posted 09-19- 10:56 PM               

I'm thinking with the upgrades alot of people are doing it would be nice to see some of the older planes remapped at a higher res.

Like the original Spit is a one peice 256 by 256 map.

we could double the texture by using one for wings and one for fuse.

Plus maybe add some high res sections for nose art and/or damage sections.

I would love to see every texture come with a damaged version that could be switched in with damage lods.

I might be just dreaming though.

Yes I know this would make alot of the older skins useless but I think its time for an upgrade for the single map planes.

posted 09-19- 11:35 PM               

I agree, some of the planes need texture mapping fixes. My particular 'gripe' is the spit. Yes two 256x256 .tif files are needed for this plane as historical markings are difficult when each side of the main wing are mirrored as it is now.

Also, the current mapping of the spit has errors on it. In particular:

1. Part of the spinner is mapped to the trailing edge of the main wing root (sp?)

2. Trailing edge of vert stabiliser is not mapped (about equiv of 2-3 vert pixel lines).

3. Top edge of vert stabiliser is not mapped(about equiv of 2-3 Horiz pixel lines).

4. '3d air intakes' below the wings and engine could be mapped better.

And yes I would fix it myself if i could - but I can't.

Just my 2c worth

Cheers,

posted 09-19- 11:40 PM               

Have you ever tried to give it anything other than black sides on the fuse? Well I wouldn't bother...the shading is lousy. I know, not a mapping problem - but I was on a roll.....

posted 09-20- 04:31 AM               

Did someone mention the Lanc?

Yep, the model sucks. It must be a high priority for someone to re-model the fuse. If I get five minutes...!!!!!.... I may well take that on. Current projects allowing.

The fuse is too chunky, the rear stabs are flat and the tailgunners perch is rubbish. It looks like the guns are 10 feet long, and you can't see the ammo-feeds etc.

Well, when I have my Midway airfields looking how I want them, and have the B17 done, and the B24 is flying in rough form (which it sort of is now, but I can't open her in OPS to tweak stuff. Buggered if I know why!!!It just crashes. Oh and if you apply left stick, she turns right...)

This post was brought to you by the Campaign for more planes with tailgunners....

posted 09-20- 04:51 AM               

As painters ourselves we do understand the ramifications of such a task in relation to skins. IF there was some sort of an outcome to this, I'm sure the issue of 'old' skins would come into it. I'm also sure that the remapping would be done smartly so as to minimise the time spent updating the 'old' skins.

A legitimate suggestion to be discussed within the community ....not an 'uninformed' one.

Cheers,

posted 09-20- 07:01 AM               

Already our planes are looking as good as some of the next gen planes. Except for the paint jobs. Even with guys like you doing excellent paint jobs the texture res just doesn't do them justice.

Please don't look at it like pissing on your work.

Look at it like a new canvas to paint on a canvas that has a higher resolution to boot.

posted 09-20- 08:19 AM               

Painting a new high-res skin might or might not be fun, depending on your aptitude and desires. Texture-mapping, OTOH, is a tedious, frustrating, and definitely not fun task, akin to getting the obBodyPts right, at least for me.

I guess what I'm sayin is, if you want to make a "new plane" like the P-38(mod) with a new map and skin, by all means do so. If it's a player-created plane, send the "author" a courtesy copy so he can check it for "quality control."

As for the "necessity" for new skins, I dunno about that. There's some pretty nice single-tif skins out there IMO, although you can do a little more with two tifs. How much time do you spend zoomed in flying around? I'd say the cockpits could use a "facelift" more than the external art. And that's one that could be done largely without any remapping.

posted 09-20- 12:32 PM            

It would be a very long process involving people with various talents.

Don't bash the work that Chad and the other artist did (I met him, but forgot his name). They had to keep it under a certain poly count and certain amount of texture usage for the inital product. The cool thing is that they can be modified to make us of the new power in today's PCs and graphics cards.

It just takes a lot of man power, thats all. I love to texture-map, but I'm so far out of the enhancement-making stuff it ain't even funny.

posted 09-20- 05:21 PM               

Yeah ya got a point there yard. I would just like to see an overhaul on some of the older original planes.

I'm not putting down Chad nor any other artists works.

I just think its time for them to be updated a bit. We come out with new planes with higher polys and better mapping that take advantage of our new computers.

and the old planes that originaly came with SDOE get left behind.

So in a round about way the most popular planes (p51d, p38, b17, lanc, and so on) arn't near the eyecandy as the newer ones.

I think they did a great job for the computers they were shooting for.

But now the average computer we run SDOE on is ALOT higher. So I figured they could use some work.

Just some smoothing, 3d intakes and higher res paint.

posted 09-20- 05:51 PM               

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Snickers
=FC=

PBY-5A MISSING IN ACTION

posted 09-20- 06:48 PM               

Cheers,

posted 09-21- 04:11 AM               

In my opinion the resolution of the textures that we currently have is more than adequate for on-line use. Lets face it a plane mapped in a 256x256 texture will look just the same in your gunsight from 100 yards as a plane mapped at 512x512. If you want to sit and admire you painting skills (and don't we all do that occasionally ) then you are not going to be doing that on-line (unless that is you have already been shot down).

As with the high res P-38 mod, let's have some higher res skins. But for the on-line standard that, let's face it is compulsory, let's respect what has gone before. Anyway as I alluded to it in my last post, unless someone steps forward to project manage the next planepack this whole discussion is academic. Having part managed some of the last one I can assure you all that this is an extremely stressful and time consuming exercise - I'm sure Tailslide, Razer et al agree!

And when I wrote 'uninformed' I meant it in the context of 'not completely thought through the ramifications on others work', but you know that anyway.

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Yardstick painted this

posted 09-21- 08:41 AM               

Werner