IE's and CD's RAF object libraries

[Blood_Hawk23]

So how are the damage models looking?

[Allen]

Basic CFS2 flat.

Attachment 15490

[Allen]

Alright I'm attaching a test copy. Would some one check for errors like missing textures or if objects are using the same model in game. I don't want to look at these any more!. Add the CD_Obj to your Scenery Library and put it at the top of the list it should over ride any older CD objects and textures you may have.

I'm also including the DPs. These are needed if you do not have the past CD objects. I did not check or edit them.

Attachment 15710

[dvslats]

Alright I'm attaching a test copy. Would some one check for errors like missing textures or if objects are using the same model in game. I don't want to look at these any more!

A monumental accomplishment Allen.

Thank you!

I've loaded 30 or so of them, so far so good. Only issue I've seen, the US flag is backwards on the pole.
Having never used these API's before I can not be a good judge on the models repeating. Time will tell.

They do look damn nice!



Thanks Again, Dave

[kelticheart]

Alright I'm attaching a test copy. Would some one check for errors like missing textures or if objects are using the same model in game. I don't want to look at these any more!. Add the CD_Obj to your Scenery Library and put it at the top of the list it should over ride any older CD objects and textures you may have.

I'm also including the DPs. These are needed if you do not have the past CD objects. I did not check or edit them.

Attachment 15710

I am going to start placing them right away in my ongoing (...and endless...) project to improve ETO GSL sceneries with more trees and more "localised" looks.

British sceneries, here I come!

Thank you, Allen! I'll let you know if I meet some problems.

Cheers!
KH

[kdriver]

Fantastic job Allen - well done and thankyou very much. I was also sick of the sight of them after converting them from APIs to BGLs and can appreciate your monumental achievement.

I'll check them all and get back to you soon.

Kevin

[Blood_Hawk23]

Now you know why I have so many "irons in the fire". Its not from boredom. Its near burnout. You spend so much time working on one that after a while you go cross-eyed. Its worse when you mess up a save and have to start over.

Allen,

I'll have a look over my next three off. I think you'll have no major issues. Though a backwards flag could be trouble.

[Allen]

I'll fix the US flag. No idea how I missed that...

kdriver

It not just looking at them. Once ported into gMax I had to convert every texture back to standard .bmp format as gMax can't open any extended format .bmp With that done it was do any edits needed to the model/textue,LOD and do a destroyed model. Exporting to a destroyable model was the easy part.

Blood_Hawk23
Yup. I stopped for 2 days working on these.

EDIT:
New CD_Flag_US.bgl attached.

Attachment 15739

[kelticheart]

I'll fix the US flag. No idea how I missed that...

kdriver

It not just looking at them. Once ported into gMax I had to convert every texture back to standard .bmp format as gMax can't open any extended format .bmp With that done it was do any edits needed to the model/textue,LOD and do a destroyed model. Exporting to a destroyable model was the easy part.

Blood_Hawk23
Yup. I stopped for 2 days working on these.

EDIT:
New CD_Flag_US.bgl attached.

Attachment 15739

Hi Allen,

I am very glad to report to you that, so far, I haven't encountered any problem with your library. I tried out at least 80% of them and they all performed great, once I turned the MB layout into a GSL scenery and I went for test flights.

I test for fps impact and whether or not the objects still have the obnoxious characteristic of disappearing before reaching the end of the screen.

Well, none of the ones I tested so far degrades fps considerably or vanishes in thin air as they did before! I am talking about sceneries including in excess of 200 objects each on a 11-year-old pc!

I'll keep on testing over the weekend and, if everything tests out well as I expect, I'll let you know. After all the testing is over, you should really upload CD's overhauled library officially, for everybody's enjoyment.

Thank you again!
KH

[kdriver]

Hi Stefano and Allen,

Have you noticed most of the watch towers and a few of the buildings are too large - some twice as big as they should be. I've checked half of the objects so far.

I'm happy to adjust the scales of these objects. When I converted the APIs to BGLs I encountered the same problem and had to adjust the scale of nearly every object.

I used a parked aircraft beside each object as a reference point. In addition the C hangars' dimensions were 150 X 300 feet.

CD_Armoury is missing from the package.

