Haluter’s Skin Downloader for the IL-2 Sturmovik Great Battles series

[Na-zdorovie]

have too add as well, i really like this, i use it as much as i can, i wish all the skins were added to this, as above it would make life sooo much easier.

excellent job guys

[Vishnu]

Ok...so who did all the stupid duck skins for the HS 129??? WTF?  Now I have to go in, find them and delete them all.   Also I noticed when I install HSD and ran it, it got rid of alot of the Historical Hakenkreuz start up planes for missions etc, that I had previously downloaded, so that no matter what, any mission would be historically accurate without choosing custom skins.  Is there a way to get the Hakenkreuz planes to always be choosen like before under the offical skins?    I hope you understand the question guys.   Thanks in advance.

Great work btw.  

[RNAS10_Oliver]

If you did not like the look of them then why did you choose to download them in the first place?

[Vishnu]

I decided to download all.....then go in and cull.    

[RNAS10_Oliver]

lol only got yourself to blame then

[BlackHellHound1]

2 hours ago, Vishnu said:

Ok...so who did all the stupid duck skins for the HS 129??? WTF?  Now I have to go in, find them and delete them all.

 

If you dont like it, don't download it. There are plenty of search and filter options to find what you do want or to remove what you dont want. 

 

2 hours ago, Vishnu said:

Also I noticed when I install HSD and ran it, it got rid of alot of the Historical Hakenkreuz start up planes for missions etc, that I had previously downloaded, so that no matter what, any mission would be historically accurate without choosing custom skins.

 

If you enable "Uncensored Restricted Symbols" HSD will download the hakenkreuz version if available. Not all skins have it though since it's up to the artist to decide if they want to upload such a thing or not. 

 

2 hours ago, Vishnu said:

Is there a way to get the Hakenkreuz planes to always be choosen like before under the offical skins?

 

Can you clarify this? No idea what you mean to say.

 

BlackHellHound1

[Vishnu]

Sorry, what I meant, I assume HSD will convert all default Historical skins if URS is chosen.   Hope that helps and thanks for the response.

[BlackHellHound1]

53 minutes ago, Vishnu said:

Sorry, what I meant, I assume HSD will convert all default Historical skins if URS is chosen.   Hope that helps and thanks for the response.

 

HSD is only for custom skins. No idea why think it would effect the default skins. 

[Vishnu]

Just now, BlackHellHound1 said:

 

HSD is only for custom skins. No idea why think it would effect the default skins. 

Gotcha

[Misty06]

What an absolute FREAKSHOW of skins. What is next ? Ace Combat skinz? 

[BMA_FlyingShark]

31 minutes ago, Misty06 said:

What an absolute FREAKSHOW of skins. What is next ? Ace Combat skinz? 

What do you mean? You can choose the skins you want to download and which not if you don't like certain skins, than don't download them.

 

Have a nice day.

 

[RNAS10_Oliver]

2 hours ago, Misty06 said:

What an absolute FREAKSHOW of skins. What is next ? Ace Combat skinz? 

How about using the features that HSD provides you? There are filters so that you can choose to see just the historical skins that are available. And you just choose to download the skins that you want to see in game. Nothing more needed.

Edited June 9, 2021 by Oliver88

[Misty06]

I used the filters. There are FEW - historical accurately/historically marked skins there. There are MORE skins there that are either non historical or outright comedic/farcical /ridiculous/absurd/grotesque/inane. To each his own I suppose. There are more accurate ( and even CLOSE historical skins) found on the main pages here than in/with HSD. With some aircraft types ( usually US/UK) there is a ""better"" representation of existing works but when it comes to the Luftwaffe  - it is pitiful. What I will call ""club"" skins made for groups of ""enthusiasts"" are for those individuals and usually contain markings that are NOT what most come to HSD to find.  EXAMPLE: Why would I want to use RACCOON BOY'S  BF-109G-6 skin?  HSD............ uninstalled. 

Just really not here for the 6yr child art in other words..................hence my earlier Combat Ace reference. 

[itsbillyfrazier]

@Misty06 I agree that HSD needs a few minor tweaks around its filters, especially so the end user can include or exclude artists at their own discretion.

 

Other than that one minor gripe, it's super useful.

 

 The majority of top skinners are submitting to HSD too. 

 

Stick with it, it will be improved and even if it isn't, its still so much better than trawling the forums for skins.

