Special Aircraft Service
the SAS Hangar => The Lounge => Topic started by: WxTech on February 07, 2016, 03:36:02 AM
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[Mod released April 4, 2016.]
Get it here:
https://www.mediafire.com/download/1s06af5s8o318sb/00_PBP-1_gunsight_RU-fighters.7z
The stock early RU sights for birds like the Mig-3, LaGG-3, Yak-1, etc., have long bugged me. And so I've just started to build a better PBP-1.
The first will be for fighters. Then I plan to add the second, horizontal axis adjustment as found on the sight version installed in, e.g., the early IL-2. This will address a good chunk of my stock planes as of 4.08.
I might have some love to spread around in a couple weeks or so... (I won't boldly issue the "Two weeks, be sure!" kind of promise. ;)
State of development as of 17 Mar, 2016. Essentially finished for most RU fighters. A few more pics in a later post...
(http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/ah126/gcledrew/I-185_2_zps2ykzmb8f.jpg)
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well, in the IL-2 world, 2 weeks can mean any length of time you require... ;)
looking forward to these improvements! :D
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The polygon vertices are all done, and the faces are mostly created. Next comes the .tga files and mapping the materials to the polys.
I still do the modeling using excel (or rather, the Open Office equivalent.)
This sight is going to look far better than the old ones. Even the currently better PBP-1b in later planes like the La-7 will be jealous. ;)
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This sight is going to look far better than the old ones.Well, we didn't expect anything else.. :) :)
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Epic! Can't wait!!
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I just made a quick test for the LaGG-3, using some simple, plain, 'dummy' textures, just to verify that things were going according to plan. Looking really good! I found a few polygons not showing, due to having defined them in the wrong order, which makes them visible for the opposite side (and hence invisible from the normal direction.) Easy fixes.
Now I have to construct the .tga files. (The collimator lens is already in hand, it being taken from any one of a number of previous sight projects.) There are a total of over 670 polygons to paint, making up more than 3 dozen discrete surface groupings (e.g., outside of collimator cell, inside of collimator cell, top surface of collimator cell, lens surface, top surface of main body. Right surface of main body, right side cover plate face, right side cover plate edge, etc., etc.).
Like some other sights, this will be something like a 70 hour job...
I was surprised to see the original iron sights still showing, which of course means another mesh than the sight mesh (pricel.msh) is used to make these. Another thing to have to track down and eliminate from another mesh.
I really wish the developers had originally dedicated just ONE mesh to the sights. With some planes' sights having parts scattered among two or three meshes, this makes for a far greater potential for conflicts among mods which involve altering these meshes for other cockpit elements. Maddening.
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I forgot to add...
As an indication of the level of detail, the knob which turns the dial for adjusting the reflector plate tilt (such action not modeled in the game) has been made like the real thing. It has a thin wall surrounding a deep, 'cup'-like hollow, with the attachment screw well down inside.
And I've constructed the surface normals so that the lighting on the interior wall is not like the exterior surface, which would be the case if the normals were naively made perpendicular to each polygon. Instead, the surface normals point mostly rearward, angled 75 degrees from perpendicular. This better emulates the lighting as would occur when the Sun shines into the opening more from behind. Otherwise the interior wall would be brightest (not accounting for specular reflectance) when the direction of light is coming *through* the wall, directly from the side.
Incidentally, I first tried this kind of surface normal scheme with the bullet casing chutes feeding the MGs in the Zero. Formerly the lighting would be appropriate for a plane having a completely transparent nose, which of course is not the case. Now these items light up much more like they really would, when the Sun shines into that forward compartmenundert from a more rearward direction.
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To show the current state of progress... Almost no texturing in detail has been applied yet; just a solid color on most parts, to verify all polys and lighting are good.
(http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/ah126/gcledrew/PBP-1%20progress_zpsridgmfhc.jpg)
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Great!
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Progress is progressing. ;)
I've not yet got around to creating the .tga with which to texture the sight, although I've been gathering and working on individual bits to collate into the final image.
I've got the sight integrated into several stock planes thus far, such as Mig-3s, LaGG-3s and I-185s. In some cases this required to cut the stock sight out of an existing mesh, so that I could incorporate my sight as a 'standalone' element in hier.him. This makes it so easy to move the thing, or replace it if desired. In case I haven't been vociferous enough on this score, I really dislike it when a sight is mixed into a larger mesh, with its bits scattered about helter skelter. It's a chore excising it and then renumbering a pile of face group entries.
Another byproduct is the filling of gaps in the I-185's sight mount platform (the cylindrical base upon which the sight sits.) The new crash pad's smaller size more readily reveals the missing polys, which even before were seen with 6DOF. And the power cable running from the panel has been altered in its path somewhat more appropriately to the rear of the sight.
