PWCG Normandy Beta 2 Released

[DukeSpookem]

Thank Patrick.  The update lets it advance with the claims.

[Jake]

Once again a question.
Today I started a new campaign 1941 in Normandy with JG 1. But as skin we fly with the green hearts. Is it possible to change the skins somewhere? I have not activated any skins in the pilot files.  Then I noticed that the German numbers from 10 upwards are correct on the left side and are reversed on the right, i.e. 01. On 12 it is a 21.
I realise that this is still a beta and a lot of things are still in the works but I'm very happy that the tactical codes work here. Which is not necessarily the case with the original campaigns. 

 

[Hotaru_Ito]

39 minutes ago, Jake said:

Once again a question.
Today I started a new campaign 1941 in Normandy with JG 1. But as skin we fly with the green hearts. Is it possible to change the skins somewhere? I have not activated any skins in the pilot files.  Then I noticed that the German numbers from 10 upwards are correct on the left side and are reversed on the right, i.e. 01. On 12 it is a 21.
I realise that this is still a beta and a lot of things are still in the works but I'm very happy that the tactical codes work here. Which is not necessarily the case with the original campaigns. 

 

 

I've been noticing the JG54 skins on other squadrons as well. Think those skins are only on the early 109s, so stops being an issue after a while, but haven't checked.

 

For the two-digit codes, that's an Il-2 issue, not PWCG. I've just been manually picking planes with one-digit codes (or 11) for my squadron and ignoring it for others. Unfortunately it sounds like the devs have no intention of fixing this, so we should assume we're permanently stuck with one-digit codes only for German fighters.

[308PFS_Waffen]

Are we starting the campaign after battle of Britain ? Is the date 1.06.1941 accurate?

Iam asking because I'm getting only Dunkirk missions, and I'm in the 25.07.1941.

[Spidey002]

I'm playing Beta 2 with Rhineland missions in an American P-51 Fighter Group 354, and British Spitfire IX Squadron 349. Both of these give me blanks skins and no markings.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Spidey002

[BBAS_PotroastBuckett]

Two questions,

 

My first question is if the mission is set outside the combat box mean that you won't encounter aircraft at your objective or no?

 

My second is if anyone could tell me, how do you get tactical markings to work for all aircraft, as I've just done a P-51 mission and none of my aircraft are loaded with tactical marking, I see other people within this forum have them on AI aircraft so if anyone could let me know it'd be a great help.

Edited October 20, 2022 by PotroastBuckett

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

4 hours ago, PotroastBuckett said:

My second is if anyone could tell me, how do you get tactical markings to work for all aircraft, as I've just done a P-51 mission and none of my aircraft are loaded with tactical marking, I see other people within this forum have them on AI aircraft so if anyone could let me know it'd be a great help.

The tactical markings seem to be problematic in the latest Beta. For RAF - the codes are somehow reversed, I think there is still a skin problem for multi nation aircraft (Hurricane, Spit V, P-51B) and those often do not get the tactical markings at all from my limited experience. I am sure Patrick is working to resolve it.

[Koziolek]

On 10/19/2022 at 8:43 PM, WaffenPL said:

Are we starting the campaign after battle of Britain ? Is the date 1.06.1941 accurate?

Iam asking because I'm getting only Dunkirk missions, and I'm in the 25.07.1941.

It is because BoB happened in 1941 after Dunkirk. Don't you know this? ?

[Hotaru_Ito]

My JG51 pilot got promoted to Major so I moved over to commanding I./JG1 on the Channel front, and I'm seeing some interesting behavior from the Allied bombers there on "strategic intercept" missions. They start out near the coast of France, then immediately turn back and head for England. Once they're almost back to the coast, the turn around again and head back to France to bomb their targets. Unfortunately, when they get there, the escort loses interest and goes home, so they're easy pickings for my Fw-190s.

 

Saw similar behavior in my brief JG26 campaign (got shot down by AA in that one pretty early on). Watched some Stukas start over the Channel, head back to France, then turn around and fly back to England, bomb their targets, (mostly get shot down,) and return to France again.

