of things, but there are severe limitations. Basically, the colors of the stock skin determine what you can do in a new skin, as follows:
MONOCHROME STOCK SKINS: (all silver or all blue)
This includes most late USAAF and USN planes, and the early IJN planes. The upper wing mirrors L/R and there's only 1 stabilizer texture that mirrors L/R and U/L. Due to this, you can only do the following:
- Keep the plane the same basic color and change only the trim and unit markings
- Give the plane solid camo top and bottom (like green/gray), but you also have to paint the entire stabilizer in a trim color
BICHROME STOCK SKINS: (different, solid colors top and bottom)
This includes most early USAAF and USN planes, and the later Japanese planes. The upper surfaces mirror L/R but at least you have separate upper and lower stabilizer textures. This means you can do the following:
- Keep as is, changing only the trim and unit markings
- Convert to monochrome
- Add multi-colored camo, but the pattern will be the same on both wings, which is hardly ever realistic
CAMO STOCK SKINS: (multiple colors with different patterns on the upper surface)
This includes all the Brit and German planes, plus a few others like the Ki61 and P40E (assuming they follow the trend and keep their AH1 paintjobs). Here the only mirroring is the lower surface, so you can do anything EXCEPT have something assymetrical on the bottom. IOW, no Brit black/white schemes, no U.S. ARMY, etc.
But these broad limitations aren't the only problems. Many planes have parts that you can't touch at all, but which will always be the color from the stock skin. Many others have decals for unit markings or whatever that are difficult to deal with. Sometimes you can work around these, sometimes you can't, so that some planes that are otherwise perfectly skinnable are ruined by these effects. Examples are the spinners on FWs and 109s and (from AH1), the nose spikes of the 109G6, the cheek guns on the B17, and the anti-glare strip on the P47D30. There are others and you'll be very frustrated when you encounter one of them after putting several hours into a project.
