More Official Skins

[SharpeXB]

It would be nice if there was a greater selection of official skins. The potential to cheat with user made skins has led to them being locked off servers. What would be great is if those user made skins could be submitted to the Devs and then made official. Similar to Rise of Flight. They would then be easier for players to obtain as well. The custom skins are a great addition to the game and it's a great loss to see them banned like this. With the upcoming Career Mode hopefully there will be more distinctive squadron skins seen in the game also.

[=TBAS=Sshadow14]

It would be nice if there was a greater selection of official skins. The potential to cheat with user made skins has led to them being locked off servers. What would be great is if those user made skins could be submitted to the Devs and then made official. Similar to Rise of Flight. They would then be easier for players to obtain as well. The custom skins are a great addition to the game and it's a great loss to see them banned like this. With the upcoming Career Mode hopefully there will be more distinctive squadron skins seen in the game also.

They are locked on like 1 server only

 

The potential for cheating is low as most people on here not filthy scum like those previously busted.

 

custom skins are ok.

But 4K skins would be more needed than just more 2K skins.

 

[SharpeXB]

They are locked on like 1 server only

 

I know but it's the only server that ever has players on it. Rise of Flight has a better system where all the user made skins are official.

Since the Devs are open to all sorts of user generated content, skins should be included in that category.

I can only assume when the Career Mode is released it will include more of these for all the squadrons.

[SharpeXB]

I was hoping that the new Career Mode would come with a variety of skins for the squadrons. Alas it did not. 

There really should be an effort by 1CGS to collect user generated skins and include them officially with the sim

The current system or lack of system for the custom skins is just unwieldy and failing. It’s too time consuming for players to search multiple threads on the forum. The skinning section of the forum is jumbled up with discussions and posts so it’s hard for anyone who just wants the skins to get them easily and then it still takes too long to download all of them. 

Non official skins are banned from the only populous server and won’t appear in the Career in any case so despite all the nice work being done one them, they aren’t worth all the effort to get. Unfortunately all the great talent that goes into creating these is unrewarded. 

More Official skins is the only way this can work. 

In the Career it’s also confusing for all the aircraft to look the same, you can’t identify your squadron or flight compared to any other friendly aircraft. In RoF it was better since they all had distinctive insignia. 

[PatCartier]

I also regret not being able to assign a skin to every plane, even in QMB! It was possible on IL2 '46.

The only way today to fly offline with skins is to modify the beautiful campaigns and missions proposed by third parties ... It's a pity.

[Trooper117]

You can assign individual skins to all planes in your squadron if you use Pat's PWCG campaign.

I have all my squadron with individual RAF skins which I have downloaded into my skins folder.

[ACG_Smokejumper]

I'd prefer some stock skim selection with numbers I can manually enter for my fuselage.

[SharpeXB]

Bump. It’s an aspect of IL-2 GB that’s really lacking compared to RoF where it was handled much better.

RoF players had easy access to thousands of skins through the official packs. 

Each of the IL-2 aircraft only has about a dozen skins and some aren’t even relevant to the theater. The career mode aircraft are all identical instead of having all their distinctive markings like you saw in RoF. User made skins aren’t worthwhile because you will be the only one who sees them. Likely the majority of players don’t have time to download all these. 

For all the nice graphic and modeling work that has gone into IL-2 GB this is a chief piece of artwork that falls short. 

Edited June 4, 2019 by SharpeXB

[CountZero]

i would like to see more offical skins also

when there is not mutch to work devs could make poll for each airplane with some historic comunity made skins and let players on forum select what one to add, and then just add them in list, maybe 4-5 aditional for start.

[SharpeXB]

It’s a really tragic situation. There isn’t even an organized place to find or download skins if you wanted them. That whole forum section is a total mess. There is really nice work work that’s completely going to waste. 

[JonRedcorn]

Yeah gotta agree this would be a huge plus. 1946 did it right. 

[SharpeXB]

So what ever happened with this effort?

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/forum/101-skins-for-battle-of-kuban/

Why wasn’t it possible to gather up a huge amount of user generated content for this?

Instead all we have are skins for the Spitfire from the western theater instead of Kuban?

 

There’s just so much nice work done on this but it’s all completely gone to waste because it’s not incorporated officially into the game. 

Why are there even skinning tools then? What’s the point?

[LukeFF]

55 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Instead all we have are skins for the Spitfire from the western theater instead of Kuban?

 

Images of Spitfire skins from the Kuban are very, very rare. Pretty much what we have now is all that's available. 

