aircraft customization: pilot names and nose art emblem editor

[twistking]

I would llike to see a feature, that would allow players to customize their aircraft and pilot appearance.

 

Most importantly this would mean adding a custom pilot name to the livery via a small ingame editor, where you could type in the name/callsign and maybe change font, colour and style.

 

One step further would be to have custom nose art (or vertical stab. art or whatever art), that you could put together in a small ingame editor ("emblem editor") from prefabricated parts. Example: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&biw=1920&bih=966&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=lrTBXZ73JZCymwW32rDwDA&q=emblem+editor&oq=emblem+editor&gs_l=img.3..0i67j0j0i5i30l7j0i24.2466.40177..40258...0.0..0.70.676.13......0....1..gws-wiz-img.....0.YDb8vyL5tzE&ved=0ahUKEwiemr2uz9PlAhUQ2aYKHTctDM4Q4dUDCAY&uact=5 You could mix, match and customize color of these parts to make custom nose art, that would be applied to an predefined area on the livery (so the original liverie would have predefined parts, where those custom graphics could be applied only - so you would not be able to have custom graphics on a livery, where the original livery designer deemed it to be unrealistic or otherwise unfitting to have custom art).

 

ED could also built a collectors program around those graphical building blocks, where DCS world "free" would come with basic geometry and generic icons to get you started and every module would come bundled with some additional themed graphics to grow your collection of building blocks for the art editor.

 

Since your custom art would be built from premade buldings blocks, the actual data to transfer in a MP environment would be super small.

There were some other games in the past, that let you do some custom art in this way and it allows for quite a lot of flexibility if done well. I think it would be a good fit for dcs. Of course another option would be to just allow users to load in their own rasterized graphics from their computer, but i think those solutions are less practical because - besides of data transfer concerns - it allows the developer no control over what kind of imagery users display in the mp environment (can be a problem with offensive or illegal imagery).

Edited November 5, 2019 by twistking

[Matti0503]

I would absolutely love for that to be implemented. Being able to put in custom names for every player would make the game even more realistic and take some work off of skin creators, as some squadrons (especially Demo Teams such as the Virtual Blue Angels) have a custom skin for each of their members with their name and a specific tail number/paint job applied. I've tried making myself a skin with my name on it, but it is hard to match the specific font used in the skin I was using as a base. Correct positioning and mirroring to the other side while editing liveries in a program such as GIMP is also pretty tricky.

[twistking]

yes. also imagine how cool it would be to have your own nose art on your plane; especially on the warbirds!

 

the main factor holding this back, is probably the devs having to remake all the existing liveries. i'd still love it!

[Buzzles]

Names could be done like the bort system.

As ED have already done that (the bort system), something leads me to think either there's a technical reason or they don't think it's worthwhile.

 

Personally, I don't think it really adds much in MP. Especially on servers where external views are disabled.

[twistking]

Personally, I don't think it really adds much in MP. Especially on servers where external views are disabled.

You might be right for competitive MP, but for cooperative MP it would really up the immersion, when flying in close formation with your buddies...

[Emmy]

Names could be done like the bort system.

As ED have already done that (the bort system), something leads me to think either there's a technical reason or they don't think it's worthwhile.

 

Personally, I don't think it really adds much in MP. Especially on servers where external views are disabled.

 

Besides which, unless everyone else has your skin loaded, nobody but you will see it.

[Northstar98]

Hmm, I'm with Buzzles, on the pilot name (could even be expanded for reg./serial numbers - for instance UK military aircraft feature a code consisting of 2 letters and 3 numbers - at the moment we just have numbers).

 

Not sure about nose art or similar, sounds more difficult to implement past just modifying textures yourself, but I'm not totally opposed. You'd still have to distribute it to each player though, as this sort of thing is client-side

[Emmy]

You might be right for competitive MP, but for cooperative MP it would really up the immersion, when flying in close formation with your buddies...

 

It is a distinct point of pride to earn your nose art in the 476th... :thumbup:

[twistking]

Not sure about nose art or similar, sounds more difficult to implement past just modifying textures yourself, but I'm not totally opposed. You'd still have to distribute it to each player though, as this sort of thing is client-side

Well, that is where the emblem editor would come in. Players would create their art from prebuilt icons and shapes within DCS. So for client-server-distribution it would only be a few kilobytes of data...

 

Sure, you would be limited in comparison to doing it in photoshop, but it would be easier and quicker to do, while also showing up corretly in multiplayer.

Virtual Squadrons could of course still do their custom liveries in photoshop as before...