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The SAS Factory - Tech Help, Ancient Mods etc. => IL-2 Great Battles => The Keepsake: Old Mod Packs, Game Versions and Guest Mods => IL-2 Great Battles Downloads => Topic started by: SAS~Storebror on April 05, 2018, 05:27:07 AM

Title: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on April 05, 2018, 05:27:07 AM
Hi folks,

We'd like to share the collection of skins, which I've gathered throughout the past months for IL-2 Great Battles, with you.
Note: These are skins we've gathered elsewhere.
We don't claim ownership of any of them.
The fact that we don't put up a credits list here is simply because there are so many skinners involved, and for some of the skins we don't even know where we got them from anymore.
If you are one of those who made a skin provided in this pack and would like to be credited explicitely, please let us know and we'll add your name to this post.

(https://s7.postimg.cc/gysoi63qz/lagg3skin4.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/image/mzqdf8qd3/)

The full set of downloads is about 55 Gigabytes, separated by plane and tank types, available for all planes and tanks of IL-2 Great Battles.

Download Links of Skin Pack Version 3:

Download Link (MediaFire): IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 @MediaFire (https://www.mediafire.com/folder/wkayv5lc4b5xi/)
Download Link (OneDrive): IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 @OneDrive (https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ahp5M3GG5xF_hkgZzOl-J8V78Zph)
Torrent: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 Torrent (https://www.mediafire.com/file/xy32zuymew2p6my/IL-2_Great_Battles_Skin_Pack_v3.torrent/file)

Installation instructions:
Extract each downloaded rar archive file to the IL-2 Great Battles Skins folder. The rar  includes the plane's subfolder name, so if you extract the rar as-is, all skins will end up in the plane subfolder they belong to.
The default skin folder location is:
C:\Program Files (x86)\1C Game Studios\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of <Stalingrad/Moscow/Kuban>\data\graphics\skins
If you have a Steam installation, the default location is:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of <Stalingrad/Moscow/Kuban>\data\graphics\skins

Q&A:

Q: No Credits?
A: Will be added on demand.
Q: Why do you do this at all? The Skins are available already from their original authors!
A: It's for the sake of simplicity and because IL-2 Great Battles has some nasty behaviour with custom skins online: You see them if both participants (the one who's flying with custom skin and the one who's watching) have the same skin installed. Otherwise the one who's watching will just see the default skin.
Simplicity adresses the way skins are rolled out to the wider public.
Unfortunately all the forums dealing with skins failed in establishing a working gallery and clear rules for skin distribution.
Therefore 10-15% of all existing skin download links are dead, the others use about 10 different hosters and the downloaded files use 5 different formats and endless different internal folder structures.
The download threads of e.g. the official il2sturmovik.com forum are cluttered with endless chatter, it's hard to find any real D/L link among them at all, sometimes you have like 20 posts per page but just one of them is a skin download, and the link is hidden behind a spoiler.
Furthermore some skinners established a nasty habit of adding fancy prefixes to their skins like "@1_" or "1A" of "__" to make them appear upfront of any other skin.
All of this is fixed in one go with this pack.

Cheers!
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: cgagan on April 05, 2018, 06:08:36 AM
Many thanks Mike!!!! 8)
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: sniperton on April 05, 2018, 06:30:48 AM
Thanks a lot, Mike, a very a good idea, and a really useful collection
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: SAS~Skylla on April 05, 2018, 10:32:51 AM
Thank you Mike, much appreciated :D
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: Forager on April 05, 2018, 10:55:47 AM
SAS~Storebror, THANK YOU!

I have just decided to get back into the Battle of series and your gift has arrived at the perfect time.
Trying to find skins at the official site was, as you said, very difficult.

Again, thanks.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: Paulo Hirth on April 05, 2018, 11:07:28 AM
  20hours 32min download utorrent!!  That's a huge pack!! BIG TY!
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: Blaubaer on April 05, 2018, 02:59:13 PM
It is a pity that other (multiplayer) pilots can only see your cool skin if they have it installed as well. As it is now, maybe squads can benefit. Freelancers remain alone with their skins.

Regards, Michael
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: SAS~Gerax on April 05, 2018, 07:59:17 PM
Many thanks for all your work with this skinpack Mike!  :)

btw, do you thinks its a good idea to move the then large skin folder to a 'normal' HD
and so away from the SSD from where I run BoX with using symbolic link(s) ?
When does BoX load the skins? At startup? Or is it critical for performance to not have
the skins on SSD? I play SP only (of course  :P).
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: SAS~Storebror on April 05, 2018, 10:51:34 PM
I would definitely not recommend wasting precious SSD space with custom skins.
Never ever.
Not in IL-2 1946 and not in IL-2 Great Battles either.

Having the game itself on SSD is always a good idea as it fights all kind of lag and stutters, namely Spawn-Lag on IL-2 1946 and Lag all over the place on IL-2 Great Battles after the 3.001 update.
Skins however are a different thing.
Their files will only ever get accessed once in a game session (from then on, that texture is in RAM) and the files are large but compared to other files to be loaded they're just very few and they never come in a bunch.
Therefore parallel access to many files (IOPS = Input/Output operations per second) doesn't cound, seek time doesn't count, all that counts - if at all - is the sequential transfer rate, and in that regard good HDDs are not that much different from cheap SSDs and that's by far sufficient for the task.

