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

[SA-Rocket]

is it normal to have it on "extracting skin previews..." in the first run for over one hour?

In task manager HSD is not using any resources, just 2.6 MB of ram but nothing on the disk usage or CPU (0% usage).

is it stuck?

Edited July 14, 2021 by A7MD_SA

[Hoss]

Depends on how many skins you have in your skins folder and how many are in HSD..............  not more than five minutes for me most days...

 

Hoss

[SA-Rocket]

3 minutes ago, 352nd_Hoss said:

Depends on how many skins you have in your skins folder and how many are in HSD..............  not more than five minutes for me most days...

 

Hoss

I only have default skins in my skins folder so I think the app is stuck there

[BlackHellHound1]

48 minutes ago, A7MD_SA said:

is it normal to have it on "extracting skin previews..." in the first run for over one hour?

In task manager HSD is not using any resources, just 2.6 MB of ram but nothing on the disk usage or CPU (0% usage).

is it stuck?

 

Did you follow the installation instructions as written in the release post? 

To me that sounds like you are trying to run HSD.exe straight from the .zip file which doesn't work.
 

A second thing to try is to force close HSD.exe and delete the HSD.db file. Then try again.

 

If neither works, join our discord and we'll help you further. https://discord.gg/RPvmtd8

 

BlackHellHound1

 

[BlackHellHound1]

Update V1.2.1.29 has been released.

 

This update has focused primarily on large speed improvements across the board and it's very much noticeable.

We included ? bubbles to the uploader to avoid confusion about what is what exactly. It's the same text as on the forums but easily accessible in HSD. As well as a small redesign of the uploader.

You can now sort the skins list by Newest skin first. The Vehicles tree will now also behave differently, expanding automatically as you click on the nodes.

Previews will now also update correctly. So if you update a skin, the preview will now also update correctly for everyone.

 

Alongside a few more changes and bug fixes.

 

Now quickly launch HSD and update! (And get all the new skins you've missed in the past few days.) 

You can read the full update log in HSD or in this forum log:

 

Edited July 18, 2021 by BlackHellHound1

[Beebop]

"1. Introduced “Sort skins by release date” option in the options tab"

This is a great addition.  Now when I find a new skin on the forums it will be easier to find it.  ?

Edited July 18, 2021 by Beebop

[BlackHellHound1]

Update V1.2.1.47 has been released.

 

This update mainly focuses on fixing some bugs in V29. Primary are an issue where HSD would lock up due to some windows date format settings as well as a massive memory optimisation.

Additionally, HSD can now detect pre-owned skins correctly again and wont add skins you don't own to your queue

 

If HSD locks up while you start it up and you can't update, set your windows date format to something with only numbers, delete your HSD.db and run it again. Once you have update HSD you can set the windows date format back to your preference. 

 

Now quickly launch HSD and update! (And get all the new skins you've missed in the past few days.) 

You can read the full update log in HSD or in this forum log:

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by BlackHellHound1

[jollyjack]

Seems that 1.2.1.47 is loading slower than the earlier version? Or do i have too may skins in my game LoL ...

I would appreciate editing options for my existing uploads; hate to bother the maintenance crew for some small fixes like text line corrections ...

[Beebop]

33 minutes ago, jollyjack said:

Seems that 1.2.1.47 is loading slower than the earlier version?

Interesting.  Mine opens much quicker that previous versions.  Do you go there regularly?  If not it may be having to load a lot more new skins since your last visit.

Justathought.

[jollyjack]

You're right, it's faster after a second start ...

[Spinnetti]

Very cool, thanks!

[Haluter]

On 8/6/2021 at 7:28 PM, jollyjack said:

Seems that 1.2.1.47 is loading slower than the earlier version? Or do i have too may skins in my game LoL ...

I would appreciate editing options for my existing uploads; hate to bother the maintenance crew for some small fixes like text line corrections ...

Editing of skins is on the roadmap and is currently being worked on ?

[Missionbug]

I finally got around to installing and testing this utility, truly excellent guys, thank you very much, really appreciated.

 

Many of the skins posted I usually cannot get to view on the forum because it takes so long for those preview images to load, no problem with the skin utility.

 

Take care and be safe.

 

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[Haluter]

Today HSD reached the significant milestone of hosting 5000+ skins!

 

That's an average of 1000 new skins uploaded every month since HSD launched 5 months ago.

 

The support HSD has received from the IL-2 community has exceeded our wildest expectations, and we would like to thank everyone for their continued support.

 

HSD has required a number of optimisation updates to keep it responsive as the number of skins have increased. Code that worked well for a few hundred skins slowed to a crawl as the skin count climbed into the thousands. Another major issue was the terabytes of bandwidth consumed by HSD on the Linode server, and we (Alonzo) solved this using a CDN (Cloudflare) which caches the skins & preview images on servers in your local region for faster downloads.  