[SharpeXB]

21 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

 

Images of Spitfire skins from the Kuban are very, very rare. Pretty much what we have now is all that's available. 

What about all the other aircraft? It’s a great deficiency in IL-2 compared to what RoF has. 

[LukeFF]

7 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

What about all the other aircraft? It’s a great deficiency in IL-2 compared to what RoF has. 

 

All of the others? Which ones? Most of the ones implemented since Battle of Moscow are relevant to the theater being depicted.

[SharpeXB]

10 hours ago, LukeFF said:

 

All of the others? Which ones? Most of the ones implemented since Battle of Moscow are relevant to the theater being depicted.

I guess I had assumed that the career mode would feature unique skins for all the various squadrons. Like Rise of Flight. 

If 1CGS had some effort to coordinate the work by all the skin makers, it should be possible. There are hundreds maybe thousands of skins for this game but they’re all lost in the disorganized forum section. It’s a shame all that work goes unused. 

[Trooper117]

I mentioned it above, but if you play a campaign in PWCG, you can assign a different skin to every member of your squadron.

Yes, you have to search for those skins in the skins thread, but once assigned your squadron will keep those skins for the whole campaign... unless they are killed of course, in which case you can re-assign another skin for your newly arrived replacement pilot.

[SharpeXB]

33 minutes ago, Trooper117 said:

I mentioned it above, but if you play a campaign in PWCG, you can assign a different skin to every member of your squadron.

Yes, you have to search for those skins in the skins thread, but once assigned your squadron will keep those skins for the whole campaign... unless they are killed of course, in which case you can re-assign another skin for your newly arrived replacement pilot.

Right. You can do the same thing in the Career Mode when you’re the commander. Still every other aircraft you see just has a generic skin. In RoF they all had distinctive ones. 

And searching the skin forum is just a terrible mess. 

[J2_Bidu]

On 6/9/2019 at 3:41 PM, SharpeXB said:

I guess I had assumed that the career mode would feature unique skins for all the various squadrons. Like Rise of Flight. 

 

We had to wait months or years to get the skins into the official packs.

 

Here you can have people organize a community pack freely and share it amongst themselves if they want it. Seems better, in my opinion. See what's happening in the FC community.

[Leon_Portier]

I´d like it if someone would put together a basic skin pack, which would contain a few community created skins for every plane.

Advertise it a bit in the forum so people know about and can get the pack and when it gets updated.

Then many people would have a common skin pack in which can be used in both SP and MP.

[SharpeXB]

4 hours ago, J2_Bidu said:

 

We had to wait months or years to get the skins into the official packs.

 

Here you can have people organize a community pack freely and share it amongst themselves if they want it. Seems better, in my opinion. See what's happening in the FC community.

Yes it took time between updates but every player was easily able to get thousands of skins. There’s no practical way to get that many by downloading them individually from disorganized forum threads. And you know how they work right? Both players need to have them in order for them to be seen by each other. So unless everyone has the same set nobody will see anything. You can spend hours and hours downloading these for yourself but you will be the only one who sees them on your screen. 

4 hours ago, [N.O.G.F]Leon_Portier said:

I´d like it if someone would put together a basic skin pack, which would contain a few community created skins for every plane.

Advertise it a bit in the forum so people know about and can get the pack and when it gets updated.

Then many people would have a common skin pack in which can be used in both SP and MP.

That’s what 777 did for RoF. The community submitted skins to them and then they were distributed to all the players in periodic updates. 

[LukeFF]

6 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Both players need to have them in order for them to be seen by each other.

 

That's not necessarily a bad thing - far too many people in the original IL2 were flying in MP with skins that were flat-out oversaturated crap or stupid ones like NASCAR paint schemes

[CountZero]

7 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

 

That's not necessarily a bad thing - far too many people in the original IL2 were flying in MP with skins that were flat-out oversaturated crap or stupid ones like NASCAR paint schemes

this system is nice to avoid that, but there is small number of offical skins per airplane (and no option to select number or squadron like in older il-2s this is noticable), it would be nice to reword good player made skins by including them in offical skins section, and then you give more skins to players to use on servers without having devs to do them, and skiners are also pleased to see their skin in game.

Edited June 11, 2019 by 77.CountZero

[BraveSirRobin]

The main problem with the current system is that it actually discourages using custom skins.  If you’re using a custom skin on a winter map you stick out like a sore thumb to people who don’t have that skin (aka everyone).

