@DEVs .... make it possible to see custom skins online like IL-2 1946 and CloD...

[MrNoice]

@DEVs .... make it possible to see custom skins online like IL-2 1946 and CloD...

 

 

 

thank you. it would really good and fun for   Squadrons 

 

 

greetings 

 

MrFies

[=SqSq=Sulaco]

Custom skins can already be seen online by anyone else who also has that skin installed.

 

Whether or not this option is turned on is up to the server, I believe Wings of Liberty has this option turned off as people were using it to cheat somehow (not sure how). 

 

You can still see other players custom skins while flying on Tactical Air War and a few other servers though.

[AndyJWest]

@ OP: It is already possible to see custom skins online. You have to download them first. The alternative would be to download the file when the player entered the server. Do you really want a monster lag every time someone enters the server with a 4K skin?

Edited January 6, 2018 by AndyJWest

[MrNoice]

@=SqSq=Sulaco well at me moment you can only see Skins youve installed by yourself ..

 

@AndyJWest  it would be nice to have a settings where you can enable/disable that.

 

 

..... like in the old 1946 where you could  enable/disable the skin download... that would be great.

Edited January 6, 2018 by KG_S_MrFies

[Halon]

Not entirely convinced seeing custom skins as default would be good, things like pink Stukas would really kill the immersion for me.

 

It would be nice if there was a way to make simple changes to the paint schemes, like editing numbers and letters etc, but thats no doubt a massive waste of resources.

[AndyJWest]

Nope. Having the option to download skins while playing online is going to result in everyone else (including those who have opted out of download) seeing rubber-banding or other artefacts for aircraft of anyone who has opted in. You can't expect the game to handle sudden 16MB download peaks without glitching out.

[MrNoice]

well then maybe they could make it like so you have to be in the lobby and click manualy download so you wont be in flight while downloading .... there would be some ways to add the  MP custom Skin feature

Edited January 6, 2018 by KG_S_MrFies

[BlitzPig_EL]

I wouldn't mind the loss of custom skins quite so much if we could at least select our own tactical numbers.

 

It can't be that much of a resource hog.

 

*EDIT*

 

I really dislike "flying" the aircraft of a real WW2 pilot.  I am not a real WW2 pilot, none of us are anymore, though I did have the great honor to fly with a real P51 pilot many years ago in the original sim.

I am not Hartmann, or Sakai, or Bader, or Bong.  To fly "their" aircraft is nothing but hubris and pretension.

 

None of us will wear a real HSU, DFC, or Iron Cross.   Thinking that you will, or do, is a sickness born of ego, nothing more.

Edited January 6, 2018 by BlitzPig_EL

[ShamrockOneFive]

 

@=SqSq=Sulaco well at me moment you can only see Skins youve installed by yourself ..

 

@AndyJWest  it would be nice to have a settings where you can enable/disable that.

 

 

..... like in the old 1946 where you could  enable/disable the skin download... that would be great.

 

 

Every server I was ever on in IL-2: Forgotten Battles and on turned off that feature within a week of trying it out because of the performance issues of pushing out custom skins. The skins we use now are two or three times the resolution and will be going up to 4K soon. It's not likely to ever work well unfortunately.

[curiousGamblerr]

I wouldn't mind the loss of custom skins quite so much if we could at least select our own tactical numbers.

 

It's can't be that much of a resource hog.

I don't think it's a resource hog but rather the engine isn't equipped for something like that. I have a vague memory of the devs saying something like that. How that's the case, given the fact that bullet hole decals are possible, is beyond me, but if I've learned anything from my software engineering career it's that early design decisions can really make seemingly trivial stuff a pain in the butt depending on how you coded things originally.

 

As for the thread topic, the DServer can barely handle gameplay. So suggestions like pushing out custom skins and integrated voice comms are a non starter.

[216th_Jordan]

Every server I was ever on in IL-2: Forgotten Battles and on turned off that feature within a week of trying it out because of the performance issues of pushing out custom skins. The skins we use now are two or three times the resolution and will be going up to 4K soon. It's not likely to ever work well unfortunately.

If there was some sort of logic behind it it could just download skins that are unavailable or outdated. By default the setting should be disabled so that people who occasionally jump on the server don't drain the bandwidth. I'd surely love that feature but I agree that It could add a lot of traffic.

 

Another option would be to have an official game server that hosts skins that are uploaded to it and are available to anyone. You could then have 3 options (2 and 3 could be combined):

1. download all skins (disables the other two)

2. download selected skins

3. download skins others use in your server or coop mission get downloaded on the fly

 

That way bad/cheater-skins don't creep in neither.

[BlitzPig_EL]

All fair points.

 

Still I hope at some point at least the number thing can be integrated into the sim.  I miss not seeing my "23" on my aircraft.

[Rolling_Thunder]

If you want to see your squads skins just download each of their skins its pretty straightforward. If you just want everybody to see your own personal skin I'm afraid you're out of luck and somewhat egotistical. I have zero interest in seeing somebodies aircraft adorned with Japanese cartoon schoolgirls.