 

If I had to guess, I'd say it's something about the way PWCG sets up its waypoints relative to the front line, combined with the way the front line is set up on the Channel front, with one side on either coast and a very wide "no-man's-land" covering most of the channel. They seem to start on the hostile side of the lines, fly all the way back to the friendly side, then continue their mission as normal. With a normal, close-together front this wouldn't be an issue, but with the Channel front it causes them to spend half an hour or more crossing the Channel two extra times.

[Patricks]

My guess is that PWCG set up a set of "Climb" waypoints to get them to altitude. I readjust the point in my squadrons missions to make a bit more sense..

[Jake]

I just saw the same thing with the A-20s. They are already near the French coast (spawn there), but first fly back to England to then fly to their destination. No fighter has that much fuel for escort. The altitude has remained the same.

[PatrickAWlson]

@Hotaru_Ito Thanks for the detailed information.  Huge help.  The way that PWCG works is a flight is repeated many, many times in the mission.  When the flight is actually spawned all of the other possible instances are cancelled and the spawned flight should be linked too the next waypoint in the sequence.  This sounds like the strategic bomber flights are linked backwards instead of forwards.  

 

 

[308PFS_Waffen]

On 10/21/2022 at 1:18 PM, Koziolek said:

It is because BoB happened in 1941 after Dunkirk. Don't you know this? ?

You don't understand... On the begining Patrick said, we will start at the beginig on the BoB, my question about date was becouse im not sure is the game limited to the 1.06.1941 date. Thats why i was asking

[Stonehouse]

On 10/20/2022 at 10:52 AM, Spidey002 said:

I'm playing Beta 2 with Rhineland missions in an American P-51 Fighter Group 354, and British Spitfire IX Squadron 349. Both of these give me blanks skins and no markings.

Not sure if it is relevant but the 354FG json is referencing squadid 102352486 for the last 4 skins defined in the json rather than 102362377. I've previously seen this sort of thing cause skins not to work properly in the release version of PWCG so maybe this is the cause. 349 sqd doesn't have skins defined so you'd assume it just picks up the general skins defined for the Spitfire at your time point. 

 

@PatrickAWlson fyi for 354 FG

 

[ACG_Kev]

Hi Pat..

 

Thank you for continuing to develop this amazing piece of software!

 

With regard to release beta 2, I am flying a campaign with No.66 sqn RAF dated 23/06/1941.

 

I noted the mission file was 17,062 KB which is quite a lot larger than existing mission files. I am unable to upload it as max is 5MB. I've attached the mission and logs as I noted the following issues:

 

1. Sqn aircraft codes were jumbled: for this sqn it should be LZ-(tail number) The mission produced GL-Z for my aircraft.

 

2. There were US ground units on the map including AAA positions.

 

3. No EN activity was sited over the patrol area (This is fine in terms of context however just wanted you be aware in case there is an issue with routes)

 

Thanks for all of your work!!

 

 

PWCGErrorLog.txt First of the Few 1941-06-23.MissionData.txt

Edited October 22, 2022 by ACG_Kev

[Hotaru_Ito]

Still flying with I./JG1, and I'm seeing that sometime in November or early December '43, the skins and tactical codes stopped working. A mission generated November 3, '43 has lines like these for the player's aircraft:

 

  Skin = "fw190a5\fw190a5_blank_02.dds";

...
  TCode = "%208%20";

 

This works fine. My plane appears with tactical code 8 and the dark green skin. However, a month later, a mission generated on December 6, '43 has a blank entry for skin (Skin = "";) and no entry for tactical code. Same for rest of flight. Result is the flight spawns with default gray skin and no codes.

 

My guess is whatever PWCG is doing to pick a skin is failing sometime around there and it just reverts to default. Can't find the problem in the .jsons though, nothing in the squad or skin file seems to change on 19431201.

 

So far all German codes I've seen have been working up to this point, on my flight and others, across three campaigns on both fronts in '41-'43. I have, however, seen missing codes on some Allied planes, including Spitfire Vs and P-47s. If it would be helpful, I'd be happy to create a test campaign and transfer around generating missions to come up with a list of what is working and what isn't.

