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Posted (edited)

It seems to me IMHO like little forethought was made about it during the 3D modeling and texturing phase of development early in the project, where we constantly saw renders of the amazing wear and tear on the TCS and bump mapping, etc... Like the issue of definable modex numbers was destined to ultimately be an afterthought or possibly even an oversight once the modeling phase was completed. I can't speak for HB nor will I, but it really perplexed me why this apparently wasn't taken into account during the 3D modeling and texturing of the Tomcat and had this on day 1 of EA release.

It was really annoying flying in multiplayer off the boat last night with a friend and we both took the same skin and both were 200 modex. Because we wanted to belong to the same squadron skin we ended up basically with "clone" planes I even started arguing with him to take a different skin cuz who ever heard of 2 CAG birds in the same squadron. Finally we just ended up flying the clone planes.

 

muh immersion waz in tatterz! 😄

 

Edited by Baz000
Posted

As all of the previous discussion on the topic shows (on the multiple threads that have been dedicated to it), thanks to the sheer number of possible sizes, typefaces, and placements seen on the F-14 during its career, the F-14 modex can't be handled satisfactorily the way it has been on other aircraft. It's an issue they're working on, but considering that they also want to release a carrier, a carrier-borne tanker, a pilot body with multiple helmet options, and one or two more variants of the F-14A, and fix and refine the bugs and systems already released, and just as many players are spitting out their pacifiers over each of those as they are dynamic modex numbers, it's understandably a low-priority issue as it doesn't affect playability or product delivery like all of the other items on this list.

We'll see it once they develop the technology, as they have already repeatedly stated.

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Posted (edited)

To me the solution could be somewhere in the middle:

Take the most popular sizes and allow them on the object.  Italics may make for wider kerning, but that's something we would have to live with. The 90% solution would be good enough for most people who want dynamic Modexes without having a lot of skins on the drive.

For numbers that don't conform to the 90% solution, nothing is stopping people from doing static modexes and applying "blank" to the dynamic modexes in the description.lua files.  It's no worse than what we have now, just a few more lines to put in the desc.lua.

 

EDIT: another solution could be to put a big block as a decal on the fuselage, tail and wings, then put the entire modex (whatever size or font you want) as a decal.  It wouldn't be a dynamic modex, but you could have a whole squadron of aircraft with one or two skins and decals.  Same with canopies and BuNos

Edited by Home Fries
  • Like 1
Posted
23 minutes ago, Home Fries said:

EDIT: another solution could be to put a big block as a decal on the fuselage, tail and wings, then put the entire modex (whatever size or font you want) as a decal.  It wouldn't be a dynamic modex, but you could have a whole squadron of aircraft with one or two skins and decals.  Same with canopies and BuNos

 

This all day. This is exactly how the Strike Fighters series handled it, requiring the decal to be for the whole modex, then selected in mission from a drop-down menu. Placement, size, and orientation were indicated with coordinates on a decal placement file. Have enough custom decals attached to a specific number on the list and everything, from modex number to BuNo to names on the rails, to even specific bits of weathering or variations in the markings could be replicated easily. The only drawback is the limited number of decal sets and not being able to just type in a number and expect it to appear. But any artist worth their salt would aim to represent the entire squadron this way anyway, so at least you have historical fidelity. In my old SF2 days, I mapped the entire Mirage Factory F-14 for decals and created several historical liveries. It was BY FAR the best way to handle it I have ever seen and I wish ED had adapted something similar for DCS instead of using the same tired old limited system left over from Flanker 2.0.

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Swordsman422 said:

This all day. This is exactly how the Strike Fighters series handled it, requiring the decal to be for the whole modex, then selected in mission from a drop-down menu. Placement, size, and orientation were indicated with coordinates on a decal placement file. Have enough custom decals attached to a specific number on the list and everything, from modex number to BuNo to names on the rails, to even specific bits of weathering or variations in the markings could be replicated easily. The only drawback is the limited number of decal sets and not being able to just type in a number and expect it to appear. But any artist worth their salt would aim to represent the entire squadron this way anyway, so at least you have historical fidelity. In my old SF2 days, I mapped the entire Mirage Factory F-14 for decals and created several historical liveries. It was BY FAR the best way to handle it I have ever seen and I wish ED had adapted something similar for DCS instead of using the same tired old limited system left over from Flanker 2.0.

