A WIP preview

[kelticheart]

A good day to everybody!

Since I've been talking for a while about this sort of tuneup of my blurred prop textures into a single library, it's high time I showed something. I am also working on better prop blade details and, when possible better texturing.

To such purpose, I downloaded pictures of famous brand emblems like Hamilton Standard, Curtiss Electric, Rotol for late-war Allied planes. Whenever I found nice blade textures, I copied them as shown below where I used UncleTgt's beautiful weathered blade texture he included in his Malinowski's P-40 repaint packs.

I also did research to make sure any given aircraft did use a specific propeller brand. Like Grumman, which used alternatively Hamilton Standard or Curtiss Electric props on the Hellcat, or Republic which did not factory install Hamilton, unless filed modifications occurred, but Curtiss Electric props on the P-47, or North American, which used both Hamilton and Aeroproducts props on the Mustang.

MORE......

[kelticheart]

....Since I went back and change my mind countless times on various details and blurred texture versions, I am still quite far from completion and upload.

I also intend to write simple instructions for using Martin Wright's DXTbmp utility and replace prop blade textures in the various aircrafts texture files, usually the fuselage. This will take me some more time.

If you consider this will be a summary/recap/integration/whatever of my prop work since 2006, multiplied by tens or more of CFS2 addon airplane designers' models, you can understand the size of what I decided to do.

My goal is to offer an upload that will reduce the search for any given alternative prop texture to one single file to download.

Hopefully, I'll get there.

Cheers!
KH

[Worthless]

Nice pics Kelti. I'm a big fan and use your add on props and exhaust whenever I can. A question, please, from a simi-ignorant when it comes to these props. I seem to recall having read in Robert Johnson's book "Thunderbolt" about a transition from the standard prop early P-47s were equipped with and something referred to as a "paddleblade" prop that entered use later in his tour. I am curious as to which one is represented in these pics you have uploaded.

[Rami]

Stefano,

The pics look fantastic! Thanks for all the work on this...I look forward to updating my hangars.

Worthless,

Most of the "D" models and beyond would have been paddle-bladed props. A paddle-bladed prop has more of a "scoop" that pulls the plane through the air with more force. It allows for higher speeds and better climb rates. Earlier P-47 models had more conventional propellers with slimmer profiles which were not nearly as efficient, and performance suffered as a result, especially in the climb.

[alpha_1]

Very nice, Kelti!

Cheers!

[Sarg Willy]

I looked at your photo,s and thought you were posting box art , Me thinks its time for an upgrade , I,m still flying what Obio called cartoon,s ,, Your machine spec,s , Sir Kelti if in you,d be so kind ,

[kelticheart]

I looked at your photo,s and thought you were posting box art , Me thinks its time for an upgrade , I,m still flying what Obio called cartoon,s ,, Your machine spec,s , Sir Kelti if in you,d be so kind ,

Thanks everybody for your encouragements!

Hi Sarg,

if you place your mouse pointer on each of the screenies I posted, it should give you its filename, where I duly entered the name of the aircraft designer and model. The pictures posted should be very interested to you, since all of the repaints I used are for aircrafts flown on the Italian front 1943-45, I know you have a soft spot for this theatre of ops. Since I am also doing GSL work in Italy, all of the planes wear correct theatre clothes.

Anyway, the planes shown are, left to right,

first post:

• 1&2, Malinowski's P-40F, RAAF 1944 skin, I believe Sqdn.3, Italian front. Available here: http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/sy...file=P40F.zip;
• 3, Malinowski's P-40M, I developed into a "Kitty bomber", RAF designation: Kitthawk MkIII, dressed in RAAF late MTO CV-V by Daniel Leahy/Pacific Ghosts. Available here: http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/sy...40e_et953.zip;
• 4, again Malinowski's P-40F20-CU, dressed in the famed 325th F.G. "Checkertail Clan", 15th USAAF, Italian front. Available here: http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/sy...=P-40FStud.zip. P-40F "Stud" has an interesting story, having been assembled from various wrecked P-40 parts and painted so flamboyantly to cover up its war-weary looks. It was the mount of 325th F.G. Commanding Officer Lt. Col. Robert L. Baseler;
• 5, Malinowski's P-47D-28-RA "Oh Johnnie" (actually a D-27), Cobrauk's repaint available here: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...id=57&id=1942;
• 6, Malinowski's P-47D-30 "Big Stud" (actually a D-40), Gnoopey's repaint here: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...tid=57&id=1948
• 7, Malinowski's P-47D-22-RA "Black Scorpions", repaint by Bearcat241, here: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...id=57&id=11577. The USAAF 15th AF repaints are all available here in the US-skins section and all rigorously depicting planes which fought on the post-1943 armistice Italian front;
• 8, Paul Rebuffat's Bf109F-4, of another famous unit, the JG.53 "Pik As" which fought in Sicily and probably this plane was still flying when the Luftwaffe tried to oppose the 1943 Allied landings in Sicily. The aircraft is dressed with a handsome repaint from ChrisN, available here http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...tid=59&id=7801.

