posted 03-20- 03:11 PM               

I know the Wildcat is still a beta but this plane suffers from this stuff, and also the P-47 whose landing gear switchin is much too close. If the struts are too detailed then I think you should "at least" have the wheels show up as the distance increases.
With the P-47 I was parked and went to an external view and was thinking "where's the gear?" Only to have it show up after I zoomed in.

I'm not slamming anyone, just making suggestions. I know most of you are concerned about FPS, but you could use the planes included with SDOE as a guide for switchin distances. I know on my planes I keep the flight controls and at least the tires viewable at a far distance because I get very annoyed seeing another planes flight controls switch in and out.

posted 03-20- 03:27 PM               

JT, I LOVE THE P-47! I'm flying the heck out of it now and just got DanW's fantastic olive drab paint scheme and am just so impressed.

posted 03-20- 03:55 PM               

------------------
Thanks,

James "Razor747" Smith

Check out the SDOE Flight Line! I am constantly adding new things. Click on image above to go to my site.

posted 03-20- 08:57 PM            

We had 4 people on the Jug and not one of us remembered about that. It's really hard to get tunnel vision towards your 'task', so to speak. If somebody found something wrong, then they let the other person know, and sometimes it was clearly forgotten. I have about 150 megs of email shit in my inbox...I must have every build of the P-47 from the minute John got it in the sim until the final version.......wow, what a difference. We had so much to do to get it in the shape its in, that we forgot a lot of little stuff. Had it not been for the secrecy of the contest, we could have always made a beta, and little things like that would have got caught. The beta concept worked really well in the case of the Corsair. Hopefully, as the Openplane community matures, there can be a more streamlined process for testing aircraft before release. Judging from the overall quality of the entries, we have a nice pool of talent to chose from. Some of the ideas that were included in the design are astonishing. From bjorn's real retractable gear on the Jug, to that dude in the biplane that laughs when you try to drop the gear. Man, that was funny as hell to hear that guy snicker. Plus, with folding wings and moving canopies, we can breathe life into these polygons.

posted 03-21- 07:16 AM            

All you really need for the effects is black and white. It's very hard to explain and takes a lot of time...a lot of time. The wear and tear effects are just white airbrush streaks. That's it. I may go back and re-work the Wolfpack skin...it's too guawdy (is that a word?) I think I know what I did wrong.

And also, just a quick reminder, alot this look depends on the resolution of the textures. You CANNOT get this look without at least two .tif files. JT did an excellent job with the mapping. Clever use of repeating textures in two spots was essential to get all of the pieces on just two files. At these small resolutions, even 20 pixels makes a difference. I paint pixel by pixel sometimes, and thats why it take so long to complete. If we had the option of 512x512 textures, man we could do wonders...4 times the size of the default map. I think with fast computers and eventually 32 meg video becoming the standard, this is possible. But as long as people still use Glide....it wont work unless you develop a pci/agp texture set like they did with Flanker 2.

posted 03-21- 07:58 AM               

Gee, I can have em BOTH, can't I?

posted 03-21- 08:05 AM               

Dan I think that olive paint job look great also hehe.

Even if you can't do a full tutorial(which i think would be great) at least come up with a list of tips and hints to get the results you got. I was thinking you used Repeating textures. Thats a great idea.

posted 03-21- 10:00 AM            

For example, if you like the German schemes, then take a look at Nick's(yardstick) work. He seems to have the German thing going for him. But, if you look at my 109 skin, you will see they are totally different when compared side by side. You have to decide which style you like best and then study it. With me, its all matter of black and white..thats all the 'effects' are. You dont need any fancy filters or anything....just time and practice.

posted 03-21- 11:00 AM               

Dan, I salute the hard work you, JT and the others have put in (I don't want to miss out Zurawski - as the efforts of the FM guys is oft overlooked but frequently criticised). The p-47 is truly a complete package.