[SharpeXB]

2 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

 

That's not necessarily a bad thing - far too many people in the original IL2 were flying in MP with skins that were flat-out oversaturated crap or stupid ones like NASCAR paint schemes

Did original IL-2 force the download of other players skins?

The trouble with having to download any skin you will want to see is that there are too many. The chance of any two players actually having the same skin downloaded is very small. And the way that forum is such a mess I doubt many players download them. They’re all buried under pages of discussions. 

And just being able to see your own skins didn’t stop cheating with them so they’ve been locked by the most populous server. 

[LukeFF]

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Did original IL-2 force the download of other players skins?

 

Yes, and that's how players would end up seeing skins that were downright painful to look at. 

[SharpeXB]

5 minutes ago, 77.CountZero said:

it would be nice to reword good player made skins by including them in offical skins section, and then you give more skins to players to use on servers without having devs to do them, and skiners are also pleased to see their skin in game.

This. Some of those skins are the best artwork you could see in the game. Very nice. But right now it’s all for nothing, nobody will see it anywhere but their own screen. 

[CountZero]

Just now, BraveSirRobin said:

The main problem with the current system is that it actually discourages using custom skins.  If you’re using a custom skin on a winter map you stick out like a sore thumb to people who don’t have that skin (aka everyone).

yes online i dont even bather with costum skins, if its not offical i dont use it, offline i play with costum skins and i downladed many of user made ones that are great, but i wont use them online, i realy belive devs could simply add 4-5 skins per airplane from historical skins made by users and win win for both sides

[J2_Bidu]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

Yes it took time between updates but every player was easily able to get thousands of skins. There’s no practical way to get that many by downloading them individually from disorganized forum threads.

 

Yeah, I know what you mean, but that's what CGF is doing for us with Flying Circus skins. He organizes a pack for everyone who submits skins to him.

[SharpeXB]

56 minutes ago, J2_Bidu said:

 

Yeah, I know what you mean, but that's what CGF is doing for us with Flying Circus skins. He organizes a pack for everyone who submits skins to him.

It would be better if 1CGS did that. If this isn’t included automatically with game updates not many player will get it. Most players don’t search here for those things. 

With download speeds and disc space what they are today I don’t imagine separate packs would be needed. I assume that’s why RoF went with keeping them separate. Today they could be just rolled into game updates. 

An effort by an individual player will eventually falter. Somebody was trying to keep the GB skins organized at one point. But that fell apart or stopped. 

Edited June 11, 2019 by SharpeXB

[JonRedcorn]

We don't need just skins though, we need a proper marking system like 1946 had. All the skins custom or default had squadron markings and numbers applied to them if you wanted. This would really improve the singleplayer experience. Seeing the default skins on your planes and enemies is definitely a bummer. But I have faith, they are hammering out fantastic updates recently, 1c is full of surprises.

[BG26_Moostafa]

I'm not familiar with the 1946 system but, I did really like the way IL2 Cliffs of Dover had their system for customizing individual aircraft. I would like to see a system added to BOS along those lines.

[6FG_Big_Al]

On 6/11/2019 at 4:24 PM, SharpeXB said:

Right. You can do the same thing in the Career Mode when you’re the commander. Still every other aircraft you see just has a generic skin. In RoF they all had distinctive ones. 

And searching the skin forum is just a terrible mess. 

I accidentally saw that today when I was promoted to commander. A great feature. If only the 1. skins would stay selected once you've determined it and 2. there might be some more generic skins. As for example yellow/red/white tail fin or a squadron emblem on the nose would be already great. So that the squadrons would stand out at least a little bit from each other.

[BOO]

On 6/11/2019 at 8:39 PM, BraveSirRobin said:

The main problem with the current system is that it actually discourages using custom skins.  If you’re using a custom skin on a winter map you stick out like a sore thumb to people who don’t have that skin (aka everyone).

I dont think the lighting in the game actually gives that great (if any) an advantage with winter skins. If fact, they are often more noticable over the winter forests toms.

 

Two stills of the same yak.

 

 

[SharpeXB]

So as if the situation was not bad already. It’s getting worse. 

Flying Circus has some very nice work being just dumped into random threads in its General Discussion section. Of course they’ll just get lost there. 

 

1CGS please create some sort of organization for this!

Some solutions:

- Pinned dedicated forum threads for each aircraft with NO DISCUSSIONS

- A User Files download section 

- Skin Packs like RoF had

- Accepting user made skins into the sim as Official which would be the best solution. 

 

This is really the best graphics and artwork that the sim could have and it’s just being lost. Why were skin tools even created for IL-2 if this is all that becomes of this work?