 

Hope this helps.

[Mtnbiker1998]

Approximately What date do Hurricane squadrons get the 20mm cannons? Having a blast flying her around on the channel but boy are those .303s tough to use.

[PatrickAWlson]

1 hour ago, Mtnbiker1998 said:

Approximately What date do Hurricane squadrons get the 20mm cannons? Having a blast flying her around on the channel but boy are those .303s tough to use.

 

Since I'm doing time warps they get them a little later than historically.  The become available at the start of 1942.

 

I hate f****** skins

[Mtnbiker1998]

5 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

Since I'm doing time warps they get them a little later than historically.  The become available at the start of 1942.

 

I hate f****** skins

Somewhat ironic I suppose, but I fast forwarded my BoB campaign to 1/1/42 and unfortunately can report that my hurris are back to the default Russian skin, and missing tactical codes. 73 squadron at KingsNorth (btw, theres also a typo in PWCG, its spelled as "kingsnortrh") Saw a few 109s with Various skins, though they all had tactical codes. No clue what squadrons they belonged to.

 

I have another pilot in this campaign in the 56th squadron, I will see if his skins are also messed up

Edited October 24, 2022 by Mtnbiker1998

[Stonehouse]

@PatrickAWlson 

I might have found a clue for you with the skins problem. I generated a new mission and then opened the mission file in notepad++ and searched for all the occurrences of "Skin =" and then tried to cross check the skin allocated to the aircraft to try to see if I could see anything strange. 

 

It's possible there is a bug in allocating the default skin to aircraft. For BF109F2s for instance I see PWCG allocated the skin bf109f2.dds at times. Thing is while there is a dds for the thumbnail of the default skin called bf109f2.dds there is actually no skin file named bf109f2.dds that I have seen unpacking any skin or camo gtp.  I'm guessing that the game probably gives this aircraft the default skin. 

 

So, if true this bug would be fine for single nationality aircraft as the fact that the game is allocating the default skin because it cannot find the skin generated by PWCG is ok because PWCG's intent is to put the default skin on the aircraft.

 

However, if the aircraft is a multi-nationality aircraft like the P40 or Hurri2 or B25 etc then this will cause a problem when the mission country <> the country of the default skin. If this was to happen on an RAF Hurricane, then you would get the VVS skin not the RAF skin.

 

Even if I am wrong about the default skin being given it seems like PWCG is trying to use the file name for the default skin thumbnail.

 

eg of mission lines showing the issue.

Spoiler

Group
  {
    Name = "Virtual WP";
    Index = 3288;
    Desc = "Virtual WP";
    Plane
    {
      Name = "Olt Jan Kottmann";
      Index = 3289;
      LinkTrId = 147;
      XPos = 309045.750;
      YPos = 1594.000;
      ZPos = 332594.090;
      XOri = 0.00;
      YOri = 135.20;
      ZOri = 0.00;
      Script = "LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Planes\bf109f2.txt";
      Model = "graphics\planes\bf109f2\bf109f2.mgm";
      Country = 201;
      Desc = "Olt Jan Kottmann";
      Skin = "bf109f2\bf109f2.dds";
      AILevel = 3;
      CoopStart = 0;
      NumberInFormation = 1;
      Vulnerable = 1;
      Engageable = 1;
      LimitAmmo = 1;
      StartInAir = 0;
      Callsign = 0;
      Callnum = 1;
      Time = 60;
      DamageReport = 50;
      DamageThreshold = 1;
      PayloadId = 0;
      WMMask = 10001;
      AiRTBDecision = 1;
      DeleteAfterDeath = 1;
      Spotter = -1;
      Fuel = 0.6;
      TCode = "13%3b";
      TCodeColor = "111";
    }

 

 

Unfortunately, possibly another bug to report as well sorry. A few posts up you said that Hurricanes get 20mm cannons in early 1942 but I can select them from the drop-down list in 1941. Which sounds wrong from what you said?