 

The next major update is a feature often requested by skin creators, and it's the ability to update/edit skins without having to request the deletion of the existing skin first. This has been on the roadmap since the start, and it is currently under development. Supporting this will require the addition of user accounts (for creators only) so that each skin can be linked to a specific creator.

 

We look forward to reaching the next milestone of hosting 10,000 skins ?

 

Thanks everyone!

The HSD Team.

 

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by haluter

[Jason_Williams]

Very nice work you guys! Thank you for such a great tool. We appreciate it.

 

Jason

[WWZed]

Thank you for this excellent resource!

 

any chance of adding the new planes in the upload, drop down for us pre template skinners?

[Haluter]

5 hours ago, WWZed said:

Thank you for this excellent resource!

 

any chance of adding the new planes in the upload, drop down for us pre template skinners?

 

Support for the following new planes & vehicles have been added to HSD:

 

Sd.Kfz 10/5
Pfalz D.XII
Spad VII.C1
Airco DH4I

 

?

[BladeMeister]

Will you consider adding CLOD/DWT to this tool?

 

S!Blade<><

[BR_Calinho]

it's possible to add all Tom Weiss P-47 Skins?

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by BR_Calinho

[BMA_FlyingShark]

6 hours ago, BR_Calinho said:

it's possible to add all Tom Weiss P-47 Skins?

Would be nice, together with his P-51 skins.

But I think they where there and have been removed because we need permission of his family.

 

Have a nice day.

 

[Venom]

On 8/22/2021 at 3:20 AM, BR_Calinho said:

it's possible to add all Tom Weiss P-47 Skins?

I was just searching HSD for the name of late Tom Weiss and came here for the very same reason. Is anything going on in this matter? I remember that someone had contact to his family...
I can imagine the copyright problem needs to be resolved, but I think Tom would be glad to hear that his wonderful skin heritage had come to a place where it can be found for years to come.
I especially liked his 'weathered' version, he really was such a talented man. RIP.

[BlackHellHound1]

We have been trying to contact the family for a while now. Raptorattacker (who originally had contact with the family) is part of the HSD team and he is unable to reach the family this time. Of course we keep trying but it doesn't look like that line of communication has remained open.

 

We are discussing alternative options for his skins now. We dont like to see them disappear either.

 

BlackHellHound1

[Mtnbiker1998]

Is there a chance we could see a tag for "personal" underneath the skin type? It'd be nice to be able to filter them out for Singleplayer users, and would also probably be nice for the multiplayer users who want to make sure they don't miss someone's favorite online look.

[Atlantia39]

Hello,

I've started to use this piece of software.  Installation went ok and it's working fine.

However, I am finding that my existing/owned skins...even the default ones...are NOT showing

up on the Skins/Owned List.

 

How can I correct this?

 

Any advice would be great!

 

Thank You.

[RNAS10_Oliver]

3 hours ago, Atlantia39 said:

Hello,

I've started to use this piece of software.  Installation went ok and it's working fine.

However, I am finding that my existing/owned skins...even the default ones...are NOT showing

up on the Skins/Owned List.

 

How can I correct this?

 

Any advice would be great!

 

Thank You.

It does not show you the default (official) skins in the Haluters Skin Downloader. It’s a downloader for custom skins so no need to show you those.

 

As for existing custom skins that you have downloaded before using HSD. If those are also skins that the author has uploaded to HSD then they will be shown on the program and marked as owned. If not then the program does not seem to know about them.

 

Unless you mean that skins you are downloading through HSD are not being shown as a owned?

[Atlantia39]

1 hour ago, RNAS10_Oliver said:

It does not show you the default (official) skins in the Haluters Skin Downloader. It’s a downloader for custom skins so no need to show you those.

 

As for existing custom skins that you have downloaded before using HSD. If those are also skins that the author has uploaded to HSD then they will be shown on the program and marked as owned. If not then the program does not seem to know about them.

 

Unless you mean that skins you are downloading through HSD are not being shown as a owned?

OK...I just wanted to make sure that I didn't do anything incorrectly.

 

Thanks!

[Yakdriver]

*grabs HSD*
*selects download everything*
next morning:

O.o

W have come a long way from 256bit 512x512 Bitmaps.
And everybody is still painting!

[Alfaunostebas11]

I built a campaign for BoS but, before publishing it, I would like to add, if possible, some skins to the aircraft used, especially as regards the different models and pilots flown by the player. Since it is very difficult to search in the forums, I am trying to use this HSD utility. I see that after loading it presents a number of skins for various scenarios. But how can I search the web and then upload some particular skins to HSD and then to IL-2 ?

