Discussing the possibility of official custom cockpit skin support

[FTC_ChilliBalls]

Greetings to all whom it may interest and especially the devs of IL 2 Great Battle series.

 

With the release of the original cockpit textures for modders by Jason_Williams 

the door for custom cockpit textures has been opened for modders of this awesome community.

 

Lo and behold, we´ve got several people working on textures with increased texture sizes,

i.e. Oyster_KAI with their awesome combined AI and hand drawn improvements.

 

Now, we all know there´s official support for custom exterior textures of planes,

enabling us to use whatever combinations of camouflage or crazy colour combinations we fancy,

be they historical or completely fantasical in nature, without influencing the experience for others on official servers.

 

Currently, we don´t have the same support for interior cockpit textures, it´s only possible to get custom cockpit textures in the game through the mods on mode,

which basically precludes any flying on the most popular and most populated multiplayer servers, whose owners are understandably wary of opening this door,

as there currently is no way to screen players for the mods they are using, possibly inviting cheaters or people who otherwise exploit the openness of the server to modifications.

 

This situation IMO begs the question whether it would be beneficial or even feasable for the devs to implement a way for us to use custom cockpit textures in any officially supported manner,

similar to the way it is currently handled for exterior plane textures. 

 

This should NOT be a discussion about whether we want such a change, and most definitely NOT be a place for people to whine about the absence of such a feature.

What I would like this to be is a factual discussion on whether it is feasable to implement such a feature, nothing more nothing less.

 

To kick things of, I have several questions I think should be answered before any others:

 

• How much work would it be to implement such a feature, ergo, do the devs have the time or the manpower to implement it in the near future?
• Would implementing this feature slow down or even outright prevent other features from being implemented, i.e. cockpit glass reflections?
• Could such a feature be exploited, i.e. an invisible or see through cockpit?

 

Thanks to anyone who wants to contribute to this discussion and especially the devs if they have anything to say about this topic.

I wish you all a wonderful day and a fun and anjoyable time flying or tanking in the IL-2 Great Battle series!

[WIS-Redcoat]

Jason already responded to that thread and indicated that he is watching it’s progress.  So it is safe to say they are aware of these possibilities. 

[41Sqn_Skipper]

On 5/2/2020 at 2:24 PM, So_ein_Feuerball said:

• Could such a feature be exploited, i.e. an invisible or see through cockpit?

 

I've seen that some small wholes a cockpit skin were made transparent (IIRC in the Bf 109 F-4) . It's save the assume that this can also other parts of the cockpit.

 

Thinking about it, a similar exploited should be already be possible by adding invisible parts (via alpha channel) in the external skin. Especially the wings and the upper engine cowling could potentially give an advantage (better view for deflection shooting and no blind-sport to lower side).

Edited May 3, 2020 by 41Sqn_Banks