Edited October 24, 2022 by Stonehouse
typo

[PatrickAWlson]

@Stonehouse - Thanks for the feedback.  The "definedInGame" flag tells PWCG to check for the existence of the skin or not. If definedInGame = true then PWCG should not expect the skin to be unpacked.  The Hurricane, for example

 

I'm going to write some more tests around the skins on what seem to be problematic dates.  The original code for PWCG was always OK with no name for the skin.  Something in there is still OK with it.  I don't really want to abort a mission generation for a skin but, at this point, every aircraft should have a reasonable default blank skin for every country on every date.  

 

        "bf109f2_default": {
            "skinName": "bf109f2",
            "planeType": "bf109f2",
            "startDate": "19390801",
            "endDate": "19450601",
            "squadId": -2,
            "country": "Germany",
            "category": "Configured",
            "definedInGame": true,
            "useTacticalCodes": true,
            "tacticalCodeColor": "WHITE",
            "winter": false
        },

In this example:

The dates span the entire war

The squadid of -2 says it's a factory skin

The country is Germany

definedInGame is true

useTacticalCodes is true

winter is false

 

So this skin is available for the entire war, for any German pilot. 

PWCG will not look for the unbundled skin. 

PWCG will use tactical codes. 

PWCG will not exclude the skin because it is not winter

 

There are two things going wrong.  The first is dates.  I did notice that the Hurricane had a date gap in its skins for early 1943.  However, not early 1942.  The second thing is to have a hard look at the skin assignment algorithm and probably rewrite it.  Until this release, using the stock skins was a least desirable option.  In many ways, it still is.  However, going reverting to a blank assignment should now never be done.

[unclepants]

I'm loving the PWCG for Normandy. It's been an adjustment, the spit Mk V with only 120 cannon rounds and the 109 F2s with the pre minengeshoss rounds (I'm used to 109s vapourising the enemy when I get a hit, these older rounds seem much weaker) means I have to play the way I play in CLOD rather than the way I'm used to in Bodenplatte, it's sorta like going back to the planes from the Moscow map but on a much more interesting (to me) map. Plus my love of Soviet planes has been a little tainted recently.  I'm afraid with Normandy and PWCG I'm not playing CLOD any more :D. I like CLOD a lot but the graphics mess with my immersion. I know it's not the game's fault, it's ancient, but it's nice to play similar missions/campaigns on a great looking platform!

Anyway -  Thanks, Mr Wilson!

[Stonehouse]

8 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

@Stonehouse - Thanks for the feedback.  The "definedInGame" flag tells PWCG to check for the existence of the skin or not. If definedInGame = true then PWCG should not expect the skin to be unpacked.  The Hurricane, for example

 

I'm going to write some more tests around the skins on what seem to be problematic dates.  The original code for PWCG was always OK with no name for the skin.  Something in there is still OK with it.  I don't really want to abort a mission generation for a skin but, at this point, every aircraft should have a reasonable default blank skin for every country on every date.  

 

        "bf109f2_default": {
            "skinName": "bf109f2",
            "planeType": "bf109f2",
            "..........................

 

Only other feedback is that I believe that if you want to end up with the default skin being used in the mission then you need to end up (continuing with the Bf109f2 example) with the line 

     Skin = "bf109f2\bf109f2.dds";

being instead

    Skin = ""; 

 

I saw the same thing with other aircraft like the ju88 which implies it can probably happen for anything. Hopefully that makes it easier to find.

[PatrickAWlson]

17 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

 

Only other feedback is that I believe that if you want to end up with the default skin being used in the mission then you need to end up (continuing with the Bf109f2 example) with the line 

     Skin = "bf109f2\bf109f2.dds";

being instead

    Skin = ""; 

 

I saw the same thing with other aircraft like the ju88 which implies it can probably happen for anything. Hopefully that makes it easier to find.

 

I pretty much completely rewrote skin selection.  A skin is ALWAYS selected - no more "".  For now, I have eliminated the use of one off skins.  Too many weird results.  I now only use the blank skins. I will review the configured one off skins and bring them back at some point.  

 

14.0.0 with all things Normandy will be dropped later today.   Appreciate all of the feedback.

[PatrickAWlson]

PWCG 14.0.0 has been released.  Thanks to all who helped out in testing this monster.  

