Which skin is which or Skins Display in flight

[IckyATLAS]

When you build a mission and set a plane model in your game, you would like to use one of the skins that are available to you.

These are listed as default and then from 01 to 10 or more skins. But you do not know to which skin it corresponds to.

Sure the default is in general OK and it will be in the colors of national origin of the plane but I find this limited.

And now that we will have different battles were the same planes have been flown by different different national air forces it is not easy to remember which skin was what.

So I have crafted a very simple mission (you have the files below at the end of this post) were you have a display in flight of all the skins corresponding to a given plane.  You have 14 plane flying straight in echelon and so you can review all the skins up to 14. If there are less skins available then if you have custom skins downloaded then you can have those displayed. In general custom skins go by their denomination and so are easier to refer to.

Or you just leave the remaining planes with default skins. As you like.

To have a connection between say skin number 06 and the plane you are looking at here it is how to proceed.

 

1) Launch the mission. Empty Lapino default winter map. Fastest to use, load etc.  for this kind of mission.

2) You will start in the plane with "default" skin or plane skin 0.

3) Press A to set you plane in autopilot mode (it will fly straight and don't bother anymore with it.

4) Hit F2. Set your view angle and zoom so that you will see well your plane from outside.

5) Now hit Shift F2 and start cycling though all the skins.

 

Here is the sequence to see what Skin 06 looks like:

 

F2 -> Player plane and plane with Default skin.

Shift F2 --> Plane with Skin 01 

Shift F2 --> Plane with Skin 02

Shift F2 --> Plane with Skin 03

Shift F2 --> Plane with Skin 04

Shift F2 --> Plane with Skin 05

Shift F2 --> Plane with Skin 06.  Now you know what the skin 06 in the editor looks like.

...

...

...

and so on.

You can come back to default by hitting any time F2.

 

You will find here four missions that display skins of A20b, P51D, P40 and FW190A8.

 

You can very easily do your own skin plane flight parade, say for a Me109 or any other plane of the ME.

Here is how to proceed if you want to have the HE111H16 skins displayed:

 

1) Select one of my skin missions say the P51D Skins Display and open it in the ME.

2) Change the name of the mission to reflect the new plane to "HE111H16 Skins Display" and save it with the same file name. I always save the mission file with the same name as the mission name. Easier to manage files.

3) Select all the planes together in one select box. If the property window is not already open then click right and select Properties and switch the plane model in the Properties box. You will have <multiple> displayed in the Name attribute, this shows multiple planes selected.

4) Select the model you like in the list that will be displayed, in this example  HE111H16. Now all the 14 planes will become HE111H16 planes instead of the originally P51Ds.

5) Now you will work separately on each plane, because when you switch model of a plane, the new plane has the default skin. All your 14 HE111H16 planes now have a default skin. All other attributes remain so nothing else to change except the skin.

5) Then double click on on Plane 1 and set the skin in the advanced properties to Skin 01.

6) Do the same for each plane in order, Plane 2 with Skin 02, Plane 3 with Skin 03 and so on until the last skin listed in the advanced property list. If you have more than 14 skins to display then just add additional planes and waypoints by duplicating Plane 14 and its corresponding waypoint. Altitudes are staged by 25 meters per plane from 1000 to 1350mt. So the new plane say Plane 15 would be at 1375. Do not forget to set the waypoint altitude at the same as for the plane. But you are free to do whatever you want here. The mission is a template for you to use and do whatever you like with.

 

When finished save and play the mission.

Have fun

 

Skin Displays.zip

 

Edited November 4, 2019 by IckyATLAS