Official Skin Packs

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

It is high time to start including OFFICIAL skin packs into this sim. There are so many expert skinners out there. I won't even start to list names for fear of leaving someone out. There are others who worked on '46 skins I still hope to see pop in here someday as well. DEV's should gather the best five or six skinner's products (which are submitted for approval) and release OFFICIAL skin packs into the game with their regular updates once a half or once a quarter.

 

Why is there no mechanism to include skin packs in the game? And yes, I know we have the option of using individual skins in SP. I use them there but would love to have them in MP where the guy forming up on me could see them as well. It'd be nice for squads to all utilize the same skin if they chose. (Numbering is another issue all together - let's leave that for another thread.) We'd have to figure out a way, of course, for approving them and probably how to get around the "unlocks" issue for these skin packs but there is some really great work out there that deserves to be both utilized as well as seen. It's a shame there are only a few skins per AC to be utilized - particularly in MP. And new guys may not be inclined to download individual skins from private parties. While I don't need hundreds of skins in this sim, collecting them was something of a pastime for me in '46. I had hours invested in collecting a couple thousand skins back then. I prefer historical skins but wouldn't have a problem with semi-historical skins if they are done well.

 

It would be great for film makers and for showing off the array of color schemes to new flyers. Musn't discount the value of available eye candy and community participation to the new guys. Making things inclusive is a selling point.  I don't even mind if the German rigs have blank or the currently approved markings enforced upon their tails.

 

Leave it up to a player vote (new forum section?) for the first round of selection with DEV approval for the final implementation. Nonetheless, get skin packs into the game and get some more diversity in the air.

 

EDIT*

 

I'd certainly be willing to pay 2-5 bucks for skin packs if funding is an issue. I'll let someone else decide how that works with user submitted skins.

Edited January 6, 2016 by [LBS]HerrMurf

[simplyjames]

I always thought adding steam workshop would be great for skins.

[Finkeren]

I soooo want official skin packs as well. Collecting and reviewing them is something that could easily be outsourced to trusted community members who'd happilly do it for free.

[SqueakyS]

Skin packs in some form would be very welcome. I only ever downloaded the skin packs for RoF because I wanted historical skins but wasn't sure which ones were historical or good. A curated, historical skin pack should be fantastic.

[Jade_Monkey]

This is a great idea. Having some nice skins is useless if nobody can see them in MP.

Edited January 6, 2016 by Jade_Monkey

[Jason_Williams]

Please stop making it sound like you cannot see other player's skins in MP. If both host and client have same skins they can be seen. This is just like original IL-2.

 

This is an issue for the community, not the developer. We've implemented the ability to see each other's skins. In original IL-2 no one complained about this. They loved it. Now users complain. Very strange situation for the team.

 

Our experience with ROF has shown that us managing skins was not really needed. It was overkill and caused us to spend money we could have spent elsewhere.

 

I highly doubt the team will change what we currently have.

 

Jason

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Yes but it is currently a hodgepodge. The guy next to you may or (more likely) may not have the skin downloaded. A central repository would solve that. It was certainly not an attack or anything personal requiring that type of a response. 

Edited January 7, 2016 by [LBS]HerrMurf

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

Having been on both sides of this fence in different situations, I can see why Jason and other developers can be frustrated by the repetition of comments. On a similar note I can also see the customer requests.

 

Hasn't this been made though? http://il2skins.de/#/howtoYes, the skins are not compiled but by all means you can see what people are using. With the exception of the eccentric yellow-nosed 109s and red-nosed Yaks (if to speak of historical skins) most of the time you see a green/grey blur flash past you and you have to guesstimate by the aircraft's shape and sometimes markings to take a shot.