Otherwise everything is going well. The textures have been improved on a few of the objects and the frame rates are good.

I should also have them all tested and adjusted, if you wish, by the end of the weekend.

Kevin

[Allen]

Each object can be adjusted as needed and would be best if some one would that knows how they should look did the needed adjustments. Model Converter X is normally quite good at exporting objects at the right size but it can be wrong.

Also Model Converter X did not list a "CD_Armoury" in the bgl. it found a CD_Armoury with some other numbers at the end and it has been converted.

EDIT:

Found the missing CD_Armoury MCX listed it as CD_Objects000. Now convetred and attache below You need to put the CD_Armoury.bgl into the CD_inf\scenery folder and CD_Armoury.dp into the OBJECTS_DP folder.

Attachment 15895

[kdriver]

Thanks Allen for the armoury, I'll go ahead and rescale the objects as required.

BTW Achim has already started using these objects in his latest RAF aerodrome scenery yet to be released.

KD

[Allen]

I looked at some of the watch towers and the are the same size.

[kdriver]

Sorry Allen, when I checked the watch offices I placed them too close together and that made them appear huge. When I spaced them apart they reverted to their normal size.

There were a handful of other objects which did need resizing. However, I was unable to recompile these three objects using scasm after adjusting their scale: CD_MainStores_Wattisham, CD_Officers_Mess_Bassingbourn & CD_Institute_Dining.

CD_Armoury.bgl and CD_Hangar_C_Wattisham.bgl have corrupted *.bmp entries and consequently their textures don't show correctly.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Allen]

How over sized are the CD_MainStores_Wattisham, CD_Officers_Mess_Bassingbourn & CD_Institute_Dining??

The CD_Armoury.bgl is fine and CD_Hangar_C_Wattisham.bgl added the stock texture so the roof is not textured.

Attachment 16106

[kdriver]

CD_MainStores_Wattisham needs to be reduced from 0.5 to 0.25.

CD_Officers_Mess_Bassingbourn & CD_Institute_Dining need to be reduced from 0.5 to 0.33.

I was able to change the scale of the following objects:

CD_Armoury_7616-37.bgl - reduced to 0.25

CD_Flag_UK.BGL - reduced to 0.25

CD_Flag_US.BGL - reduced to 0.25

CD_Gun_Turret_Instructor.bgl - reduced to 0.25

CD_Sick_Quarters.BGL - reduced to 0.25

CD_Married_Quarters_Officers.BGL - reduced to 0.33

CD_Officers_Mess_Oakington.BGL - reduced to 0.33

My copies of CD_Armoury.bgl and CD_Hangar_C_Wattisham.bgl which I downloaded from this thread have corrupted bmp names:

Instead of armourtex1.bmp I have armour~1.bmp and instead of C-typeWattishamenh2.bmp I have C-type~2.bmp

KD

[Allen]

Can those be tranalated to a percent so I can do the resize in gMax?

CD_Armoury.bgl and CD_Hangar_C_Wattisham.bgl are not corrupted. That is short hand left from convetring to .3ds. .3ds format uses 8.3 format for texture and if the texture is over 8 long a ~ will be put into the name. It acts like a jump. This will work fine in CFS2.

[kdriver]

CD_Armoury.bgl and CD_Hangar_C_Wattisham.bgl are not corrupted. That is short hand left from convetring to .3ds. .3ds format uses 8.3 format for texture and if the texture is over 8 long a ~ will be put into the name. It acts like a jump. This will work fine in CFS2.

Provided there are no other textures in the same folder which begin with "armour" or "c-type". Unfortunately I have a number of them and consequently the wrong textures show up.

Not sure what percentage you want - the scales in the disassembled bgl's are 0.5 = 50%, 0.25 = 25%, etc. I can send you the files which I have changed if you like. There are only those three files which I was unable to recompile.

[kelticheart]

Hi Kdriver and Allen,

all of the above going on, between you two, is way over my head! Yet, I am glad I stirred this up.

Thank you very much Kevin for getting involved one more time, and thank you Allen for your patient work. I didn't notice the sizing problem you are reporting Kevin, because I did not place all of the new Gmax objects together in the same scenery, but I am reviewing all of my old GSL works with them, selecting those that I need here or there each time as I go.

