posted 12-11- 01:48 AM               

Any ideas of future projects boys?

posted 12-11- 04:25 AM               

I know SV was working on an updated set of airfield scenery, which would be a good thing to have too.

posted 12-11- 01:11 PM               

------------------
-Sv =FC=

WWI in SDOE!

posted 12-11- 05:57 PM               

Each airfield needs to be shaped to fit into a gap in the terrain. The gap itself is 1 tile sized. Into that tile you fit your airfield. Easy....no

Your airfield needs to be chopped up into smaller pieces to texture. Otherwise you end up with a blurred airfield. If a simple program exists to do this, I don't own it!

Once you have this, and have made a portion of it flat enough to be a runway, simply work out all your runway co-ords, all your formation point co-ords, reference in and position all your airfield bits, set up a bombtarget, texture the whole thing and you are done.....

Oh yes....you must set the position co-ords exactly right, or you will see the join...

This is why most of the airfield stuff I have been working on has been based around a flat surface, water! It is so much easier to build from a flat base.

Towns are just the same, only without the runway stuff.

It can be done, but I would probably try to flatten out some areas to take flattened fields. That way, re-textured fields could be pinched from current terrains. Add in some new airfield furniture, like SV's canvas hangars, and that would get this going.

posted 12-12- 04:37 AM               

Heres the plan!

Step 1: create some totally flat tiles in Somme land

Step 2: create some flat airfields#

Step 3: liberally dust them with period artifacts...

Step 4: Heres one I prepared earlier...

Step 5: er....try and stick it all together so it doesn't fall apart!

Help needed though! If SV has some stuff for the airfields, that would be really useful. As would any reference material on where the airfields ought to be sited, and, allowing for the non-realistic shape of the terrain, where people think they should go.

I have had another idea though........

I hate it when this happens......

It may be easer to build a new terrain from scratch.....ish.

Proper trench lines, bombed and shelled ground, shattered trees, the works. An area like the Ypres Salient might work well. I reckon the tundra, modified to fit a little better, could be a good long term project.

WW1 needs a terrain! Having seen the difference in flying Pacific planes over some terrain that looks like Pacific makes a hell of a difference. Diego's PTO shows how strong that impact can be. It's a re-paint, with some window dressing, but what a change!

WW1 could do with that!

Somme was a good start, but the land didn't fit the texture.

posted 12-12- 12:54 PM               

Werner

posted 12-12- 02:07 PM               

It would probably be too difficult to do since it wouldn't be flat tiles, but it sure would be fun to practice landing in more difficult conditions.

posted 12-12- 02:29 PM               

I will fill you in on my current project(s): I am going to create photo real texture for all of the Fance section of Dover much like I did with the aerodrome expiriment. It will be general farm land with some nice new (tall) trees thrown in. Also it will have WWI aerdromes in place of the existing airfeilds. I was planing to do it like this:

1. Create the new super texture by colorizing terra-server files and stitching them together in a clever way, mostly in vallies and flat areas, I will leave the mountains less touched.

2. Create the airfield supertextures from the tiles. Now, using the original terrain supretexture, determine the coord locations and size (texture coords) for each airfield - in other words, where each airfield goes.

3. Use the coords from step 2 to cut away airfield supertextures from my new terrain supertexture. Now I will use these new airfield supertextures JUST like I did the first WWI aerodrome thing I tried to do - I will blend them into the surrounding terrain.

4. Now I will delete all the WW2 structures at the airfield and add WWI structures. My WWI hangar is done, it just needs a pretty texture - it is mapped, but the texture itself is just the WWI hangar blueprints.

5. Now I need to learn how to set the airfield properties so that the aircraft know where to take off and stuff.

After this, the WW2 targets could be hidden or replaced with WWI targets. Also I want to find a good way to scatter trees around, I like the FUIII idea of raising forrests up in th mesh, it looks sweet! Also scattering some real alpha trees around and making sure that the terrain matches a bit in color and has a shaded area under the tree...

posted 12-12- 02:58 PM               

wait till I get my little Pacific Atol terrain rolling again!

Diegoha ssupplied me with a sea terrain to build it on, and I have built some islands of varying sizes. Those with airfields are fun! One has a field that is similar to waht yo describe! The runway is on a rock shelf.

Target bearing island include a radio mast, a seaplane tender....wishful thinking on my part! and a small harbour. There are a couple of towns, well, tiny fishing hamlets!

posted 12-12- 03:08 PM               

I have an idea for Tailgunner and the PBY crew - what if there was a stretch of "water" in the terrain that was actually land, and ended in that seaplane tender? that, and have a second set of invisible wheels that, when the plane was sitting on them, would hold the plane just a skiff above the water. Then when you want to do a water landing, you drop the special gear and pray! Sure landings and takeoffs would be tricky with this narrow, virtually invisible runway, and sure there would be no water splashes and sure if you hit this particular patch of water you would explode like it was land, but maybe it's a decent compromise? I mean hey, for mace's awesome stol planes to work you need lots of wind, so there's a trade-off for everything.

I got this idea when I was remembering having read somewhere that in the middle east someplace you can step out into a body of water on a clear box just a centimetre or two under the water and have pictures taken, "walking on water". Bizarre connection, but hey.

Werner

posted 12-13- 04:41 AM               

Problems are 2 fold with this at the moemnt:

1: wheels and water .... don't mix them. They bounce like crazy. Whether it's a dof spring thing, from the gear, or just a material thing, I'm not sure yet. Want to try and find a means of taking off & landing that doesn't need wheels....

2: Pilots tend to die when the water splashes fountain up through the plane. Needs to be cured one of 2 ways. Either stop the water splashing so much, or make the pilot un-killable. Don't know much about pilots/parachutes etc. so don't know how well this would work.

posted 12-13- 05:16 AM               

What I am in the process of doing with the Somme terrain is to re-shape certain areas, to more acurately reflect the landscape. Tundra isn't as detailed as the release terrains, so you can't do too much, but the plan is to make it less er....tundra!

I want a river, which I will lower and flatten out, I want to define a trench line, with a rough and bumpy no-mans land, and I need to create some flatter areas to add in airfields.

Any pics that help with the look of these features will be really helpful. It won't end up as an accurate map of the western front, since I can't find anywhere that is well mapped, and has German and Allied airfields within a 40 mile square!