Second post:

• 1, again Paul Rebuffat's Bf109F-4 of the JG.53 "Pik As", this time with my other, broken, no-disc, blurred prop version;
• 2, late Akemi Mizoguchi's Bf109G6/R6, dressed with another beautiful repaint from ChrisN, plane flown by Uffz. Georg Amon, 7./JG53, Sciacca, Sicily, June 1943. Here: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...tid=59&id=1290
• 3&4, FDG2's P-47D-20, 322nd F.G. "Tuskegee Airmen". Sopwith Chameleon's repaint available here: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...id=57&id=1227;
• 5, FDG2's B-17G "KWITURBITCHIN", 97th BG, 414th BS, 15th USAAF. Repaint again by SC, here: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...tid=57&id=1185
• 6, FDG2's P-51B "Topper III", 322th F.G. Repaint pack by me and Jaxon here: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...id=57&id=14130
• 7, Alphasim's B-24J "Hughuey's Revenge", repaint by SC, here: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...tid=57&id=1167

Sarg, I hope I understood correctly what you asked for.

Worthless:

Rami already gave you a detailed answer to your question. Let me add CFS2 blurred textures cannot represent different types of prop blades, like for example the late-war Mustang "cuffed-blade". Another good example of trying to make prop blades as aerodynamic and efficient as possible, in the attempt to overcome the hp loss between the engine and the propeller. More or less like the hp loss each car experiences between the engine and the transmission, the hp difference when measured at the engine crankshaft and the drive wheels.
Prop-driven, piston engine aircraft technology reached its best, and its natural development limits, during WWII. From then on, only jet engines could provide better performance.

Cheers!
KH

[Worthless]

Very informative and I appreciate both responses. As I mentioned, I don't know much about props, so your answer prompted me to go look at the various articles a googlesearch produced. I'd never heard the term "cuffed" used in connection with propellers. I hadn't expected you could do much with the blurred image. So your answer concerning blurred textures was not unexpected. Not wanting to be considered a "rivet counter", it wasn't trying to be picky. I was just curious if the stationery image blade was a standard blade or one of the so called paddle blades I'd read about.

[Sarg Willy]

Your English , is better than my Irish , I was after your computor system spec,s , Xp , Nividia , or Ati card ,

[kelticheart]

Your English , is better than my Irish , I was after your computor system spec,s , Xp , Nividia , or Ati card ,

Oh, my!....

Yeah and my reading attention level needs some tuneup, perhaps new spark plugs..........please forgive me!

Mine it's a modest 2005 machine, at the time state-of-the-art for its price range, but now a tad Jurassic. I assembled it myself and it's based on an ASUS mobo, AMD Sempron, 2.0 Ghz, 2Gb RAM; the video card is an ATI Radeon with 256Mb video RAM. I expanded the hardware up to its limits over the years and the OS is, obviously, my beloved XP SP3, carefully cleaned up of all useless services like those needed to connect to the Net and other unneeded programs. I clean my HDD with CCleaner, defragment it and defragment the Registry every weekend.

Every year, before summer, I take it completely apart and clean it carefully with soft brushes and compressed air from the dust accumulated over the year, particularly all cooling fans, including the power unit/transformer. Heat is the computer nemesis and dust acts as insulation, seriously limiting heat dispersion and cooling. Mobo, CPU, RAM and my HDD are all carefully monitored by all kinds of freeware diagnostic utilities I downloaded over the years. So far, they all tell me my machine is perfectly healthy. Should anything go wrong, I hope to be warned in time to salvage what's possible.