I am almost ready to send you for your review a *.lay/*.gsl of Gary Burns' BoB Hawkinge, which I re-did using more aerial pictures and screenshots from A2A and Il-2 forums (amazing simulators!) that I was able to find, searching through Google images. Allen, you always wrote you don't have an ETO install in your CFS2, would you like to see it too, anyway? The scenery includes Rami's port of Dover.

I am using Ian Elliot's watch office in Hawkinge, but its placement is pure guesswork for me since I have not been able to find exactly where Hawkinge control tower, or "watch office" in RAF lingo, was built during WWII. In all truth, there are several other RAF airports where it's impossible locating their watch offices from recce pictures, but I'll cross that bridge when I'll get there.

Cheers!
KH

[Cees Donker]

Glad you guys are having so much fun!



Cees

[Allen]

Provided there are no other textures in the same folder which begin with "armour" or "c-type". Unfortunately I have a number of them and consequently the wrong textures show up.

Not sure what percentage you want - the scales in the disassembled bgl's are 0.5 = 50%, 0.25 = 25%, etc. I can send you the files which I have changed if you like. There are only those three files which I was unable to recompile.

You shouldn't have a prob as the ~ is 7th character or jump. The 8th 7th character is the last used in the texture name. The only way you should have a prob with it loading the wrong text IF you have a texture that use the same first 6 character and use the same last character. I'll still redo them.

SCALE 0.5 is full size for a bgl exported from gMax.

[kdriver]

Hi Cees & Stefano,

Your objects live on Cees - soon to appear in a RAF base near you!

You're welcome Stefano - I'm probably driving Allen mad. I'll send you the objects which I rescaled. See what you think.

As for Hawkinge, Ian Elliot made an accurate but non-GSL rendition of that aerodrome. It's in the correct geographic location and the watch office, which is a wooden hut, is in front of the hangars on the edge of the grass apron where the aircraft are parked. It's found in his scenery package in the CFS2 scenery section here at SOH. I'm happy to continue doing research on the other RAF aerodromes which you plan to do.

Cheers,

Kevin

[Allen]

Here is the resized objects.

Resized_objects.zip

[kdriver]

Everything looks perfect Allen. Thanks very much for all your trouble.

I've asked Kelti to do a last check on the objects, particularly the resized ones, and I think we're ready to go.

Kevin

[kelticheart]

Hi Cees & Stefano,

Your objects live on Cees - soon to appear in a RAF base near you!

You're welcome Stefano - I'm probably driving Allen mad. I'll send you the objects which I rescaled. See what you think.

As for Hawkinge, Ian Elliot made an accurate but non-GSL rendition of that aerodrome. It's in the correct geographic location and the watch office, which is a wooden hut, is in front of the hangars on the edge of the grass apron where the aircraft are parked. It's found in his scenery package in the CFS2 scenery section here at SOH. I'm happy to continue doing research on the other RAF aerodromes which you plan to do.

Cheers,

Kevin

Hi Kevin,

I have all of Ian's production for CFS2, I wish it were GSL. From the attached:

1. From Ian's Hawkinge, which is which: #1, 2 or 3?
2. Is it the shack visible above DW-K fuselage?
3. I am using all of these following 3 B/W pictures, mostly from 1930's Hawkinge. The first matches Ian's hangar types, all Belfast types, while the second shows the living quarters behind the hangars, but it's older than the previous as not all of the hangars are there. The third B/W is a good aerial shot, but it's so small that when I watch it with a lens I can't understand much.
4. View from Il2 forum. This matches the 2nd B/W, I gather the watch tower would be the small building in the foreground, lower left-corner. I think you sent me this one a while ago and I found it again.
5. View from A2A Simulations forum. Very nice, there's even a graveyard behind the hangars. Yet, it's fictional both for the living quarters layout and for the presence of two "C" type hangars which I did not see anywhere else.

Did I do my homework or what?

Both Il2 and A2A are , yet their sceneries match only partially historical pictures. More Il2 than A2A and I agree with you Ian's Hawkinge is the closest one, but it's not GSL or GSL-isable!

I am looking forward to your comments, sir!

Cheers!
Stef