Soviet Reticle

[Raptorattacker]

I think I've managed to brighten the Russian reticle...
It seems to work, or maybe it's just me and my old eyes (and they are!!).

Anyway, try it and see. It doesn't require MODS on, just drop it into

data>graphics>Planes>Your plane name>Textures

HERE

As far as I know it'll work on all Soviet machines...

 

Rap

Edited April 6, 2022 by Raptorattacker

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

I didn't know we could mod reticules with mods off. That's a game changer. How do you access the base files to mod? If I go into a planes texture folder all I see are the pilot photo and skin normal map files.

 

Edit:

Nevermind I found the answer here: 

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by JenkemJunkie

[Raptorattacker]

You have to find them (and I can't remember where they are right now). As far as I can remember you unGTP the data>Graphics 1, 2 and 3 and they're somewhere in there.

 

[WWDarkdiz]

Anyone have an ideas why the old RAF gunsight reticle, german Revi brighter mod no longer seem to work?  Seems it stopped after the last update

[Sakivano]

17 hours ago, WWDarkdiz said:

Anyone have an ideas why the old RAF gunsight reticle, german Revi brighter mod no longer seem to work?  Seems it stopped after the last update

Yeah, I noticed it too.

[Stonehouse]

Have they moved? All the reticles seem to be in graphics\textures\common now, perhaps previously they were in folders under graphics\planes\xyx aircraft\textures?

[jollyjack]

yep .. but not in planes there ....found it here: data\graphics\textures\common

Edited April 18, 2022 by jollyjack

[WWDarkdiz]

3 hours ago, jollyjack said:

yep .. but not in planes there ....found it here: data\graphics\textures\common

I'll check it out...

[WWDarkdiz]

Still appears very dim, certainly not what it was, especially close up on the hurri.  Can hardly see it

According to what I saw, the pbp1_reticle.dds seems to work (tested on a LaGG-3), however, the reticle_k14.dds (US), reticle_l3.dds (US), reticle_mkii_bar.dds (RAF), reticle_mkii_early.dds (RAF), reticle_n2a.dds (US), reticle_revi_16a.dds (German), reticle_revi_c12.dds (German) files do not.

I have all of these files in my data/graphics/textures/common folder, as well as the appropriate files in the data/graphics/appropriate plane/textures folder.

Some of the sights are VERY hard to see, especially zoomed in (lean to gunsight), and certainly not what they were prior to the update.

I wonder if the actual file name needs to be changed, so it is similar to the pbp1_reticle.dds structure?  For example instead of reticle_n2a.dds, change it to n2a_reticle.dds?

I guess all we need is the original default file name.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

Here's all the originals I know of. Changing whatever to these names should work.

Original reticles.rar

[Stonehouse]

I'm not proficient at all with 3d art tools like Photoshop or Gimp so quite possibly have stuffed something up in creating this. Attached is my attempt to brighten all available reticles I'm aware of. Set up for JSGME and note that the pbp1_reticle.dds is Raptorattack's version not mine. I did notice that none of the reticle dds's seem to use  DXT3 compression as do most other dds's in IL2. So things like reticle_ez_42.dds are 21 MB as a result. No idea whether using compression would improve in cockpit FPS without loss of detail. @Oyster_KAI might be able to advise?

 

It was late last night doing this so largely untested. Incudes a copy of the original file - I did my best to match the original other than brightness and contrast so mostly the modded file matches the file size of the original but some don't - I don't know why this is the case. So far I haven't seen any issues but also don't know for sure if they all look brighter in game.  

 

If someone knows how to use tools like Gimp and is interested please do a better job than me, I know it won't be hard to improve on my work as I can only hack around in Gimp with very so so results.

 

<edit> Attachment removed since it had issues, see post 2 further down for update.

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Stonehouse

[WWDarkdiz]

Got all of the reticles working.

The process involves compressing each from Stonehouse's above download (not the copy of...) in GIMP, compress using BC3 / DXT5.

Then, you have to put the right reticle in the right aircraft folder in planes/Planename/Textures.

Since I'm not sure which one goes where, I simply copied them all into each aircraft's texture folder.  Seemed to work like a charm, the Hurricane and 109E7 looked much brighter, although I noticed a small square artifact on the Hurri reticle.

But at least I can see the sight!

I zipped them up, simply copy them into your planes/planename/textures folder.

I also added the scratchless canopy file, see the appropriate thread for the author (name escapes me rn, but it is well done!)

Compressed Reticles.zip

[Stonehouse]

Interesting - when I unGTP'd the games graphics gtp files all the reticle dds files were in data\graphics\textures\common. There are none in the individual plane texture folders.

 

So I suspect that maybe the textures in the individual plane texture folders override the ones in common if the file name is the same.

 

I also think (it does for me) that they would work if you set the modded dds files up in data\graphics\textures\common instead of each individual aircraft's texture folder.

 

Good to know that compressing them doesn't seem to make a visible difference although just checking now with the stuff from last night I don't see any artifacts on the Hurri sight? Could that be from compressing the dds?

 

<edit> no it was my goof - I think I did not get the contrast for the hurri sight such that it was properly black and this shows up if you look very closely as faint outline in the glass of the sight.

 

Redone and repackaged including adding compression now that WWDarkdiz has shown that it's ok to do so (thank you for improving my knowledge). Note this is using the data\graphics\textures\common approach. Originals moved off to their own folder and renamed to get rid of the "-Copy". Not competing just providing choice.

 

 

 

Brighter Reticles.zip

Edited May 13, 2022 by Stonehouse
fixed hurri sight, switched 7zip to zip file

[54th_Coopaloop]

tried it out for the boys

the version Jenkem made.

[czech693]

After trying several attempts to get the reticles brighter I decided to remove the reticle mods that I had installed a long time back with JSGME.  After I removed them I found all the reticles were brighter. Must have been a change in the latest update that conflicted with the old mods.

[C6_lefuneste]

Most of reticles can only be seen at 100% when your eye is in front of it. The problem in VR is you can not have both eyes in front of it. So in best case, you will have one eye with a bright sight, the other one with only a part of the sight drawn. For soviet sight, as it is in middle, if you are also in middle no eye can see the sight with the good brightness. In fact, each eye see a different part of the sight...That is very annoying, that's why I did my mod. It allow to change brightness in game by a menu, and also to have the sight diplayed only for one eye.

It is here (I did not check id last release brake something):

But it is working only in offline, as it is a mod...

Edited April 20, 2022 by C6_lefuneste

[Raptorattacker]

Here, unzip this and drop it into your data>graphics>textures folder and then tell me that it's not an improvement! 

I don't use VR by the way so any problems with reticles in that mode are a mystery to me!

 

Rap

common.zip

Edited December 13, 2022 by Raptorattacker

[Raptorattacker]