[katdog5]

Not entirely convinced seeing custom skins as default would be good, things like pink Stukas would really kill the immersion for me.

 

It would be nice if there was a way to make simple changes to the paint schemes, like editing numbers and letters etc, but thats no doubt a massive waste of resources.

 

exactly..

[56RAF_Roblex]

One issue with allowing people to choose whether they download other peoples custom skins is the problem we already have.   If you use a custom skin and other players do not have it then they see a default skin.  That skin is green regardless of whether you are on a Summer or Winter map.

 

I have made custom skins for all of my squadron, each with personal insignia etc. and a unique wingtip & tail colour.  We find this helps a lot when eight of us are spawning at a field and other people are also spawning around us in the same aircraft.   We can easily see who is beside us so we can pair up with the correct element leader when we taxi out to the runway.   The unique tail & tip design also means that in a swirling dogfight we know which aircraft are squadron members.   This is fine in Summer & Spring maps but when there is snow we have to revert to normal skins.    Several people have asked 1C whether they can at least get the game to have two default skins and choose a Winter default when the map is in Winter but I have never seen any reply.

[Oubaas]

Screaming, pink, "Hello, Kitty!" Stukas, dive-bombing a target. Heh heh. Cool.

[MrNoice]

yeah making it selectable would be nice

[Finkeren]

Official approved skin packs like in RoF is the way to go IMHO

[[CPT]milopugdog]

Official approved skin packs like in RoF is the way to go IMHO

I loved those!!! They could even do like they did with RoF, and have them be used by squadrons in the career mode.

[MrNoice]

Official approved skin packs like in RoF is the way to go IMHO

THIS

 

 

yes that would be really great !!!

[Finkeren]

Of course the big stumbling block to official skin packs are going to be a certain little four-pronged symbol (it starts with an ‘S’ and ends with ‘WASTIKA’) For silly legal reasons (for which we absolutely cannot blame the devs) the German and Finnish skins will have to be sanitized, if they are to be officially hosted on this site.

 

Please don’t start another pointless discussion about this. I just wanted to point it out.

[6./ZG26_Gielow]

A hybrid system would be great.

 

First we can have a historical markings system like the classic game which you could choose squadron badges, numbers, etc We could add here an option for camo patterns.

 

Second, what we have now on a custom tab where you can add your own stuff over the historical ones and anyone who has the same files can see it too.

 

Thus we can avoid downloads and pink stukas while we can have a high level of personalization without sacrificing the historic factor.

[ShamrockOneFive]

Official approved skin packs like in RoF is the way to go IMHO

 

I think that's the best way forward.

 

Even if not, we can easily have a community based unofficial multiplayer skin pack and distribute that amongst players. It wouldn't reach quite as many people but it would have some reach.

[WWDubya]

I miss IL2Skins.com...

[Dakpilot]

Am sure Jason mentioned intention/desire for original IL-2 style individual aircraft 'decal' unit marking for the future

 

Cheers, Dakpilot

[56RAF_Roblex]

I asked and was told it was impossible to add custoim numbers/markings to an unmarked skin.   Something about the skin code being written by another team (ROF?) and it cannot be changed unless they re-write the whole thing themselves from scratch.

[Dakpilot]

I asked and was told it was impossible to add custoim numbers/markings to an unmarked skin.   Something about the skin code being written by another team (ROF?) and it cannot be changed unless they re-write the whole thing themselves from scratch.

 

I think that was what Jason was hinting at but with no promised time frame in mind

 

(from memory, I may be wrong  )

 

Cheers, Dakpilot

[=GW=xshinel]

Seems the custom skin system will be released in the BoBP,  mention by Jason in the last big TS meeting.

[curiousGamblerr]

Seems the custom skin system will be released in the BoBP, mention by Jason in the last big TS meeting.

Also mods on mode and a cockpit gauge API was mentioned like a year ago for BoK and still we haven't heard anything about that in forever, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

This isn't meant to be a dig at Jason and the team, they'd build it all if they had the time, but it's true.

Edited January 7, 2018 by 19//curiousGamblerr

[SharpeXB]

Official approved skin packs like in RoF is the way to go IMHO

Agree. All the user created skins are too time consuming to download. When BoX launches a career mode I hope it will come with a large variety of skins. Honestly the way RoF does it is the only practical way for players to get a big collection of these.

[Finkeren]

Also: Creation of officially approved skinpacks would be really easy to pass on to a 3rd party. Some might even wanna do it for free. All the devs would have to contribute is hosting and bandwith.

[curiousGamblerr]

Also: Creation of officially approved skinpacks would be really easy to pass on to a 3rd party. Some might even wanna do it for free. All the devs would have to contribute is hosting and bandwith.

 

I've had some brief discussions with Jason and Dave about this, and Jason's first question was "who is going to host it?" because often those things can be pricey, particularly because of the large file sizes involved.

