II.JG1_Vonrd

There are plenty of "Thumbs down" GIFs available... here's to "the guy"

Also the orange flight suits that you pointed out to me. The default skins should probably be altered to have the orange unless they are depicting aircraft post... (was it 2009?).

@Zabuzard This helmet already exists in the Mirage - F1. Could it be imported or adapted to the F-4E for Luftwaffe service? See this post for justification:

Thank you for the info! I probably will change their flight suites to orange. What are your thoughts about the HB Default skins? It looks like only 37+83_n81a_jg74 has orange flightsuits. Would you happen to know which year?

Ah... good point. But here's an F-104 pilot suiting up in Nevada Nov. 1982. I still think that both green and orange are correct. I might revise this skin giving one of the crew an orange suit. EDIT: I just noticed your avatar... are you a former or present member of the GAF?

@Volator, thanks for the compliment and the reply! The Gueneau helmet was mostly a challenge for myself as a skinner but I found bits of evidence that it was being used by this crew. Zoom in to the pilots on the photo of the aircraft taking off as well as the already zoomed photo of the pilot. You can clearly see the medallion shaped earpiece as well as the internal visor which matches a Gueneau 316. Many sites for the Gueneau confirm it's use by the GAF. See this: http://www.best-of-flightgear.dk/guene316g_text.htm: The Gueneau 316G was the German version of the French-made Gueneau 316 flight helmet. Photographic evidence suggests that the helmet entered service around 1974 and was used till around 1990. As for the flightsuit, I've seen evidence for both orange and green for that period. Attached are two screenshots from a Youtube chronicling the daily life in AG52 for that period. One pilot has orange while the other has green. I found this research to be somewhat difficult because information was sorta sparse. If you have more info I would be delighted to see it.

Luftwaffe RF-4E 35+76 from 1984 Tiger Meet https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3340850/

This was working perfectly for me about a month ago but now my controller doesn't show up in the controls settings when DCS MT is launched through Steam. The controller IS recognized when DCS launched directly and not through steam but @CrowDude's program is not in affect. I'm using a generic controller and Steam sees it as a "generic wireless" and not an official XBox. Still, everything WAS working. Did the last update bork it for me? I tried pointing Steam to the ST version of DCS but DCS wouldn't launch. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

One of our members was having persistent blue screen crashes happening only in DCS. Very difficult to TS since the crash was immediate and didn't generate crash log files in either DCS or Windows. He tried pretty much everything including driver updates, fresh install of DCS and hair pulling. Probably even more things that I'm not aware of. He finally re-named the Livery folder in Saved Games so that a new Livery file would be generated and did not load any of our squad's custom skins. So far, no crashes. No other squad members have any problems with the skins. I'm not sure how a livery loaded in Saved Games would cause a catastrophic BSD. Other than having him try each individual skin one by one is there anything that I could look at within the skin textures / lua? Here are the links to our skin packs: File: DCS World: JG1 MODERN Pack - 24 August 2024 LINK: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ypkesx7kejkpmxu1uoyfz/JG1_MODERN_20240824.zip?rlkey=56kjbo50tk5azs59px9h248r9&dl=0 File: DCS World: JG1 WW2 Pack - 6 June 2024 LINK: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tlh9b6xftd8xpx250qeur/JG1_WW2_20240606.zip?rlkey=exj1h47bh8xib8urehs59yge6&dl=0

Thanks! and you're welcome.

But the official paint packs still suffer from this "scattering" of individual objects. Maybe a individual could be allowed access to the 3D model in Blender (or 3DS Max) with the sole responsibility of cleaning up the UV maps. I would gladly volunteer to do so.