 

 

[BlackHellHound1]

7 hours ago, Misty06 said:

I used the filters. There are FEW - historical accurately/historically marked skins there. There are MORE skins there that are either non historical or outright comedic/farcical /ridiculous/absurd/grotesque/inane. To each his own I suppose. There are more accurate ( and even CLOSE historical skins) found on the main pages here than in/with HSD. With some aircraft types ( usually US/UK) there is a ""better"" representation of existing works but when it comes to the Luftwaffe  - it is pitiful. What I will call ""club"" skins made for groups of ""enthusiasts"" are for those individuals and usually contain markings that are NOT what most come to HSD to find.  EXAMPLE: Why would I want to use RACCOON BOY'S  BF-109G-6 skin?  HSD............ uninstalled. 

Just really not here for the 6yr child art in other words..................hence my earlier Combat Ace reference. 

 

There are only 1765 historical skins on HSD with more added each day. Very few indeed.

And if you don't want a few skins, plenty of filters to avoid downloading them. Just set the skin type to Historical only and like magic, all the other stuff is gone. Hell, you can even easily remove skins you don't want anymore! 

 

But hey, if a tool with easy to use filter functions is too hard for you to use, by all means continue as you did before. 

Edited June 10, 2021 by BlackHellHound1

[Na-zdorovie]

you gotta be doing something wrong if you can only see "a few"

also i find you comments on disgusting etc Real annoying to say the least, i mainly fly historical, BUT i have a lot of my own skins that i like to fly for fun, after all is a game....for fun.

you may not like them all which is your right, but please don't disrespect others work, whatever if its too your liking or not, someone puts time and there love into it

[RedKestrel]

I can't wait to see some Typhoon skins on here! I really would love to see some RCAF markings, I don't think any of the official skins are for the Canucks. They probably won't look very different I suppose but its still nice to have.

[MasterBaiter]

Hey there! Great job im loving HSD so far!

 

The only thing I would add is an option to sort out the skins by release date so you don't have to go through them all to see which ones are new.

 

Keep it up!

[Kerhuon]

Downloaded  but not installed as Norton do not want it on my pc , window firewall too !! ?

[LukeFF]

6 hours ago, Kerhuon said:

Downloaded  but not installed as Norton do not want it on my pc , window firewall too !! ?

 

Norton is useless bloatware, and Windows's cries of it being malware can be safely ignored. If there was truly a problem with HSD, it would have been discovered long before now.

[Haluter]

On 6/16/2021 at 2:05 PM, Kerhuon said:

Downloaded  but not installed as Norton do not want it on my pc , window firewall too !! ?

HSD was developed using the Delphi Community Edition, and the compiler is known to produce executables that produces false positives in a few AV products. HSD is digitally signed which should help prevent most of these, but it's not 100% effective. In addition the required *.dll files are embedded in HSD.exe which are extracted during the first run. This could be deemed suspicious by the heuristic check in some AV products.

https://www.google.com/search?q=delphi+false+positives

Edited June 19, 2021 by haluter

[jokerBR]

Hello. First of all, thanks for the tool. Great idea, but for some reason it is painfully slow on the startup (that small red bar while "downloading new and updated previews" simply doesn't move, crawling for the last 23 min and barely hitting 2/3 now). 100Mbps up/down free for it, maybe the server is starving? It would be nice if the tool let the user to choose what to "preview" or not _after_ filtering/searching for content. 
Other than that, congrats. More when I get to know the UI. ?

[blue_max]

I just downloaded the tool and I'm absolutely loving just going through all the skins. Some of the racing skins are completely bonkers, it's awesome! Really nice tool, thanks, and thanks so much to all the skin artists for sharing their work in this way.

[Laddie]

I just installed your skin downloader and am about to fly with the first of my choices using it. Very easy to install and use, this will save me time searching the forum for appropriate skins, so a huge thank you for your work. I have one really stupid question though, where is your program located when it's installed ? I want to add a shortcut to it, but I'll be damned, I can't find it to create one ? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Edit : never mind, I figured it out, well I reinstalled following the advice about copying the folder and installing it where you desire. I'm a bellend ha ha

Edited June 23, 2021 by Shaun50
Found the solution

[Beebop]

On 6/9/2021 at 7:28 PM, Misty06 said:

I used the filters. There are FEW - historical accurately/historically marked skins there. There are MORE skins there that are either non historical or outright comedic/farcical /ridiculous/absurd/grotesque/inane. To each his own I suppose. There are more accurate ( and even CLOSE historical skins) found on the main pages here than in/with HSD. With some aircraft types ( usually US/UK) there is a ""better"" representation of existing works but when it comes to the Luftwaffe  - it is pitiful. What I will call ""club"" skins made for groups of ""enthusiasts"" are for those individuals and usually contain markings that are NOT what most come to HSD to find.  EXAMPLE: Why would I want to use RACCOON BOY'S  BF-109G-6 skin?  HSD............ uninstalled. 