I have a dual fan HDD cooler on my Maxtor 160Gb HDD but, in case of sudden crashes and such, I backup everything on two HDDs I placed into external USB boxes. My 20Gb+ CFS2 multi-theatre install is replicated twice on a bi-weekly basis, together with my CFS2 addon collection and every tweak I do. I do not use MS backup programs, but a neat small freeware utility called Sync Expert, which backups only files on the main drive (host) with newer dates and different sizes from the backup drives (mirrors). This makes backups real efficient and fast.
I am also in the process of burning DVDs with everything I downloaded over the years. This is a huge project because I do not want to store duplicated materials such as gauges, 2d panels, sound files, weapon packs and so on. Therefore, hardly anything that I archive is 100% original.

I chose to keep my CFS2/main computer not connected and use another lesser, older rig just for e-mails and the Net, which I almost do not use anymore, since I enjoy lightning-fast wide band connection in my office at work.

In this way CFS2 should not be endangered by possible viruses or slowed down by all the services needed to connect, firewall and antivirus. I download everything at the office, where I run Win 8.0 safeguarded by all kinds of safety measures and I use an 8Gb mem pen to bring new addons home. Needless to say, I put so many controls on the USB connection that, I hope, viruses will have a tough time reaching my main rig at home.

Did I answer properly this time?

Cheers!
KH

[kelticheart]

Very informative and I appreciate both responses. As I mentioned, I don't know much about props, so your answer prompted me to go look at the various articles a googlesearch produced. I'd never heard the term "cuffed" used in connection with propellers. I hadn't expected you could do much with the blurred image. So your answer concerning blurred textures was not unexpected. Not wanting to be considered a "rivet counter", it wasn't trying to be picky. I was just curious if the stationery image blade was a standard blade or one of the so called paddle blades I'd read about.

Hi Worthless,

I don't think neither Rami nor me thought you were counting rivets. Curiosity is the mother of knowledge and we all harassed our SOH friends asking questions over the years. I increased my knowledge about WWII aviation history and technology many thousandfold since I joined SOH!

Mustang pictures taken from the web:

the first is a late-war Hamilton, blunt-tipped prop. Look at the blade stems, there's nothing there. In the following pictures three earlier version Hamilton propellers, equipped with a sort of envelope covering each stem.

Those are the "cuffs" of the blades, designed to improve the airflow over the stem of the blade, consequently increasing propeller efficiency and fuel consumption.
P-47 props wore cuffs as well, as shown in the next group of pictures.

Cheers!
KH

[kelticheart]

Worthless:

the following are prop brand emblems to help you with identifying them better, and, guess what? I even found a drawing of "paddle blades"!

Respectively:

1. Hamilton Standard
2. Curtiss Electric
3. Aeroproducts
4. Hamilton paddle prop
5. British Rotol
6. .....

Cheers!
KH

[Worthless]

This is great stuff Kelti. My thanks for your explanation and the pics. Who ever knew there could be so much difference in prop styles. And I can clearly see the "cuffs" on the P-47 pictures.

[Sarg Willy]

Thank you Kelti , nice to see such perfection , attainable on Xp , My nephew called today to ask about car repairs , and I asked him if a dual processer would work with Xp , Drivers for a new board would be tough to find , But he added people trade those in all the time for newer systems ,
So I asked for a pair of 3 gig Processors Intell , 2 sticks of ram and a decent vidio card , He answered that won,t be a problem , Got my fingers crossed ,,

[kelticheart]

Thank you Kelti , nice to see such perfection , attainable on Xp , My nephew called today to ask about car repairs , and I asked him if a dual processer would work with Xp , Drivers for a new board would be tough to find , But he added people trade those in all the time for newer systems ,
So I asked for a pair of 3 gig Processors Intell , 2 sticks of ram and a decent vidio card , He answered that won,t be a problem , Got my fingers crossed ,,

You're welcome Sarg!

A word of advice: I have been looking in the used hardware local market for a while now, trying to find a more recent machine that XP would run without excessive problems. The worst XP limit is the amount of RAM it will read, which is 4Gb. By the same token, I read many times here 4Gb should be plenty for CFS2, (providing you run it with the 4Gb RAM patch uploaded here, otherwise CFS2 itself won't "see" beyond 2Gb). The rest of faster hardware components will not be a problem for XP.

