VB-6 Dauntless

[Greebo]

Thanks to Lyric1 for finding me the info for this SBD skin, it should be useful for Midway and Solomons scenarios as well as the MA. This was an SBD-3 in real life but that's considered an acceptable substitution for AH's SBD-5.

This SBD was one of the USS Enterprise's VB-6 aircraft that attacked and sank the Japanese carrier IJNS Kaga during the Battle of Midway. Although B15 suffered a big hit to the tail during the attack and almost ran out of fuel on the way back the crew of Ensign George Goldsmith and James Patterson managed to land it safely on the USS Yorktown.

[Vraciu]

These skins of yours are approaching photorealistic territory.   

 

Is this 2048?

[oboe]

These skins of yours are approaching photorealistic territory.   

 

Is this 2048?

Agreed, especially the rear gunner in the bottom photo.  On my 13.3 screen it looks photographic.

This skin made me think of a question about the power & spec map values - the first SBD was a darker blue, this one is lighter but seems to have realistic glare.   Do you need to change to values to compensate for the shade of the paint? 

[Greebo]

Thanks guys, glad you like it. The SBD is a 2048 res skin.

In RL the USN three colour scheme used for the default SBD had a glossier Sea Blue on the upper wings and tail than the paint on the rest of the aircraft. So I made a lighter layer for the upper wing and tail areas on all the effects maps to represent this but turned this layer off on this skin. In general I'll just play around with levels on the effects files comparing them to my source photos until I am happy. On this one I added a reduced brightness layer to the diffuse file as the skin looked too bright compared to RL WW2 colour photos of similar aircraft otherwise.

[caldera]

Nice!   

[lyric1]

 

[Devil 505]

Most excellent.

[Nefarious]

Great job as always, perhaps it's only on my end, but the numbers 815 look blurry or artifacty on my end.

[Devil 505]

Great job as always, perhaps it's only on my end, but the numbers 815 look blurry or artifacty on my end.

It's the way the graphics engine renders colors at a distance and off angle.

[Nefarious]

It's the way the graphics engine renders colors at a distance and off angle.

ahh, thanks.

[Greebo]

Its as Devil said. The letters are not created using a font but hand-made from rectangular blocks of colour, so no aliasing except on the diagonal corners of the characters.

[FTJR]

very nice as usual Greebo.