Thanks United. Can you repost the link to the walk around, it’s broken. It may be one I haven't seen and pictures of the starboard side are hard to come by. I couldn’t find any early career color photos. In fact, the only color photo I could find was washed out. The photo almost looked like there was a three color scheme. I went for the "official" colors someone posted a link to on this forum and then color corrected my monitor. Even then I had to make adjustments for in-game color.
Unfortunately the image posts washed out all the weathering, exhaust, and nearly all the rivets. Those aren’t panel lines, those are some of the worn rivets that caught the reflection. I wish I could do some green rivets but they wash out and I’m color blind anyway, I had to get some (a lot really hehe) help to get the right look. Not bad for a color blind guy using MSPaint and a little GIMP.
I had to make a lot of compromises. A single pixel covers a lot of space on a big plane like the B-17. In the new mapping, I’m hoping Hitech will add a separate file for the gun turrets, other small parts and the engine nacelles, making room for more fuselage and wing detail. I’ve dropped the cartoon nose art as too difficult and ugly at anything less then 1024 tex size so I made the Nine 0 Nine early in it’s career,
26 th mission or so, before Dietrichs’ crew, around the 56 th mission, when the cartoon had been added. Mapping forced me to use an alternate lettering designation on the starboard side and the forward crew hatch mirrored to the starboard side. Hitech may make me remove the forward hatch. The aft crew hatch and missing piping on the engine nacelles I added should be ok. Also I changed the engine soot pattern to reflect wartime photos. I just realized I forgot the tail gunners escape hatch lol.
Thanks for the kind words guys.