 

From a player's perspective we can get together and compile our own skin packs without taking away time from the developers, and having some more control over it as well. Mission4Today for example is a great place to do exactly what was suggested - enter the skins here in a contest with a thread structure like the BoM skins suggestion, then open a poll and vote the entries for each aircraft. Or by all means just include everything, if to be frank there isn't that much of a selection so far considering this game is quite new (as opposed to the old Il-2 whence I have 15.7GB of skins and that's after losing 23GB during in a HDD write-off incident) so this is doable. That way everyone has full control over it and things can be a community initiative without any payments or such, and without having to fight with the developers because party A or B have different visions and etc. Why complicate things?

 

In fact, for the MP aspect of things Badger from JG53 has tried to stir a similar initiative, try contacting him: http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/20327-attention-squadron-commanders/

Edited January 7, 2016 by Lucas_From_Hell

[Jade_Monkey]

I dont think that this has to be done by the devs btw.

 

We have the functionality, so it's a matter of coordinating with the mission makers and the community, more specifically for big organized battles.

 

The Friday night bomber flights has its own paint show thread: http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/18929-fridays-bomber-night-paint-shop/

[ShamrockOneFive]

You know, Mission4Today used to have a great archive of skins. Someone needs to do something like that. Curate some skin packages and suggest them to your online players.

[I./ZG1_Badger1-1]

Jason, didnt you say that some skins for the new airplanes?(110 109E etc.?) are coming?

Edited January 7, 2016 by I./JG21-HeTzeR

[Livai]

We have offical hosted custom plane skins made by skinners

If the player not comes here to choose a custom plane skin it is not the Devs fault. I see many fly with Default skin everytime. Sad to see that many are happy to fly default......

 

I highly doubt the team will change what we currently have.

 

Jason, how about to enable Steam Workshop where skinners can upload their custom plane skins. Steam allow to upload 100MB for each user who bought the game there or enabled a Steam-Key. Could be a great Idea. I wonder why RoF didnt had Steam Workshop? RoF had Mods-On-Mode. Maybe the same problem like with the custom plane skins many new player never known about mods or custom plane skins. They never search if nobody show them different things and if someone search for that are not that many where the money and time could spend elsewhere. That is what I notice. Many things changed if I compare to the old IL-2 Series. I think thats the experience from the team?

[BlitzPig_Bill_Kelso]

There is all ready a 700MB skin pack available at mission4today for IL2 BoS.

 

Not to mention a sub forum where people showw off AND share skins.

[7.GShAP/Silas]

You know, Mission4Today used to have a great archive of skins. Someone needs to do something like that. Curate some skin packages and suggest them to your online players.

 

 

This has been done.  Silky was nice enough to do all the legwork of collecting hundreds of beautiful skins and stick them in a pack that takes about 8 clicks to install.

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/18127-silkys-skin-pack-v1/

 

Enjoy.  The more people who have it, the more we'll see one another's super cool skins.  If I thought that every person saw my group's white tailed IL-2's, I'd be happy as a clam.

Edited January 7, 2016 by Silas

[SharpeXB]

The system for providing skins to the players needs to be GREATLY SIMPLIFIED

 

- Add a single link and topic to the forums section here. Not another site like M4T, probably very few new players even know what that is. Provide it right here on the official site.

 

- Make it separate from the skins discussion threads. The discussion is great but it's too time consuming to pour through if you just want the skins.

 

- Make it SIMPLE! A single link that you click which says "Install"

 

The Skin Pack system in RoF was beautifully easy for players to get all the thousands of skins in one simple step. The current BoS non-system is a quagmire.

 

This has been done.  Silky was nice enough to do all the legwork of collecting hundreds of beautiful skins and stick them in a pack that takes about 8 clicks to install.

Yes, like that. But even more streamlined. First of all it needs to be stickied to the top so it can be found. Edited January 7, 2016 by SharpeXB

[7.GShAP/Silas]

I agree with all of that, yes.

[Dutchvdm]

I would already be happy if there would be skinpacks for the squadrons that where actually present at Stalingrad and Moscow. 