 

This is the delta from PWCG Beta 2 to PWCG 14.0.0.0

Improve strategic intercept and scramble mission waypoints
Fixed bombers on Normandy map turning towards home
Increased range of radar unit spawn to make them appear on Normandy map
Skin related fixes
- Added date considerations to skin selections
- Fixed code issue where winter skin selection could clear the skin list 
- Fixed order of British unit/aircraft markings.  Check US too.
- Removed JG54 109 skin from use
= Zremoved all squadron skin assignments to force use of blank skins
- Fixed yak9t and Spitfire IX skin lists
- Fixed several data issues with skins (Tempest, Hurricane, FW190s)
 

[Jake]

Yesterday (19.01.1945) something strange happened. I continued flying my Tempest campaign (v. 14.0.0) and wanted to land after the mission. Afterwards I looked at the recorded track and a FW-190 D9 actually tried to land on an allied airfield (landing gear and position lights were set). It calmly circled the airfield several times. The runway at Grave Keent was occupied by a landing Tempest and so it had to turn away again and was also shot down by flak shortly afterwards. Was this intentional or is it a mistake?

 

[Patricks]

Defector!

[Monksilver]

37 minutes ago, Jake said:

Yesterday (19.01.1945) something strange happened. I continued flying my Tempest campaign (v. 14.0.0) and wanted to land after the mission. Afterwards I looked at the recorded track and a FW-190 D9 actually tried to land on an allied airfield (landing gear and position lights were set). It calmly circled the airfield several times. The runway at Grave Keent was occupied by a landing Tempest and so it had to turn away again and was also shot down by flak shortly afterwards. Was this intentional or is it a mistake?

 

A homage to Oberleutnant Armin Faber perhaps?   On 23 June 1942 after a dog fight over southern England in his Fw190 A3 Faber headed back for base in France, desperately short of fuel he was grateful when he landed at the first airfield he could find. However, instead of being in France Faber had landed at RAF Pembrey in West Wales. By the time Faber realised his mistake it was too late and he was captured and the Allies at last had their hands on an intact Fw190.

 

The red tag on the map below shows where RAF Pembrey was, doesn't look like navigation or even basic compass use was Faber's strong point.

 

 

Faber's plane at Pembrey.

 

[unclepants]

I've just spotted the Iconic Missions button and I'm chuffed! Brighton, my town, is a location. It's not a big thing but I've been waiting for someone to create a  map of Brighton, and IL2 BoN is the first one. CLoD has it I suppose, but it's a rather cursory looking thing, not really satisfying. DCS? Nope. The location is there but it's just fields. Not really a big thing but I was hoping with the Channel Map. So I was rather happy to see my street (well almost, if you squint) shown in BoN and now I have these Iconic Missions. Thanks, Pat. You've made my day.

[kaizerhund4]

i pressed the pwcg download here and i do not see where i can download beta 2, is it down?

[Stonehouse]

3 minutes ago, kaizerhund4 said:

i pressed the pwcg download here and i do not see where i can download beta 2, is it down?

It doesn't exist anymore because the release version is available now and the beta is no longer needed.

[kaizerhund4]

ok thanks

[digital_vole]

Apologies if this has already been covered, I’m new to all this.

 

Ive just started playing PWCG (fantastic stuff, thank you) and I’ve noticed that my wingman is claiming victories after missions when we didn’t even see any enemies. Is this normal? I’m sure this kind thing did go on but wasn’t expecting that level of detail. 

 

Also, is it fine to just restart a mission if I cock it up? I come from DCS and played a lot of liberation, with that you need to regenerate the mission if you fail it.

 

Finally, I’ve started as RAF in 1943 and am not seeing much in the of Fritz and his flying machines. Is this normal? I might see one or two on a flight but no more.

 

Im sure there was something else but I can’t think of it now.
 

Thanks:)

 

 

[Stonehouse]

8 hours ago, digital_vole said:

Ive just started playing PWCG (fantastic stuff, thank you) and I’ve noticed that my wingman is claiming victories after missions when we didn’t even see any enemies. Is this normal? I’m sure this kind thing did go on but wasn’t expecting that level of detail. 