Just really not here for the 6yr child art in other words..................hence my earlier Combat Ace reference. 

Yet another comment from someone who takes this game much too seriously.  You won't fall under the thumb of some dictator if you don't show up in the right uniform.

And don't be rude.  Those "comedic/farcical /ridiculous/absurd/grotesque/inane" took some effort.  (ever tried skinning?) 

No one is forcing you to download them.  Use the filters and if you can't say something nice or constructive....you know what you should do.

 

I agree with Na-zdorovie, "...after all is a game....for fun.  you may not like them all which is your right, but please don't disrespect others work, whatever if its too your liking or not, someone puts time and there love into it"

(emphasis mine).

 

 

[Reggie_Mental]

On 6/16/2021 at 8:56 PM, LukeFF said:

 

Norton is useless bloatware, and Windows's cries of it being malware can be safely ignored. If there was truly a problem with HSD, it would have been discovered long before now.

True. It even hates FSX, turning loading times from minutes to hours.

 

I'd rather have a virus than Norton installed.

 

Kapersky does the job and never gets in the way. Never had a problem with Kaspersky AV at all

[Beebop]

2 hours ago, Reggie_Mental said:

I'd rather have a virus than Norton installed.

I agree about Norton but be careful for what you wish for.

 

[Mysticpuma]

This is a fantastic utility. Fired it up today, chose historic, 5Gb of skins later, very happy. 

Easy to use, well done to the guys who created it. 

[Beebop]

This is a streamlined more intuitive tool than the original IL2Skins from the Maddox Days, (original IL-2).  I do like it but I have some questions.

 

Q1:  What's the best way to filter for most recent adds? 

I'll see a skinner post he has just uploaded a skin but it can take a while, even with the author filter, to find it.  (some skinners are very prolific).

 

Q2: Is there a way to not have the program automatically show all the skins I have?  After that loads I generally clear the queue.  Besides, when the skins load I can already see which ones I have installed.  If that could be an option rather than an automatic function at startup it would be nice.

 

Q3:  I imagine there is no way to speed the programs initial loading process.  It's a matter of how many skins are cached isn't it?  It would seem to me that at some point, a year or two down the road when the skin amount doubles or even triples it could take several minutes to load the program.

 

Just askin'. 

Thanks for the Program.

 

[BlackHellHound1]

1 hour ago, Beebop said:

This is a streamlined more intuitive tool than the original IL2Skins from the Maddox Days, (original IL-2).  I do like it but I have some questions.

 

Q1:  What's the best way to filter for most recent adds? 

I'll see a skinner post he has just uploaded a skin but it can take a while, even with the author filter, to find it.  (some skinners are very prolific).

 

Q2: Is there a way to not have the program automatically show all the skins I have?  After that loads I generally clear the queue.  Besides, when the skins load I can already see which ones I have installed.  If that could be an option rather than an automatic function at startup it would be nice.

 

Q3:  I imagine there is no way to speed the programs initial loading process.  It's a matter of how many skins are cached isn't it?  It would seem to me that at some point, a year or two down the road when the skin amount doubles or even triples it could take several minutes to load the program.

 

Just askin'. 

Thanks for the Program.

 

A1: Not yet possible but we are trying to work out a method. We already store the upload date so the infrastructure is there. Just need to think of a clever method and implement it. A little workaround for now, you can click on the "owned" column in the skins list so all the skins you don't own show on top including the new skins.

A2: The Queue that forms when you start HSD is not "just" your downloaded skins but skins that require updating. You should always download these so you get the latest version the artist has created. If they return, it means they still require updating. Sometimes CloudFlare takes a moment to catch up so it may return for a day or two after a skin was updated by the artist so try it again a week later or so.

A3: While it is really hard to speed that up, Haluter is always looking at ways to improve it regardless. We try to avoid it taking to long so it's hard to tell now what the future holds. No promises though.