What I am telling you is to investigate a little further about Intel dual-core processors, which I was strongly advised against because they tend to heat up real quickly and burnout fast. I always used AMD processors coupled with Asus-AMD dedicated motherboards. They are very durable and AMD transferred a while ago (mind me, this is a very down-to-earth explanation) some graphic functions directly into their processors, leaving more power to the video cards. Back in 2005, I had a few friends running CFS2, now they all moved on, and my pc, compared to their Intel machines with equal features as mine, was always able to display higher resolution levels with better framerates than theirs. One of the reasons why a couple of them gave up was because they did not enjoy many of the addons I was collecting, since their pc's could not handle them without running CFS2 at the bare minimum graphic detail, while I was able to run CFS2 with all the graphics maxed out, even with 1Gb of RAM only. When I assembled it I had "only" 500Mb of RAM, which I later expended to the maximum allowed by my Asus mobo of 2Gb.
Even now, providing I do not exaggerate with the total of GSL objects in the scenery, non multi-res planes usage and flak display, I get 25-40 fps with all of Rhumba's replacement mesh in place, which takes its toll on the animation rate.

If I were you, I would open a new thread here asking suggestions about which was the best hardware combo pc of about four-five years ago. The pool of technical computer knowledge here is immense and I'd be very interested in reading the replies as well.
If you really have to go with dual-core Intels, make sure over abundant ventilation and cooling is constantly provided to them. Otherwise...


Worthless:

While searching info for you I also stumbled on something I thought I had settled for the Thunderbolt: those "paddle" blades you enquired about earlier were not produced by Curtiss Electric but by Hamilton Standard, as the drawing I found shows.
Although it would not be a problem producing a set of Hamilton prop textures for Malinowski's and Alphasim's later, P-47D-25 onwards, models, the shape of the props modelled by their designers definitely resemble the older, shorter Curtiss props.

It's interesting to note that the newer blunt-tipped Hamilton prop on the Mustang and the "paddle" prop on the Jug did not need to be "cuffed", as their stem hape had a better built-in efficiency.

But this is getting quite close to rivet-counting, so I won't go back once more to change my Thunderbolt blurred prop textures!

Cheers!
KH

[Worthless]

By all means, Kelti. Move on to something more worthwhile. It's hard for me to see how you can improve on the prop enhancements already accomplished. I was simply curious. That's all.

[Sarg Willy]

Thank you for the tip,s , and the Prop infoe ,

[Sarg Willy]

Speaking about props , If you check SceneDb /Fs2kprop/texture , is where the Cfs-1 prop , propelle.bmp resides , and it really needs some of your talent , Kelti , perhaps a wee bit more transparency on the rotating prop ,`I,ll try and attach my feeble attempt at a reworked file ,

[kelticheart]

Speaking about props , If you check SceneDb /Fs2kprop/texture , is where the Cfs-1 prop , propelle.bmp resides , and it really needs some of your talent , Kelti , perhaps a wee bit more transparency on the rotating prop ,`I,ll try and attach my feeble attempt at a reworked file ,

I am sorry Sarg, but I tried working in those CFS1 prop textures in the past several times, with no success. Everytime I discover something new about blurred props painting, I go back to those textures and try to do something to them to no avail.

I think the reason sits in the fact that CFS1 textures do not make large use of "extended bitmap" texturing, expecially in the blurred prop disc field.

In CFS2 we can paint what I call a "front" texture and add a so-called "alpha" texture, which provides various degrees of transparency using a gray scale of tones, ranging from white (fully opaque, displayed as solid black) to black (100% transparent). As the grey tone used in the texture becomes darker, the displayed transparency increases. I use lighter shades to simulate the blurred prop blades, while the empty spaces among them are simulated by a 99% dark gray tone, being 100% solid black. The "front" texture provides the colour of the blurred disc, which I paint a very light grey, plus any additional coloured detail like the Allied aircraft blurred yellow tips, or the blurred trace left by a propeller manufacturer brand emblem, operating instructions stencils or natural metal parts of the blade close to the spinner (for ex.: Malinowski's P-47D or AH's Bf109E-4).

Through the wonderful, small Martin Wright's utility DXTbmp the two textures can be joined into a single file and CFS2 engine displays it like a rotating disc.