For example, for the period jul - aug 1942, Stalingrad scenario, is there a skin for the pilot George Michalek's Bf-109 F4, commander of I Gruppe JG 3 ? Or for the commander of StG 2 Major Hozzel's Ju-87 D3 ?

How do you search and download/upload ? Is there an instruction manual?

Thanks.

Edited October 10, 2021 by Alfaunostebas11

[Raptorattacker]

"You have our full blessings to share my uncles work with the world".

A message from Tom Weiss's nephew, James.

Now all that remains is to set about implementing it.

We are on it.

Expect moves to be made very soon.

 

Rap

[BlackHellHound1]

Update V1.2.1.50 has been released.

 

These are just a few bug fixes. Nothing major.

You can read the full update log in HSD or in this forum log:

 

[Stout]

I uploaded a skin and found out afterwords that I made a mistake in the paint. Is it possible to update uploaded skins?

Edited November 23, 2021 by Stout

[BlackHellHound1]

7 hours ago, Stout said:

I uploaded a skin and found out afterwords that I made a mistake in the paint. Is it possible to update uploaded skins?

 

Hey Stout,

 

It is possible to update. Join our Discord server and request a skin deletion in the #request-skin-updates channel.

We will have to verify that you are indeed the artist that made it (one time check) and then we delete it. You can then re-upload it using the same name.

 

I will help you further on our discord.

https://discord.gg/RPvmtd8

 

BlackHellHound1

[Odin78]

 Hello,

Thanks a lot for great job!

Only one *complain*-after the last update with my bad internet stacking for an hour in downloading new and updated previews.And same every start.Can i switch off this options and start like previously?

   Best regards!

Edited November 23, 2021 by Odin78

[Haluter]

On 11/23/2021 at 5:37 PM, Odin78 said:

 Hello,

Thanks a lot for great job!

Only one *complain*-after the last update with my bad internet stacking for an hour in downloading new and updated previews.And same every start.Can i switch off this options and start like previously?

   Best regards!

 

Sorry to hear that you are having issues. Are you allowing HSD to complete downloading the new & update previews?
You can delete HSD.db in the same folder as HSD.exe to force it to create a new database. That may help resolve the issue.

[Odin78]

14 часов назад, haluter сказал:

 

Sorry to hear that you are having issues. Are you allowing HSD to complete downloading the new & update previews?
You can delete HSD.db in the same folder as HSD.exe to force it to create a new database. That may help resolve the issue.

  Thanks!!!

Solved after renewing database as per your advice.?

  Best regards.

[Chief_Mouser]

Hi. Just been looking through the Fw190A-5 skins in the BoK section of HSD; looking specifically for Historical skins. About half of those that show with just Historical ticked are listed as Fictional, including some complete sets of squad skins. Maybe a problem with the filters? Cheers.

[BlackHellHound1]

On 12/5/2021 at 8:46 PM, 216th_Cat said:

Hi. Just been looking through the Fw190A-5 skins in the BoK section of HSD; looking specifically for Historical skins. About half of those that show with just Historical ticked are listed as Fictional, including some complete sets of squad skins. Maybe a problem with the filters? Cheers.

 

I'm not seeing that when I apply "Skin type: Historical" and "Vehicle: Fw190A5" filter. Can you PM me a screenshot and your HSD.log? 
 

[Chief_Mouser]

6 minutes ago, BlackHellHound1 said:

 

I'm not seeing that when I apply "Skin type: Historical" and "Vehicle: Fw190A5" filter. Can you PM me a screenshot and your HSD.log? 
 

 

Neither am I now. The Fictional squad skins are gone. Most odd.

If it happens again I'll be in touch.

Cheers.

 

 

[=RS=Stix_09]

Is there a way to optimise this tool so its not d/l'ing lots of very small files to do a comparison.
Larger file d/l's are much more efficent than a lots of little files. (looking at log file this appears to be how it works) It also appears to use disk rather than memory for each file it d/l's . (Memory is 1000 times faster than standard disk writes/read and in my case  all my skins are simlinks to a normal hard drive, not a ssd)

just asking...

EDIT:
After about 1 hr it showed a updated program version (I've not run this in months).
 

Edited December 11, 2021 by =RS=Stix_09

[Spinnetti]

Tool works great, and recently updated. I donated a couple bux. Thanks!

 

One thing would be nice: ability to show full list of stuff you've already downloaded (basically inverse of the default function), and be able to filter by type (historic, generic etc). That way I could see all my downloads at a glance (and in my use case, be able to delete all the non-historic ones). 

 

Need something like this for missions too