That last plane has such a good looking stock leather crash pad model and texture that I adapted it. I rescaled it to a more cubic shape and of the correct size, and added a few new polys to fill in big gaps at the sides, as well as tweak the top forward portion where gaps were present. It looks far better than the simple thing I started to cook up and which you see in the screen grab above..
This one sight mod will impact a lot of planes, its having been used probably well into 1943, or even '44. It's too bad a different different version (having azimuth adjustment via a screw feed) was used in attack planes like the Il-2 and Peshka, for this sight I'm showing here could otherwise have been adapted to them as well. But I will be making up a correct sight, having that horizontal adjustment with vernier.
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The model is all textured, and I'm putting the finishing touches to the details. I haven't decided whether to release the mod in one go for all planes using this sight, or to put out a few planes to start. I'll see how I feel after looking at the remaining planes which I haven't examined, to see if there's any time-consuming massaging of existing meshes to attend to.
Looking good!
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Great news mate!
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(http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/ah126/gcledrew/I-185_1_zpsoavpnubw.jpg)
(http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/ah126/gcledrew/I-185_2_zps2ykzmb8f.jpg)
(http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/ah126/gcledrew/I-185_3_zpsayabwfgc.jpg)
(http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/ah126/gcledrew/I-185_4_zpsi8vau5gj.jpg)
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I have all stock 4.08 (and 4.09?) MiG, LaGG, La and I-185 planes equipped with the new sight. Yaks to be added (requiring the excising of the original awful sights from their Body.msh files, which takes some time to finagle.)
For the I-185 I filled in the missing part of the gunsight base upon which sits the sight. The power cable has been directed more toward the back instead of the side.
For some other planes I had to make new gunsight bases, as the large stock crash pads would have have formerly hid them anyway (without 6DOF), and were perforce not built by the original mesh creator(s).
In other respects I did not address the crude modeling of the sight bases and the 'handles' dangling from their forward parts. For the time being at least I deemed this aspect to be of little enough importance to spend time on. Perhaps in future?
In a cockpit mod for a collection of Russian birds was included for one of them a neat reticle pattern of good resolution and having the more correct inner and outer ring thickness. (The old stock pattern had the inner ring the thicker of the two.) I took this quadrant and made it into a full pattern. (The stock RU reticle patterns are but 1/4 of the whole, the RETICLE.msh file building the thing up.) I reduced the tick mark lengths to resemble those in an actual photo of such a reticle, added a radial brightness gradient to suggest a brighter central hot spot, added some smaller scale brightness variation, reduced the 'strength' of the fuzzy glow, and colored it so as to further suggest the overall illumination variation.
As you may gather, now all my RU reticles are full patterns like those for all other planes in the game. Ever since starting to mod reticles 3 or 4 years ago I found this 'quadrant' treatment for the RU ones to be a bit strange. But I suppose it was an early scheme to realize good resolution without having to make a larger single .tga.
For the crash pad, I took the existing mesh (and graphic) for the stock I-185 and scaled it accordingly so as to make the smaller, more 'cubic' form. To do the rescaling, in Excel I simply multiplied each of the X, Y and Z values by an appropriate scaling factor, then added the required offset to place the pad on the plate it's attached to in my model. I did have to add a few extra vertices to fill in the awfully big gaps at the sides, which were glaring with 6DOF. And I fixed other gaps at the forward corners of the top surface, which at those corners had the top part noticeably separated from the sides.
And like all former sights, this one was built entirely in Excel, with surface normals manually calculated.
As to surface normals, you'll note how the interior of the hollowed out, 'cup-like' knob behaves differently from the exterior. With a naive surface normal treatment, whereby they are directed always perpendicular to the polygons, the interior would exhibit essentially the same specular lighting as for the opposite and parallel exterior polygons. That is, the inside would shine reflected sunlight just like the outside, as though the outside were transparent to light. This is awful! And so I've redirected the surface normal vectors so as to point much more nearly parallel to the knob's axis, toward the pilot, and not straight sideways. This makes the lighting behavior for the inside much more closely mimic nature.
(In an another thread of some months ago I outlined the similar surface normal treatment I gave to the Zero's MG cartridge chutes, which are some distance forward under the cowling, thus receiving their light through the more rearward opening toward the pilot.)
I'm still debating releasing what I have now, adding the Yaks later...
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Looking great WxTech! If something that's unavailable can be a must have, than this is it. Thanksfor all your effort.
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And now the Yaks have the new sight. Up to the -9T, that is, for the -9U was most probably equipped with the PBP-1b (like that in the stock La-7.) This takes care of all stock RU fighters in my 4.08 game which would have used the PBP-1. Getting closer to release!
As noted earlier, at some point I want to cook up the version of this sight which has also the azimuth axis of motion and which was installed in attack planes such as the IL-2 and the Pe-2
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Along with my gun sight fixes I also address matters dealing with glass.
