First off, apologies if this has come up before...I've been out of the SH3 scene for a while, but I thought I should bring up this little find I made recently.
I was wondering if anyone had come across this site before ? I discovered it by accident when browsing for Flight Sim addons. I was surprised to see Silent Hunter 3mentioned, and a plug for the notorious 'SeaWolves' and 'Battle in the Med' payware expansion packs;
http://www.combatplanes.ca/index.html
On the 'Samples' page they have 3x SH3 ship models available to download, claiming to be just 3 of 26 or so ships included in their Expansion announced in January of '06, which i'm assuming was their Battle in the Med expansion. I gave them a try out and here's what i found;
First model listed 'Fast Transport', basically a modification of the Transport already in the game with a second funnel added, crashes my SH3 after loading at startup. Perhaps one of our ship modders could take a look at the files and find out what may be the cause.
Second model, the 'APD Light Transport', a moded Fletcher class Destroyer, does actually work, and isn't half bad looking, apart from a slight texture mapping problem on its Mast Array. I could have lived with this if it were not for the fact that it's textures also replaced my Stock Fletcher class Destroyers texture and replicated the problem on its Mast Array also. Hmmph...see thumbnail.
The third model, the 'USS Wasp' CV, looks way too much like an Illustrious clone.
She was in fact a Yorktown class Carrier...and as for the textures of the aircraft on deck?... Well, take a look at the thumbnail below and judge for yourself.
I should say here that it is just possible an addon ship I already have may be causing the above texture error, though it wasnt replicated on other Illustrious models I have installed (Ark Royal). Perhaps someone could install it on their system and try it out. Going by the error already seen in the previous screenshot however, I dont really suspect that another addon is to blame.
Conclusion...A big

.
If this is part of a payware package, I think I'll just stick with the mods and addons that are already available for free. I'm wondering what potential errors the 23 other ships in their expansion (which I'd have to pay for) might contain, and how much they might also affect the stock files.
At least if there are problems with addons in the freeware community, then other users, if not the modders themselves, will tell us about it...and they dont charge for their services either.
Keep up the good work freeware modders.