Aircraft roster additions
 

Looking at (modded) SH5 roster, one area that could still use some additional units is air forces. Out of 53 countries in game, only 8 have any kind of aircraft, and out of those 3 are simply reusing British planes - I hope to add some more variation to available aircraft.

I began with simplest thing to do, ie retexturing models we already have in game that were also used by countries currently lacking air units. SH5 gr2 models can use multiple textures (thanks Gap and Vecko for showing me how), so this doesn't require any importing / modelling, just some GIMP work.

Here's what I have been able to repaint so far:

1. Bulgaria - Arado 196:


2. Brasil - PBY5 Catalina (camouflage based on "Arara" Catalina that sunk U199 in 1943):


3. Belgium: Hawker Hurricane (Belgian Air Force bought some of those in 1939 from Britain)


4. Free French - Avro Anson (camouflage based on unit based in Kongo, conducting ASW patrols over south Atlantic):


5. Finland - Me 109:


6. Greece - Avro Anson. Hellenic Air Force used a squadron of Ansons for maritime patrolling and escorting convoys:


7. Irish Avro Anson. Again, Ireland used small numbers of Ansons for patrolling its territorial waters. Neutral throughout the war, so mostly harmless unless it catches you shelling neutral ships:


8. Brasil - P 47: Besides a bug with number, this one is a bit ahistorical. While Brasil used P 47's, they were based in Italy in late WW2 and I'm not sure we could add Brasilian patrol from Italian base:


9. Spitfire - Portugal: these neutral fighters were based in Azores, supplied by Allies in exchange for permission to use bases there for Allied maritime patrols:



10. Turkish Spitfire: couldn't find any details on when and how they were used, sadly. Another harmless plane - unless one could create a fake "Free Turkey" nation for guarding passage into Black Sea :hmmm:


11. Yugoslavian Me 109 - Before it ended up in war with Germany, Yugoslavia purchased 73 Me 109 fighters in 1939. They were later fighting Luftwaffe over Belgrade:


12. Spain: Me 109 model repainted to act as HA 1109 fighter (which itself was Me 109 clone produced in Spain):

Awesome effort indeed !!

Looking good Kapuhy ! :up:

With What you are doing with SH5 after all these years i cant imagine what you do with Uboat once its finished what with Actual Campaign impact like your actions changing ammount of supplies in Britain Etcetera :Kaleun_Applaud::Kaleun_Applaud:

Outstanding!:rock:

Hi Kapuhi,
very nice aircraft textures :up:


Alas, to contemplate these pictures in the game I would be dead soon because plane must be close and overflying my sub...:D
Strange thing: I never saw any bombs dropped from planes, I wonder if this is rendered in the SH5 grafics ?

Hey guys, thanks! :oops:

A small update from this weekend - it's Hurricane season:

Egypt:
https://i.imgur.com/TrYeGpw.jpg
Free French:
https://i.imgur.com/2ZizWBn.jpg
Portugal:
https://i.imgur.com/E9UWMku.jpg
USSR:
https://i.imgur.com/GK7iB35.jpg
Turkey:
https://i.imgur.com/xh9cCmF.jpg
Yugoslavia:
https://i.imgur.com/U01GLHn.jpg

I'd hate for my last thought to be "Hey, these textures are all wro..." :D

It is. In test mission I've created to take aircraft screenshots, I've seen them drop bombs on ships.


-------------------------
I am struggling to find a workaround for a problem - despite switching material name from "skin" to "cfg#TXRskin" as Gap suggested in this post, LOD file seems to ignore other textures. This happens to Catalina model as well (only aircraft I know to use multiple textures in stock game):

https://youtu.be/5jNL97bmiZs

So far only way I found to work is to remove LOD file altogether. Even overwriting it with copy of full resolution GR2 file doesn't work, which suggests the issue is not with GR2 file but the game being configured to ignore additional textures with all LOD files. Another way that would probably work is creating a separate folder with main and LOD GR2 files for every texture version, but I suspect this might be quite taxing for game engine.

Ehi, nice work kapuhi.