 

Grt Martijn

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

The system for providing skins to the players needs to be GREATLY SIMPLIFIED

 

- Add a single link and topic to the forums section here. Not another site like M4T, probably very few new players even know what that is. Provide it right here on the official site.

 

- Make it separate from the skins discussion threads. The discussion is great but it's too time consuming to pour through if you just want the skins.

 

- Make it SIMPLE! A single link that you click which says "Install"

 

The Skin Pack system in RoF was beautifully easy for players to get all the thousands of skins in one simple step. The current BoS non-system is a quagmire.

 

Yes, like that. But even more streamlined. First of all it needs to be stickied to the top so it can be found.

 

Valid points but I think the M4T system works well. What they did there though works well: there are a few utilities that install the things quickly for those who find it harder. There is Skin Manager, Jonesoft's Generic Mod Enabler, DCS had ModMan and other stuff. Those who don't have a problem installing skins manually can do easily without them, but for the people who want to keep it simple it's nice that these programs can drag a whole bunch of skins in one click. JSGME in particular is not catered towards any particular simulator so it's easy to just point the textures folder in BoS, download 500 skins then install everything.

Edited January 7, 2016 by Lucas_From_Hell

[beepee]

Personally I feel it is up to the individual.

 

But for those unable to do it for themselves, these are a few of the collections and packs out there:

 

http://www.il2skins.de/

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/13781-blackhellhound1s-skin-museum/

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/20043-ju-87-skinpack-last-reserves/

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/19482-4jg53-complete-skin-pack-bf-109-e-7-f-4-g-2/

 

http://www.zargos-skins.net/

 

These are only a few.

 

As for installing them, it's not that hard.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

The system for providing skins to the players needs to be GREATLY SIMPLIFIED

 

- Add a single link and topic to the forums section here. Not another site like M4T, probably very few new players even know what that is. Provide it right here on the official site.

 

- Make it separate from the skins discussion threads. The discussion is great but it's too time consuming to pour through if you just want the skins.

 

- Make it SIMPLE! A single link that you click which says "Install"

 

The Skin Pack system in RoF was beautifully easy for players to get all the thousands of skins in one simple step. The current BoS non-system is a quagmire.

 

Yes, like that. But even more streamlined. First of all it needs to be stickied to the top so it can be found.

Pretty much what I said in the OP.

[LukeFF]

 

 

Sad to see that many are happy to fly default......

 

Not to take anything away from all the excellent third-party skins that have been made, but the default skins are also very good.  

[SharpeXB]

Valid points but I think the M4T system works well. What they did there though works well: there are a few utilities that install the things quickly for those who find it harder. There is Skin Manager, Jonesoft's Generic Mod Enabler, DCS had ModMan and other stuff. Those who don't have a problem installing skins manually can do easily without them, but for the people who want to keep it simple it's nice that these programs can drag a whole bunch of skins in one click. JSGME in particular is not catered towards any particular simulator so it's easy to just point the textures folder in BoS, download 500 skins then install everything.

The trouble with that above is it took a whole paragraph to explain it. That type of complexity will just lose new players. Most of them won't even know what M4T even is.

Keep it simple. Very simple.

Sure the pack system in RoF was extra work for the 777 team but it saved all the players hundreds and thousands of combined hours. There's something like 4,000 skins in RoF and I can't imagine how a BoS non-system of downloading each one individually would work. The fact is it would not work and the end result is very few people would end up with the skins. They're a great part of the graphics experience in the game and in RoF you can have them instantly with a single click. We really need that here.

Edited January 7, 2016 by SharpeXB

[VBF-12_Stick-95]

In IL2 1946 skins in mp worked quite differently.  If you flew on a server that allowed user skins, the system would transfer that skin to the cache of everyone on the server,  The result was there was no need to separately download skins to see them in mp.  I understand this is probably not feasible in IL2 BOS due to the hit on fps, etc.

 

I am not against some form of organized user skin packs to also accomplish this if there is some way to distinguish historical/semi-historical from the fanciful without going through what could amount to thousand of skins one by one. 