PWCG has a complicated algorithm for claiming and allowing victories so it may be a bug or may be intended. Probably best to post the question in either this thread https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/19801-pwcg-1410-ooh-the-colors/ or this one https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/61145-new-pwcg-issues-thread/ as this was a thread for the beta version of the latest release and testing reports, not to worry it's not a problem other than your questions might not get noticed.

 

You may need to post the mission and/or the zip file created when you hit the "report error" button in the main campaign screen (where the pilot board is) so Pat can use the info to debug the issue but ask the question first as to whether it is normal behaviour.

 

 @PatrickAWlson you might want to ask the mods to lock this thread so you can still refer to it, but people can't add to it.

 

8 hours ago, digital_vole said:

Also, is it fine to just restart a mission if I cock it up? I come from DCS and played a lot of liberation, with that you need to regenerate the mission if you fail it.

Yes. Until you do the PWCG combat report step PWCG doesn't know the mission results. 

 

8 hours ago, digital_vole said:

Finally, I’ve started as RAF in 1943 and am not seeing much in the of Fritz and his flying machines. Is this normal? I might see one or two on a flight but no more.

 

Have a look at your campaign configuration. If you are using simple config (guessing that you are) check the air density setting and bump it up a level. e.g. If low, make it medium.

 

Note that putting more aircraft in the air can impact game performance so it is a tradeoff.

 

This is where advanced config comes in as you get better granularity with advanced. See here for more info Advanced Config - Installing and Using Pat Wilson Campaign Generator (c6-squad.ovh) 

 

Worth looking at the rest of this wiki too as you'll get a better idea of how you can tweak PWCG to suit you.

Edited November 22, 2022 by Stonehouse

[digital_vole]

Thanks @Stonehouse

 

Its only happened once, but if it happens again I’ll post that stuff in the correct place. 
 

thanks again

[Patricks]

This is likely normal, but two scramble missions (early BoB) out of Newchurch in Hurri II's, I hear "Bomber's spotted 9:00 low" but there are no planes anywhere near us. First mission was to fly a search bracket S/SE of the base over the channel, flew the whole course and never saw anything. Second mission ran into 2 JU88's and took them down.  Have seen these phantom calls before, just "the way it is"? Also, with the new 5.03 release, should I start the campaign over? This was from the previous version. 

 

Just noticed 14.1.1 is out, I was using 14.1.0, will read the release notes..

Edited November 24, 2022 by Patricks

[Spidey002]

That’s part of the mission behavior Pat added into the missions to cause wingmen to fly more aggressively. 
 

Without it, wingmen would sometimes circle around and not do anything when enemies were present. 

[Patricks]

12 hours ago, Spidey002 said:

That’s part of the mission behavior Pat added into the missions to cause wingmen to fly more aggressively. 
 

Without it, wingmen would sometimes circle around and not do anything when enemies were present. 

 

False callouts of "Enemy Spotted" when there is no one anywhere near? Again, the mission is a Scramble as "the airbase is under attack", but it's not, yet the AI are acting (Calling contacts) like it is. They stay in formation with me (lead) and don't venture off, but there are no enemies near the base, the 2 Stukas are a good 20 minutes out (flying the bracket WPs layed out) over the ocean. It's like the Stukas were supposed to be at the base but the timing was way off, but I really don't know. I just updated to the latest PWCG and will start a new Campaign to see if the behavior changed.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Patricks

[Spidey002]

20 minutes ago, Patricks said:

False callouts of "Enemy Spotted" when there is no one anywhere near?

Check out page 49 of the main post for some context:

 

[Patricks]

Ok, so this is just normal (bad) AI behavior, I can live with that. I JUST updated to PWCG 14.1.1 last night and today I see 14.1.2 is released, so I will go with that. It's odd that the link you show above is from 2015 yet the version is 14.1.2? Guess the big question is, do I need to start a new campaign with both the IL-2 major update and the PWCG update(s)? Hate to lose my progress but want everything to work as designed. In general all works just fine as-is..

Edited November 25, 2022 by Patricks