 

I hope that answers all your questions.

 

BlackHellHound1

[Reggie_Mental]

5 hours ago, Beebop said:

I agree about Norton but be careful for what you wish for.

 

I dunno, but I have had viruses that were easier to remove and impacted the performance of my desktop rig less than Norton did. 

[BladeMeister]

Very true Reggie_Mental. No insult to anyone with Norton currently, but I had Norton AV on my first puter way back when with a Celeron chip. After about 2 weeks, the complete neub that I was , I figured how to get rid of it and stop all of the problems and headache it caused me. I wouldn't wish Norton AV on my worst enemy. Well, maybe on my worst enemy, but no one else.

 

S!Blade<><

[Haluter]

On 6/23/2021 at 5:48 AM, jokerBR said:

Hello. First of all, thanks for the tool. Great idea, but for some reason it is painfully slow on the startup (that small red bar while "downloading new and updated previews" simply doesn't move, crawling for the last 23 min and barely hitting 2/3 now). 100Mbps up/down free for it, maybe the server is starving? It would be nice if the tool let the user to choose what to "preview" or not _after_ filtering/searching for content. 
Other than that, congrats. More when I get to know the UI. ?

 

Sorry to hear that it's so slow for you. We made some improvements in the time it takes to launch in the recent update. The current version is v. 1.2.1.10, can you please confirm which version you are using? If you are not running the latest version you should see an [Install update] button top right.

[jokerBR]

7 hours ago, haluter said:

 

Sorry to hear that it's so slow for you. We made some improvements in the time it takes to launch in the recent update. The current version is v. 1.2.1.10, can you please confirm which version you are using? If you are not running the latest version you should see an [Install update] button top right.

Hi haluter.  Thanks for your answer. ?

Yes, I'm using the 1.2.1.10. 
After the first run where it took easily more than 30 minutes to load all previews, today it took about 4 minutes to "download new and updated previews" (first run after one week without using it). I'm in Brazil, so my bet is that this has something to do with Internet (no matter how many Mbps I have, there's always the "path" between my machine and the server). Anyway, no problem, since I can let it run in the background while I do other things and then check the news later.

Curious thing is that the skins selected seem to download faster than the previews... which is a good thing. I tend to look at things from the bright side: it would take a lot more time for me to search and locate all the skins if they were scattered all the place, so no complaints from my part, it's a win anyway. Oh, and the UI is well done and easy. Congrats. ?

 

[=SFG=capt_nasties]

this is pretty rad thanks!!

[Reggie_Mental]

Haluter, do you (or anyone) know where I might find this skin? TYIA - and can you add it to your utility?

PS: My download took a few hours, but I let it run overnight. No problem.

Edited July 9, 2021 by Reggie_Mental

[Beebop]

That IS a nice skin.  I'd take one if it were available.

[Haluter]

3 hours ago, Reggie_Mental said:

Haluter, do you (or anyone) know where I might find this skin? TYIA - and can you add it to your utility?

PS: My download took a few hours, but I let it run overnight. No problem.

 

I'm not familiar with this skin unfortunately. I would also like to see it on HSD, but it will have to be uploaded by the original artist or with their permission.

Edited July 9, 2021 by haluter

[Burdokva]

Great tool, nice concept, easy to use. I do have to state that the filters are ... not exactly useful. I am in the camp where I am looking mostly for historical skins (or semi-historical, at least, based on an incomplete photo or pilot memoirs).

 

Now, when I select the 'generic' filter I would imagine this would show camoflages, maybe with theater markings, but no specific unit, plane number or pilot insignia. As the name 'generic' suggests.

 

Unfortunately, the filter (whether used standalone or along with the 'historical' filter) returns loads of multiplayer squadron 'generic' markings, like "this is a generic skins for X squadron."

 

Now, some people may need and/or enjoy these, and prefer HSD over their own squad's tool. But please, can't these skins be lumped into a new category like 'MP squad skins', or something similar?

 

A generic skin should be just that. Hey, I need a desert skin for a 109 - a will look for a generic one. Hey, I need an early war brown/green RAF camo, I'll look for a generic one. The filter returning other things makes this quite difficult.

 

[Field-Ops]

This is an excellent tool. I'm really happy something like this has come to the community so thank you to those involved. 

 

I wonder if something like this could happen for scripted campaigns?