The canopies have all had their reversal of surface normal orientations applied, so as to make the dirtiness more prominent in the up-sun direction (scattering of light is generally more efficient in the forward direction than it is in back-scatter.)
I'm currently working on armored glass. The see-through faces are done, as well as the (non-see-through) edges for all inside surfaces and some outside surfaces. For a couple of planes I elected to cut the (front) armored glass out of the mesh than included the original gun sight, and added it to the mesh for the rear armored glass. This makes for a uniform treatment, where I will use the same dedicated texture for both tgecfront and rear armored glass. Shuffling about of mesh bits can be time consuming, especially when vertex ordering must be carefully monitored so as to keep assignments to face groups correct.
I've also been making further tweaks to the sight texture, making it look a bit better each time.
Progress is progressing. ;)
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Sounds like you really having a fantastic time just creating....
Will you be able to eventually compile those great new sights into a mod for installing into the CUP #WAW setup?
!S
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I will be soon packing up a mod for distribution. If it requires 'special' treatment for incorporation into CUP, which In cannot address with my ancient 4.08 version, I'll have to entrust that to another modder.
I've made up another crash pad, of the form of a horizontal, 'fat' cylinder, like that for the stock La-7.
And I've made a rectangular reflector plate, with truncated corners at 45 degrees. (Still debating adding the narrow beveled edges; at the moment it's just a simple affair, with plain, 90 degree cuts where face and edge meet.)
Each plane will have its sight supplied with one or the other of the different reflector and crash pad. But I'll also supply the 4 versions of the sight that result from this 2X2 matrix of configurations, the user choosing that which he prefers, if my choice is not to his/her liking. ;)
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Awesome what you create, keep it up the good work
Tobias
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Mod released, in ModWorx (at last!)
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Thanks a bunch!
Would make sense to me to add the download link to the first entry in this thread.
Kopfdorfer
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I've added the sight to the BI-1. The significantly oversized stock model stands out as such when this more accurately dimensioned one replaces it! I'm debating installing it in the BI-6 as well, although the stock sight is the PBP-1b. What to do, what to do?
I've started building the version of the sight used in attack planes, such as the early IL-2 and the Peshka. These have the azimuth adjustment knob. For the IL-2 I'm considering mounting it a bit farther rearward than stock, for the sliding rod (to switch between the stowed and shooting positions) on the real thing looks to extend to a greater distance than currently modeled. But that's just a notion that bears further scrutiny...
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I've made up a working version for the early IL-2, this sight having the azimuth adjustment knob on a long horizontal shaft. Also made in simplified form is the mounting arm, it being a sliding post designed to alternate between the forward, stowed position and the pulled rearward, firing position. Having no knowledge of animating meshes, I've fixed the sight in the firing position, which is the better all around arrangement.
As seems to be common, the original sight was somewhat oversized. The nearer position of my more realisticacally smaller sight overcomes this.
I have yet to add the texture elements for the new parts to the current .tga, but even the provisional plain finish put on on those bits for polygon checking makes for a better looking sight than the stock thing, by far. What a difference to the cockpit a realistic sight makes!
This one will be added to the early-to-mid-war Peshkas, too.
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On the sight version installed in attack planes... The full texturing is complete, and all 4.08 stock planes equipped with it have been 'upgraded'.
The stock sight in the Peshkas was oversized and mounted a bit low; the control yoke when pushed forward and turned hard left or right would partly merge with the lower sight. This no longer occurs.
The Il-2 armored glass has been given a slight greenish tint and my 'cloning' treatment (a second windscreen overlaps the original, and has its surface normals reversed in sign) so that the tint not change much with varying illumination angle. Additionally, this glass and the rest of the canopy glass has been given a dirtier edge. I like the 'grungy' look this creates, suggesting hard-worked planes given little attention to sparkling cleanliness. I will likely do this for the later Il-2s as well, and pack them with my mod (even though no optical sight exists for them.)
This new mod pack will be made available fairly soon...
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Great news.
Best regards, Gerhard :)
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Have just adapted the sight to the Il-2's rear gun. The original was smaller than the real thing (unlike the much more usual case of the sights being modeled too large), and so now the sight looks bigger than before. And the stock reflector was a more-upright 65-70 degrees, instead of the proper 45. I had to lower the mount upon which sits the sight, in order that it not merge oddly into the sight body. A benefit overall now is a better field of view through the reflector.
The Peshka rear gun arrangements are next on the list...
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Any news on these? I would love to have this in especially my early IL-2s
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Any news on these? I would love to have this in especially my early IL-2s
Actually, I did finish adding the sight to some planes, but was hoping to do more 'pit work before packing up the mod for release. Other projects took over, and I left stuff on the back burner. I suppose I should just release the sights by themselves...