[BraveSirRobin]

The current skin method works great if everyone has all the custom skins.  It's terrible if you're using a custom skin on a winter map and other people don't have that skin.  You show up as the default summer skin, which sticks out like a sore thumb on a winter map.  We need default winter skins for the winter maps.

[7.GShAP/Silas]

The current skin method works great if everyone has all the custom skins.  It's terrible if you're using a custom skin on a winter map and other people don't have that skin.  You show up as the default summer skin, which sticks out like a sore thumb on a winter map.  We need default winter skins for the winter maps.

 

 

This is very true.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Don't discount the value of eye candy on new players either.

[SharpeXB]

Don't discount the value of eye candy on new players either.

Yes and skins are right at the top of the list. Honestly they're about the most appealing graphics feature right after the aircraft themselves.

I can't imagine a new buyer of this game a year or so from now when BoM and Bo? are available and there's 30+ aircraft each with dozens or even hundreds of skins. No new player is going to surf through the skin forum section and spend several days or a week just downloading skins. The end result will be that none of the really great work out there with the skins will ever be seen.

[6./ZG26_Gielow]

Squadrons have skin packs of their members for coops mission. You just need to download it on respective coop thread. That is a community solution for the issue.

 

But if you want to see every casual lone Wolf skin on air quake servers, good luck

[SharpeXB]

In IL2 1946 skins in mp worked quite differently. If you flew on a server that allowed user skins, the system would transfer that skin to the cache of everyone on the server,

That would be great. At least for MP

However what's the protection against someone just making an invisible plane skin?

Edited January 7, 2016 by SharpeXB

[CaK_Rumcajs]

What if the MP mission creator could choose the skins available in their mission? If the server was able to distribute the skin set available in the mission it would solve many needs. Ofc there is a real problem with current skin implementation. Those are immatriculation numbers and markings. The lack of implementation of generic squad skins + markings in text form is a significant shortcoming of the sim. My point is let us create generic skins, allow MP servers distribute their limited skin sets and we are done. No need to take care of skin packs on the part of the developer.

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

The trouble with that above is it took a whole paragraph to explain it. That type of complexity will just lose new players. Most of them won't even know what M4T even is.

Keep it simple. Very simple.

Sure the pack system in RoF was extra work for the 777 team but it saved all the players hundreds and thousands of combined hours. There's something like 4,000 skins in RoF and I can't imagine how a BoS non-system of downloading each one individually would work. The fact is it would not work and the end result is very few people would end up with the skins. They're a great part of the graphics experience in the game and in RoF you can have them instantly with a single click. We really need that here.

This is perhaps a personal view but I think we're 'over-dumbing' the new player. I was on Mission4Today even before I went from Il-2 1.0 to 1946, it's a good central resource. Anyhow those are opinions and it's good to have two sides so we can find a middle ground for the community as a whole

 

The devs have limited resources and have chosen to turn down the idea which is their right, so we need a workaround.

[VBF-12_Stick-95]

That would be great. At least for MP

However what's the protection against someone just making an invisible plane skin?

 

From what I know, an invisible skin in IL-2 BOS is not an invisible "plane".  I also don't think the 1946 skins transfer model would work for BOS.  What I wonder though, is there some sort of server check on user skins?

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

Planes can't be turned completely invisible via comunity skins. Inner sections and compoments of each aircraft as wellas cockpit parts, lass ect are excluded from user skin files and thus will always show up.

 

Player textures also don't effect "dots" (aircrats in extreme distance to the observer) in any way. Seriously, a great thing such as skinning should not be let down due to certain peoples "fears".

[SOLIDKREATE]

I release a 4./JG51 Staffel Pack with 16 planes last year. I'd be up for making a complete unit again. We can already see each others skins on MP as long as you have that persons skin installed. I think this is a great Idea. Pretty soon I'll be releasing a 7./JG54 Staffel Pack for the Bf-109F-2.