 

However, in this day and age there are affordable solutions such as Amazon S3+Cloudfront, which I use for the mission planner. I would volunteer to set up something but I'm on the fence given time constraints and the possibility of miscalculating and screwing myself out of some serious cash.

 

For reference, in December I served 683,786 files totalling some 20GB and it cost me $2.98. The issue is most of those files were small image tiles for the mission planner, the rest even smaller source code files, whereas skin files are much larger. I'm not sure, but I think it would still be affordable. I don't have time to run the numbers right now, and wouldn't know where to start as far as estimating how many people would actually download skinpacks, but it would be interesting to explore. My hunch is the devs could contract this out to someone like me and pay less than $100 per month after initial setup costs, but it's hard to say.

 

The other problem with skinpacks in this game is the fact that skins can be exploited so easily in multiplayer. I will avoid going into details but I think most of us understand how that would work. It's unfortunate that we need to consider this fact, but it is what it is (however, given these would be "official" skin packs, the devs could add a hash check in the game to prevent this pretty "easily" - easily in quotes because the check itself is simple, but who knows given the context of the rest of the code).

 

Expanding on this idea, I've imagined a "Sturmovik Content Mananger" which would make installation a breeze. Basically, a content system in the cloud as described which holds not just skin packs, but mission packs and other things, and then a small client application to manage, download and install the packs. If anyone is familiar with Linux package managers, imagine a similar idea. I fantasize about this project because it would be a lot of fun to build, but ultimately I'm hesitant to begin such a thing without support from the devs. Give me a couple thousand bucks for the time and pay for the hosting costs and its done   The only dev code changes necessary might be the aforementioned hash checks on the skins to avoid cheating.

 

I could ramble for days about this, it's something I've put quite a bit of thought into, but ultimately I've never put a formal proposal together so I don't expect the devs to take me up on it. Perhaps I should tho, since they seem to be ramping up their cooperation with third party contractors...

Edited January 7, 2018 by 19//curiousGamblerr

[KG_S_Kalle_Kalutz82]

Well, there is NOT only the option

a) its allready working, just everybody has to download everything before the game

or

b) the joining player brings it with him, so that (possibly) a little lag occurs for all others in game

 

Would be nice if the server running people could offer some collectable thread or something in this way, to ensure

that there will be no "pink stuka's" or other "immersion killing things" how somebody here mentioned correctly.

The server should have it and if you join you will load anyway the server stuff....right??

 

I mean, such a beauty should be seen also by others for sure

 

 

 

Edited January 7, 2018 by KG_S_Kalle_Kalutz82

[Ehret]

Hi,

 

It might be a good idea to allow changing of colors on existing, common skins. Wings tips, bars on tail, propeller hub, stars, and other marks, could use some customization. It wouldn't be as good as true custom skin of course, yet enough to make squadron members distinct. Middle ground could be user's bitmaps in those places.

[Royal_Flight]

I wouldn't mind the loss of custom skins quite so much if we could at least select our own tactical numbers.

 

It can't be that much of a resource hog.

 

*EDIT*

 

I really dislike "flying" the aircraft of a real WW2 pilot. I am not a real WW2 pilot, none of us are anymore, though I did have the great honor to fly with a real P51 pilot many years ago in the original sim.

I am not Hartmann, or Sakai, or Bader, or Bong. To fly "their" aircraft is nothing but hubris and pretension.

 

None of us will wear a real HSU, DFC, or Iron Cross. Thinking that you will, or do, is a sickness born of ego, nothing more.

I agree. Not to say I don't recognise the hard work and research that people put into recreating historic skins, but there seems to be a tendency for aircraft in development to be relying more and more heavily on a patchwork quilt of various unique ace liveries. Hopefully they'll ship with a few 'standard' skins. I agree with you about not wanting to fly 'someone else's' plane. I'd rather fly my own.

 

It's been suggested before but I would far rather have a selection of default camouflage styles (e.g. early-war green/black, late-war grey, winter pure white, winter whitewash over green etc) and the ability to add decals. Tactical numbers, squadron codes, fuselage bands or coloured wingtips or rudders or something.

Maybe even the option to add custom nose-art.

How this could be done I'm not sure, but it would be my preference.

 

I mean, such a beauty should be seen also by others for sure

 

 

 

That is an awesome skin, I must say.

[Jade_Monkey]

Well, there is NOT only the option

a) its allready working, just everybody has to download everything before the game

or

b) the joining player brings it with him, so that (possibly) a little lag occurs for all others in game

 

Would be nice if the server running people could offer some collectable thread or something in this way, to ensure

that there will be no "pink stuka's" or other "immersion killing things" how somebody here mentioned correctly.

The server should have it and if you join you will load anyway the server stuff....right??

 

I mean, such a beauty should be seen also by others for sure

 

 

 

Nice skin!!

 

I dont think this is possible, especially with 4K skins.

 

Imagine joining a server with 84 people and half of them are using a personal skin that you have to download. Im not in front of my pc but I vaguely recall 4K skins are around 300MB? That would be gigs worth of downloads as soon as you join a server.