The problem with those CFS1 prop textures is that the transparency is set in the aircraft model file, or *.mdl, instead of being mapped to a texture file. Everytime I tampered with them, I only succeeded in getting the still propeller blades transparent, without affecting the blurred disc at all!

Believe me I tried, because I still use some excellent CFS1 aircrafts as AIs, like the P-51D, Spitfire MkI and FW190A made by Alain L'Homme. To date, I have no idea about what to do to improve their blurred prop discs, perhaps some day I'll stumble into a good solution!

Cheers!
KH

[Sarg Willy]

These Jpeg,s are the result I came up with , certainly not up to your standards of perfection , but a slight improvement I like to think over the stock ones , for Ai usage ,
and i,m sure your aware that the cfs-1 model canopy,s can be cleared via Martin,s tool,s , and even shades of tint applied, green , blue , what ever ,

[kelticheart]

These Jpeg,s are the result I came up with , certainly not up to your standards of perfection , but a slight improvement I like to think over the stock ones , for Ai usage ,
and i,m sure your aware that the cfs-1 model canopy,s can be cleared via Martin,s tool,s , and even shades of tint applied, green , blue , what ever ,

Mmmmm...they do look improved....How did you manage it?

Did you add an alpha texture lightening only the blurred blade sections (this is how I tried a zillion times to correct them)?

You used MDLmat to clear the canopies, didn't you? Good job, they almost look like CFS2 models. The Bf109G-6/R6 (or a G-14/K-4, judging by the shape of the rudder) looks real good, where did you find it?

Cheers!
KH

[mksystem]

Amazing! Just when I think something is perfected, someone takes it to a new level!!

[Allen]

The CFS1 prop use pallete colors to set transparnt.

http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/info/PropProg.txt

Go to http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/ and try Bmp2000 or BmpExt.

[Sarg Willy]

Hi Kelti , You should be able to save the second proppelle from the screen shot , as it,s a BMP , the first one ,s a Jpg , back up the old and give it a try , of course the screen shots from a Pre-historic Voodoo 3 card , and w98 , so I can,t vouch for the same effects , displayed on your current Hot rod machine ,

Allen your suggestion , would probably work too , but I used a colour program from raaf 662 , CFS_bmp, not sure it would run on Xp , it,s so old ,
Just the stock 109_g with G-Crew wing support Kelti ,

[kelticheart]

Hi everybody!

What amazes me is that a simple subject, like blurred prop discs, can stir so much interest. The love for CFS2 is still hot around here!

Sarg:

What do you think of the below shot? It's Alain L'Homme's splendid (for those ancient times) Spitfire MkIA for CFS1, repainted in BoB-era QJ-J livery and MkIIA D-B, Douglas Bader's mount colours, converted to CFS2. I downloaded the pack twelve years ago from Simviation.

It had a few issues, (for ex., in the original pack the two repaints could not work separately), which I resolved and I enjoyed a fantastic AI BoB Spit MkI ever since, apart from the prop texture, of course. You can put 100 of these Spits in the air and the fps remain the same as if there were the usual "finger-4" patrol!

The same goes for L'Homme's P-51D Mustang, repainted by Sopwith Chameleon. The best AI P-51 bubbletop for huge bomber formation escorts over Europe! Again, apart from the prop texture!

But the conversation we are having here led me yesterday to trying a new approach. The attached *.zip includes both the generic CFS1 prop texture you indicated me and the specific prop texture for L'Homme's Spitfire MkIA.

The new textures work more like a CFS2-standard texture, with an alpha channel texture providing the transparency and the blurred effect. A while ago I discovered that, if one saves any texture as an alpha channel texture with DXTBmp, the regular texture is turned into a greyscale texture that can be worked on to make whichever detail transparent, semi-opaque and so on. This is how I mask out unwanted details, permanent droptanks or payloads, in FS9 aircraft converted models like Mr. Kazunori Ito's or J.R. Lucarini's.
I simply created an alpha channel texture from the original, I replaced the blurred textures with mine and then joined the two, a CFS2 standard for prop textures.

Try the attached out and let me know what do you think. If they are rubbish, just dump them and I'll try something else. Although I don't really know, at this point, what else I could do to improve them, considering the obsolete material I have to work with which, for example, prevents from creating a full blurred disc. The below is all I can get.

Cheers!
KH