Author Topic: Will all planes be re-skinned? (Read 694 times)

Makarov9 · « **on:** January 30, 2003, 10:11:21 AM »

Since you guys are making a new graphics engine, will the planes all have new higher-res skins? Also will all the cockpits be redone?

Would be nice but it would probably be a ton of work to get done by the release of AH2.

Imp · « **Reply #1 on:** January 30, 2003, 02:43:01 PM »

I think they will probly rework them a bit but i doubt they will remake all of them.

But I could be wrong

SunKing · « **Reply #2 on:** January 30, 2003, 03:49:41 PM »

oh yeah .. please .. a high res setting for us who just picked up the 9700 pro video card.! That would be awesome.

Reschke · « **Reply #3 on:** January 30, 2003, 07:45:00 PM »

What about having support for player made skins with HTC approval. Or even being able to have sequential numbers associated within a squadron flight according to your position within the squadron as linked from the "club" portion of the clipboard.

Just a thought.

Puke · « **Reply #4 on:** January 31, 2003, 12:34:27 AM »

They better increase the texture maps. Actually though, I guess they could let the skinners who make skins for specific maps do their thing and that would be an easy way out for them. But what's the point of making AH2 with greater eye-candy yet still use AH1 texture maps?

Oh, and if you guys do re-do the cockpits, please consider the Hellcat because the front view is totally muffed. There is no vertical bar like that which we have top center and the top horizontal bar should be much higher.

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Or even being able to have sequential numbers associated within a squadron flight according to your position within the squadron as linked from the "club" portion of the clipboard

Why? Each letter will take memory and you have an icon over each plane telling you who each person is and you'd never get close enough in formation to even see that little letter on the aircraft. I'd rather keep that memory for other things.

Reschke · « **Reply #5 on:** January 31, 2003, 10:25:37 PM »

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Originally posted by Puke
Why? Each letter will take memory and you have an icon over each plane telling you who each person is and you'd never get close enough in formation to even see that little letter on the aircraft. I'd rather keep that memory for other things.

As I said Puke..."Just a thought."

You never know what someone can or can not do until you put the thought/idea there in front of them. And we already know that HTC as a company has some pretty good guys and girls working for them; if they were not good then they would not have lasted this long.

I guess what I am saying is that if it can be done in another game (IL-2) then why not in a future version of AH. Yes I know that IL-2 is a box game and those tend to give up some features that we all like for online play but I would seriously doubt the memory required for what I asked about is that great. They already keep track of who is in which squadrons and the system then puts the appropriate nose art on the aircraft/vehicles. So why not add one more small bit of code to bring sequential numbers into the mix. Like I said..."Just a thought".

Puke · « **Reply #6 on:** February 01, 2003, 12:53:05 PM »

Reschke,

Sorry if I came off gruff or something. I was just trying to be to the point. I was involved in something a few years back that dealt with the very such thing. I'm not a programmer so cannot explain it to any great degree and so will not even try, but we did deal with putting unique nose numbers on aircraft and trust me, it brought up some things about memory that I never imagined from the stand-point of a simple flight-sim player. It's nothing impossible and can be done, but it does take memory and my point was really that I personally am not for it because you'd barely see that letter on the side of the aircraft and you already have the icon over the airplane anyway (which is not a t-map) and I'd just personally rather use that texture memory for other things. Or I could be off my rocker and things are way different with texture memory these days.

Arlo · « **Reply #7 on:** February 01, 2003, 01:29:25 PM »

I wouldn't be surprised someday if the friendly icon could be viewed as a tail or fuselage number. The pilot merely types in the number and it's superimposed on the plane. Isn't that how the noseart works?

- Arlo ...

Quote

Originally posted by Reschke
As I said Puke..."Just a thought."

You never know what someone can or can not do until you put the thought/idea there in front of them. And we already know that HTC as a company has some pretty good guys and girls working for them; if they were not good then they would not have lasted this long.

I guess what I am saying is that if it can be done in another game (IL-2) then why not in a future version of AH. Yes I know that IL-2 is a box game and those tend to give up some features that we all like for online play but I would seriously doubt the memory required for what I asked about is that great. They already keep track of who is in which squadrons and the system then puts the appropriate nose art on the aircraft/vehicles. So why not add one more small bit of code to bring sequential numbers into the mix. Like I said..."Just a thought".

Dowding · « **Reply #8 on:** February 03, 2003, 04:27:31 AM »

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The pilot merely types in the number and it's superimposed on the plane. Isn't that how the noseart works?

That's ok for noseart, because there are only a few score squadrons. If everyone has a particular decal, then that's 500 people whose information has to be downloaded, assuming this information is entered at the start of the AH session. Then as people come online, more information has to be shared about their number, and yours.

I don't think that sounds very practical, and is a lot of effort for something that you will simply not see 99% of the time.

Pollock · « **Reply #9 on:** February 03, 2003, 08:35:31 AM »

It would be awesome if they allow actual squadron markings and skins. I am being selfish here but it would be great if the P47-D25
was re-skinned to the famous grey and green camo of the 56th FG. What bottle was it HTC Makers Mark I forget?

Arlo · « **Reply #10 on:** February 03, 2003, 12:20:53 PM »

I wasn't talking a decal. Just a couple of stenciled numbers -- the player's choice 01-99. Wouldn't need downloading ... already part of the game. Would probably take the server and your pc less than a millisecond to work out. And no, it's not seen in combat hardly at all. It would be specifically for screenshots that players like to take of squad formations. Sure, they can use psp and edit but hey ....

Quote

Originally posted by Dowding
That's ok for noseart, because there are only a few score squadrons. If everyone has a particular decal, then that's 500 people whose information has to be downloaded, assuming this information is entered at the start of the AH session. Then as people come online, more information has to be shared about their number, and yours.

I don't think that sounds very practical, and is a lot of effort for something that you will simply not see 99% of the time.

Reschke · « **Reply #11 on:** February 03, 2003, 02:37:47 PM »

Well to follow on what Arlo is saying. If each player joined a squadron the nose art is already taken care of. Then why not have a number assigned sequentially based on the time that they entered the squadron. Then as long as they stay in the squadron they retain that number on the aircraft/vehicle. If you think about it the number will actually become something similar to the nose art because it would not change. Also if one of the "low numbered players leaves a squadron then their number will be claimed by someone else who joins and not be filled by someone moving up from within and yes the numbering should be limited to a single font and section of numbers from 00-99. but allow different collors sort of like a collor pallete. And also make it where you can turn it off client side in case someone is having issues with frame rate hits or something else similar.

I am not a programmer at all and don't have any idea of what it takes to do something like this but after seeing the sequential numbering in IL-2 I would think its not that much of a memory hit as it used to be. Especially with the list of minimum hardware requirements that have been offered up for AH2.

moot · « **Reply #12 on:** February 03, 2003, 03:20:28 PM »

the 262 tail number is a stand-alone bitmap called "3", if there were other bitmaps like it of other numbers, it could be made to wear one or another depending on the need.
But even something that simple might add too much load to the servers' bandwidth.

Batz · « **Reply #13 on:** February 03, 2003, 04:05:21 PM »

Not if each player sets it up on his front end.

ie i set myself as 1 moot as 2 , drunky as 3 etc. The rest of the world could careless how you number your planes. We never really close enough to read it anyway. Besides some cute screenshots you dont get much benefit. Even in IL2 most of the time you cant read the numbers.

What we ended up doing (besides rw) was painting a RVT band a color that was much more visible then numbers.

But that requires individual skins.

Arlo · « **Reply #14 on:** February 03, 2003, 05:22:21 PM »

Good .... excellent, Batz.