This has been and continues to be an issue for livery makers across all modules and paintkits. Some are far worse than others but all suffer from illogical placement of parts in the UV maps. The example I'm giving is for the Heatblur F-4 but it is just one example and not meant to single out Heatblur's module. Yes, this module doesn't have an official paintpack yet and I'm hoping that these issues will be addressed when it's released. The issue is that there doesn't seem to be any effort to group the little bits and bobs like nuts / bolts, antennae, control rods, etc. in logical and adjacent groupings. Those of us who are experienced skinners have methods to single out errant pieces in the UV map but it is a time consuming... "adventure" and can be quite frustrating. I am familiar with the process and have unwrapped in Blender. I pay attention to grouping the parts from a single entity as adjacent as possible. Possibly the makers of the default skins don't have as much difficulty since they have the ability to load the 3D model and work within that software. I'm assuming 3DS Max. As users, we don't have that option as far as I know. So, this is the example. Trying to find the engine inlet probes. Notice how they are spread out but there is plenty of map available where the arrows point. Again, this is just one example of many many many similar or worse issues throughout every module.

I wonder what percentage of DCS (or any combat flight sim / game) players are female? It would be nice to have more and maybe by being inclusive in representing females in the game, might attract more.

Is there any possibility of using Heatblur's already done humans in other modules? (I anticipate that the answer is that they can't be cross pollinated but have to ask).

I was simply asking whether there are plans to include other simulations of pilots as regards gender and ethnicity. Since Congress repealed the prohibition law in 1991, female pilots have been the norm in the US. Many countries prior have had female pilots. As for ethnicity... Tuskegee? Would that not be "true to its form"? I'm afraid that this may induce kneejerk reactions and might be considered political. So be it. I'll accept a ban if that's what it means.

Any plans for female and ethnicities besides White, pilots / crew (both flight and ground) ?

Well... I wasn't going to go there... and I don't think that I would be able to tell unless it was done badly and was obvious. I just think that having a competition where it was allowed might result in some really stellar artwork.

Amazing screenshots and congrats to the winners! Must have taken hours finding just the right composition / lighting, etc. and without the advantage to use Photoshop or other such software. How about having a competition where post processing IS allowed and even encouraged? Aren't many of the official art releases post processed? At least "touched up"? I think that rOEN911 did much of the Rise of Flight and IL2 GB artwork and shows what can be done with software. https://www.deviantart.com/roen911

This is a depiction of Phantom II, QF-4E-60-MC, S/N:74-1638 of the Air Force Heritage Flight Foundation at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2012. The aircraft has a very glossy "wet look" paint job, probably something similar to Imron paint. I've wanted to do a shiny and relatively un-weathered skin and this seemed to be a suitable subject. Link: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3340370/

As @Talisman_VR said "I can't find any up to date information about the new Heatblur DCS Cold War server" I'm enrolled in the Heatblur Discord server but I can't find any link to rules and how the HB Cold War (former Enigma) missions work. There are numerous Youtubes and even a single player mission but I have no idea what is current and applicable. Regarding the SP Mission, is this still applicable to the HB Cold War server? https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3330453/ What is the specific channel in the HB Discord? It would be nice to have a link to a "manual" and perhaps a list of changelogs. I only played Enigma's sporadically and never really understood the mechanics. There were several iterations like rectangular sections to hexagonal sections, the active AWACS Bot to (now?) just text AWACS Bot, etc. I (and my squad) want to become more active but just joining and thrashin around without clues is not very satisfactory.

That explains... thanks!

This is not about the spotting per se (but I'm having much worse spotting than some others in our squad) but why I see the "improved spotting dots" in some servers, (Warbirds for one) and not in others (our JG1 servers, Heatblur among others). I, of course, have the spotting dots enabled. Are there server settings that would explain why I'm experiencing this? For the record here's my PC specs. CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 7600X MOBO - Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite AX Memory - G.Skill DDR5-6000 (4 ea 16Gb. Total 64 Gb) P/N: F5-6000J3238F16G-fx5 Graphics card - PNY GeForce RTX 4080 Storage - 2 each 2TB P3 NVMe PCIe 3.0 M.2 Internal SSD VR - Pimax Crystal using OpenXR latest build OS - Mindows 11 Pro 64 bit

Noice!

How about a Luggage carrier?