Wow you were TMF?  That's awesome.  I did the same kind of thing with the A-6 Superpack.  I also loved that you could put decals anywhere with coordinates based on the CG of the aircraft.

Edited by Home Fries
Posted

I wasn't with TMF, but I did a lot of work skinning their Tomcat. If you go to the main SF2 mod site, a lot of the available liveries for the TMF F-14 are ones I've made. It took me months to nail down the coordinates for all the components, but once I had a map, a new skin was just a matter of making the decals and editing the text files.

If there is one way that SF2 is unequivocally superior to DCS at all, it's in the way skins and decals function.

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Posted
5 hours ago, Swordsman422 said:

It's not a question of "should" but a question of how. if it were easy to do it at the level of quality that HB expects of themselves, it would have been done by now.

I doubt it actually.  Has it ever been on the list?

Hard to have seen them getting to it by now.  Maybe after F-14A-95-GR

4 hours ago, Home Fries said:

To me the solution could be somewhere in the middle:

Take the most popular sizes and allow them on the object.  Italics may make for wider kerning, but that's something we would have to live with. The 90% solution would be good enough for most people who want dynamic Modexes without having a lot of skins on the drive.

For numbers that don't conform to the 90% solution, nothing is stopping people from doing static modexes and applying "blank" to the dynamic modexes in the description.lua files.  It's no worse than what we have now, just a few more lines to put in the desc.lua.

 

EDIT: another solution could be to put a big block as a decal on the fuselage, tail and wings, then put the entire modex (whatever size or font you want) as a decal.  It wouldn't be a dynamic modex, but you could have a whole squadron of aircraft with one or two skins and decals.  Same with canopies and BuNos

 

Great ideas!

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Posted
3 hours ago, Swordsman422 said:

I wasn't with TMF, but I did a lot of work skinning their Tomcat. If you go to the main SF2 mod site, a lot of the available liveries for the TMF F-14 are ones I've made. It took me months to nail down the coordinates for all the components, but once I had a map, a new skin was just a matter of making the decals and editing the text files.

If there is one way that SF2 is unequivocally superior to DCS at all, it's in the way skins and decals function.

My contribution to the TMF Tomcat was the kneeboard/bluebrains graphic that substituted for the NATOPS manual on the knee in later versions.

Posted
9 hours ago, Uxi said:

I doubt it actually.  Has it ever been on the list?

Yes. Go see some of the other threads where this issue is raised and HB has responded with "working on it, but low priority." 

Here's what IronMike had to say about it June of last year.

 

And 2 years ago:

There are more examples, but I am honestly too lazy to search for them.

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Posted
On 10/20/2021 at 4:06 AM, Baz000 said:

HB or ED to give us the real squadron callsigns to use like bandwagon, victory, gunfighter, rage, etc etc for our navy tomcat and hornet squadrons

Per a Ward Carrol video, I believe those callsigns are only used in certain situations around the boat, and I don't think our comms menu selection items match any of the situations where they would actually be used. Once out on task they switch over to the "universal" callsign (from that big book with a silly acronym name I can't remember) like what we already have in DCS.

Posted

It's situational. Operational callsigns, per the name, were used when the aircraft was a component of a larger operation, such as an OSW CAP or a CAS element during OEF or OIF. Squadron callsigns were used around the boat, but "around the boat" meant really that as long as the aircraft was primarily within communication with the boat or on the boat's comms network. That's why the F-14s involved in the Gulf of Sidra incidents retained their squadron callsigns vice an operational one. Long CAPs, carrier-launched interceptions, etc. that we have in DCS would use squadron callsigns. 

Honestly, I think "both" would be ideal. Select the op callsign and squadron callsign in ME and have it be used in correct situations. Barring that, having more flight callsigns couldn't be a bad thing, but they'd either have to find that voice actor again (and it's been how many years since those lines were originally recorded) or completely replace the lines. This brings up another thing that I wish would happen; that we'd have multiple voice options and get to choose our PC voices on the logbook page.

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Posted

Well, we've got plenty of users that could volunteer voice lines for comms. I'd be willing to. I've always been fascinated by aviation radio phraseology. 

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