Probably you are already aware about that website, but I think that wings palette has the largest online collection of aircraft drawings, featuring most warplanes from WWI to modern and portraying them with the paint/camo schemes of various Air Forces and sometimes even Wings and Squadrons using them. A precious resource for scale and 3D modellers and for photoshop artists :)

That's odd. Which aircraft are you trying to fix? :hmm2:

As far as I can tell it happens with every single .gr2 plane. In clear TWoS only one to use 2 textures is Catalina, so perhaps it's the best plane for testing this issue.

Do you mean the generic flying boat that in SH5 stands in for the Catalina? IIRC TWoS uses a slightly modified version of that plane. Can you please send me a copy of both its GR2 files (main and LOD model)?

@ kapuhy

I got your e-mail with the files I had asked for, and I must admit that after a first glance, the main material of both files seems to be configured correctly . In theory, the British (secondary) texture should be applied both to the main and the LOD model, and I remember having tested in the past the correctness of the above statement. Before I run some new tests, may I ask how did you set the float plane in the British roster?

Below, copy of the file from my British roster. As far as I remember I didn't change it, as I did no modifications to British version of this plane.

Okay, when you get time, try if setting up the flying boat in the British roster as a completely new unit (i.e. a proxy clone of the SUSFloatEarlyWar unit) with its own texture, makes any difference.

Just tried it - sadly, without luck. Proxy clone exhibits the same behaviour unless it's given its own gr2 files.

Floating Plane's folder in TWoS contains some rather unusual files compared to other aircraft's folders:

https://i.imgur.com/YkggWmh.png

Looks like two planes (dat and gr2) sharing single folder, but I haven't seen the dat version in game, nor any roster entry referencing it.

Okay, I have finally found the discussion that I was telling you about. I didn't re-read it all (yet), but it might contain the key to your problem:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...15#post2053415

If memory serves me well those files were inherited from OHII, and they are the remains of an attempt to import a more realistic Catalina model in SH5. IIRC the model used was the one contained in GWX, but after some failed attempts to make it damageable by other units, it was finally discarded.
After many years, I think that problems wasn't insurmontable, but I don't think that retrying to import the same plane again is worth it: I seem to remember that some later supermod for SHIII or SHIV has a better Catalina model, and some even better models are on my HD :yep:

I know this thread :-) That's where I've learned how to make main model accept multiple textures. The problem is, LOD file for any gr2 plane in my game, even when I change its main material from "skin" to "cfg#TXRskin", keeps using only default texture.

Okay, from the day after tomorrow I won't be at home and probably I won't have time to test anything, but maybe tomorrow I will; I want to see if the same problem happens on my rig and with vanilla game...

Test mission
 

For Gap or anyone who'd like to help test it: I've put a simple single mission on file sharing website:

https://ufile.io/c5i2m7up

Unpack into "Single Missions" folder. It puts British Catalina right above player's boat, if you go to external camera and look up you should see it.

Speaking of LOD models, I was suprised to find that FloatingPlane_LOD.gr2 is actually.... the same model as FloatingPlane.gr2. At least, its number of vertices is the same and I don't see any visual difference either. And its not just this plane - half the GR2 format planes have LOD models with equal or higher number of vertices than the "detailed" model: US Heavy Bomber, Beaufort, Fulmar, Me 109, Arado, FW200, Savoia, C200 fighter...

Ok, I'm not a game designer or 3D modeler but I don't get what is the point of having a LOD model that is more complicated than regular model?

This mod is a great idea. I'd like to contribute a little. Let me present to you one of the less known plane from WWII era, Grumman J2F "Duck". For me the most badass plane ever build. Let's just enjoy the video:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kX-CwMJ-is


https://i.postimg.cc/SnszWLVF/sh5-20...4-07-59-25.pnghttps://i.postimg.cc/CBjZFcMD/sh5-20...4-08-02-12.pnghttps://i.postimg.cc/qzQ3hDsx/sh5-20...4-08-03-15.pnghttps://i.postimg.cc/VJGnTZ5k/sh5-20...-08-04-559.jpg


Found this forgotten legend somewhere on subsim long time ago. The model creator is Testpilot1978. It was created for SH3 with GWX. I just converted it for SH5 very quick and unpolished.


If there is interest I can provide files for implementing it in this mod.