Can photos used in career menu screens be changed?

[Blitzen]

There are various black & white photos used on the progressive screens in career mode during the process of the flight start that are vintage World War Two photos. I love the career mode  but I am continually scratching my head  to understand how the 777 IL-2 crew chose the photos they did.Many of these photos ( at least on the German side) really aren’t appropriate: some even show B-17 formations , while others German infantry scenes, scattered among Luftwaffe scenes. I’d like to have ( where appropriate) the ability to change these to ALL Luftwaffe photos readily available available on line. This is obviously a small change and an obviously esthetic one, but one I’m sure others might endorse

[AndyJWest]

I suspect that the developers could only use photos that were known to be copyright-free.

[DetCord12B]

11 hours ago, Blitzen said:

There are various black & white photos used on the progressive screens in career mode during the process of the flight start that are vintage World War Two photos. I love the career mode  but I am continually scratching my head  to understand how the 777 IL-2 crew chose the photos they did.Many of these photos ( at least on the German side) really aren’t appropriate: some even show B-17 formations , while others German infantry scenes, scattered among Luftwaffe scenes. I’d like to have ( where appropriate) the ability to change these to ALL Luftwaffe photos readily available available on line. This is obviously a small change and an obviously esthetic one, but one I’m sure others might endorse

 

Most are stock photos that are royalty free, for obvious reasons. I found a few after you mentioned it - swf/il2/careers/bok, bos or bom. Some are located in the phases sub-folders, others (like Next Day) I'm not sure where they are.

 

Example. This one appears during the German campaign for Kuban if selecting the final phase.

[Trooper117]

Time for our intrepid modders to come to the fore... I would love to see the pilot pictures changed to something more historical as well, the present pics we have are pretty awful...

[seafireliv]

Despite the Career adhering to historical reality as far as how the war generally went, the actually sorties and missions are dynamic. There`s also the unpredictable element of the Human Player Pilot...

 

What i`m getting at: having actual real world WW2 pilots in the sim means they could very well be killed in situations when they never were - Personally I don`t have a problem with that since I see the Career as an alternate WW2 where things went slightly differently in tactical aerial combat, but some people get really upset when their `fave` Ace historical pilot gets blown away after mission 2- And making him come back to life after you know he went down in flames would just make it silly.

 

It`s safer to make the pilots randomly made up  and chances are you`d never fly with the actual real world guys anyway.

Edited May 15, 2018 by seafireliv

[Trooper117]

I don't care if Lt SausageKnacker has a portrait of an historical ace... to me he's SausageKnacker and he's in my flight, and if he gets killed then send me a replacement, hopefully in period flying gear... at the moment, the pilot portraits we have have faces that look like they have been cloned from a 'chamber of horror' movie...

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

I, for one, welcome our new facegen overlords.

[Trooper117]

You would... I imagine your balls are even more excited.

[DetCord12B]

9 hours ago, Trooper117 said:

Time for our intrepid modders to come to the fore... I would love to see the pilot pictures changed to something more historical as well, the present pics we have are pretty awful...

 

The portraits aren't actual portraits. It's a silhouette only that then has ears, eyes, hair, a mouth and nose randomized and applied to it. Which is why they look...odd?

 

It looks like this before any of that occurs.

 

Though I am experimenting with a way to apply actual photographs.

 

[Blitzen]

That is positively frightening!!!

But I agree the portraits we have are very weird...and There is something about the German ones that look like they began life as reasonably good looking Slavs who got "modded' up a bit.....

[Custard]

Honestly, I love the portraits. They're characterful! And part of the IL-2 lore as far as I'm concerned, like ridiculous 1946 menu music.

[Trooper117]

Yes, but in the original we all had the ability to change the menu music... I suspect that every man and his dog did exactly that.

I have the standard IL2 on my HD still (unmodded), and I have all music, pilots portraits and pilot skins changed to my liking.

[JG7_X-Man]

On 5/15/2018 at 4:23 PM, DetCord12B said:

 

The portraits aren't actual portraits. It's a silhouette only that then has ears, eyes, hair, a mouth and nose randomized and applied to it. Which is why they look...odd?

 

It looks like this before any of that occurs.

 

Though I am experimenting with a way to apply actual photographs.

 

Haha! Evection day is eminent! 

On 5/16/2018 at 8:56 AM, Trooper117 said:

Yes, but in the original we all had the ability to change the menu music... I suspect that every man and his dog did exactly that.

I have the standard IL2 on my HD still (unmodded), and I have all music, pilots portraits and pilot skins changed to my liking.

 

I would like to change these to my own photographs too - so there isn't a mod for this yet?

[Dutch2]

Yep sure, the 1c designer will be very proud on what he did achieve, but the results are if selecting from a army of men made by dr Frankenstein. ?

 

I think the only way is to fill all the body part maps with transparent.dds files and use the map with the basic body for the real pilots pictures. Only there is one problem, the basic is also being shared to the body part maps (eyes, hair, mouth). If only wanting to show your own face then I guess its not an problem selecting 50 of the same photo, but filling this with different photo’s could be another story, because the stock pilot photo is an layer combination from the basic with all kinds mix of eyes/hair/mouths/ears. 

 

 

Edited January 7, 2021 by Dutch2

[sevenless]

On 5/14/2018 at 5:51 PM, Blitzen said:

There are various black & white photos used on the progressive screens in career mode during the process of the flight start that are vintage World War Two photos. I love the career mode  but I am continually scratching my head  to understand how the 777 IL-2 crew chose the photos they did.Many of these photos ( at least on the German side) really aren’t appropriate: some even show B-17 formations , while others German infantry scenes, scattered among Luftwaffe scenes. I’d like to have ( where appropriate) the ability to change these to ALL Luftwaffe photos readily available available on line. This is obviously a small change and an obviously esthetic one, but one I’m sure others might endorse

 

All of them can be changed. The path is: data\swf\il2\worldevents and the subfolders within. You only need to ungtp the game and then you can change everyting you like to.

 

One pic from the automission folder:

 

[Dutch2]

For some strange reason that not working for the pilots photo’s. The pilots .txt story can be changed but the dr Frankenstein disciple pilot photo’s still appears. 

[sevenless]

3 hours ago, Dutch2 said:

For some strange reason that not working for the pilots photo’s. The pilots .txt story can be changed but the dr Frankenstein disciple pilot photo’s still appears. 

 

It is no photo, but randomly generated and as we all know the result won´t win any beauty queen contest.