As you have suggested correctly Gerhard, the key to success is to use Symbolic Links if you have your game on SSD.
Windows Users will have easy access to Symbolic Links using this tool: Link Shell Extension (http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html)

Now if your game is on SSD, you will want to create a separate Folder on HDD to hold your skins (name it whatever you want, I call it "D:\MyIL2GBFiles" for this time).
Then you go to the game's skin folder.
The default skin folder location for IL-2 Great Battles is:
C:\Program Files (x86)\1C Game Studios\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of <Stalingrad/Moscow/Kuban>\data\graphics\skins
If you have a Steam installation, the default location is:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of <Stalingrad/Moscow/Kuban>\data\graphics\skins
Go back one step and move the "skins" folder to your "D:\MyIL2GBFiles" folder.

Next open up two Explorer Windows.
In one of the windows, you navigate to the IL-2 Great Battles "data\graphics" folder.
In the other window, you navigate to the folder holding your new HDD skins folder, in this case it'2 "D:\MyIL2GBFiles".
Now right-click the "skins" folder inside there and drag it over to the other window, then release the right mouse button.
A menu will pop up from which you select "drop as"->"Symbolic Link".
This will get you a symbolically linked subfolder "skins", which points to "D:\MyIL2GBFiles\skins", inside your IL-2 Great Battles "data\graphics" folder.
Voilá, you're done.

Cheers!
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: Duggy on April 08, 2018, 02:58:42 PM
Mike I do hope none of these are from A&A, we are checking.
It is quite clear when downloaded that they are not to be uploaded elsewhere.

Duggy
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: SAS~Storebror on April 08, 2018, 10:00:33 PM
Hi Duggy,

Yes I've seen that note and did not include any skins which I got from A&A website in that pack for that very reason.

Cheers!
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: Duggy on April 09, 2018, 04:41:52 AM
Appreciated Mike  :)

Regards Duggy
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: jeanba on April 09, 2018, 05:38:22 AM
Quote from: Paulo Hirth on April 05, 2018, 11:07:28 AM
  20hours 32min download utorrent!!  That's a huge pack!! BIG TY!
Yes, 30 Gbytes of skins => 30 Gbytes of thnak you to storebror
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: MDS1 on April 11, 2018, 12:54:08 PM
Grateful thanks for this, a really great idea, and very useful for amateurs like me.

Big thumbs up to you buddy, for all your hard work and contributions :)
Kind Regards,

MDS1
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: TheOligopolist on July 31, 2018, 07:43:58 PM
Barely a single dud in this entire collection.
Really impressed with the quality of these textures. Thanks to you for this collection and thanks to everyone that made these skins.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack
Post by: Mission_bug on August 23, 2018, 12:55:12 PM
Superb selection of artwork there Mike, thank you very much for the links, really appreciated. 8)


Wishing you all the very best, Pete. ;D
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on September 05, 2018, 03:05:19 AM
Hi folks,

The starting post has been updated to Version 2 of our Skin Pack.
The new version completely replaces the old one.

Changes:

Torrent will follow as soon as it's ready.

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: cgagan on September 05, 2018, 05:17:22 AM
Many thanks (again) Mike,  8)
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on September 05, 2018, 05:59:04 AM
Torrent has been added to first post.

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: Sid on September 09, 2018, 05:23:56 AM
Thank you for this, very much appreciated!

Sid
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: Mission_bug on September 10, 2018, 10:35:26 AM
Thank you very much Mike for the updated links, really appreciated. 8)

With the earlier link I tried twice to download the whole package but it failed so I had to take each folder separately, with the new link the whole thing downloaded no problem. ;)


Wishing you all the very best, Pete. ;D
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: bomberkiller on September 11, 2018, 12:49:20 AM
Hello Mike,

thank you very much.  8)

(Skin "4.JG52 Bf109F2 #09 Winter" is damaged)

Best regards, Gerhard  :)
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on September 11, 2018, 04:04:18 AM
Yep, too bad.
It's a skin coming from the "Luftwaffe Simulated Air Combat (LSAC)" group and it's broken.
Unfortunately even the latest version of their skin pack includes the same broken skin.

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: spartan18a on October 21, 2018, 02:00:32 PM
Thanks a lot! :)
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: sakivano on December 27, 2018, 03:38:42 AM
Hello everyone. Yesterday I purchased IL2 Battle of Stalingrad/Moscow/Kuban and got amazed at que quality of the sim and graphics. Awesome. The problem is, I've just downloaded this pack of skins and I've unzipped them in "c:\Program files (86)\1C Game Studios\IL-2 Sturmovik Great Battles\data\graphics\skins". All the skins are now there, but when I launch the sim, I only see the original skins... Can anybody help me? I guess something is missing... In the official forum they say that once in game, I have to chose Custom instead of official, but there is no skin there to choose :(
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: sakivano on December 27, 2018, 06:08:57 AM
All right, I can make them work provided that the skin folder is in the game folder. If I follow the advice by SAS~Storebror (place the skin folder in another hard disk and drop it in the game folder as symbolic link) nothing appears.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on December 27, 2018, 09:11:04 AM
I guess you've mixed up symbolic links and shortcuts.

Shortcuts - the things you can create with Windows per default, just by dragging something with right mouse button and selecting "create shortcut here" on drop - won't work.
IL-2 doesn't see them and almost any other game won't see the contents behind such shortcuts either.

Symbolic Links are completely different.
They work on file system level and the game - IL-2 in this case - doesn't even know that the folder it's trying to access isn't a real folder but a symbolic link to another location.
Windows doesn't support the creation of Symbolic Links without special command line commands and/or specific tools.
The easiest free tool I've seen so far for symbolic link creation (and hard link creation for a similar effect) on Windows is Link Shell Extension (http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html).

Symbolic Links definitely work with the custom skins folder.
I'm using it myself that way.

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: sakivano on December 27, 2018, 10:03:54 AM
Oh, you are right, what I did was to create a shorcut. I`ll try the other way  :-|
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: sakivano on December 27, 2018, 10:53:14 AM
Oh, it works perfectly as you said. Thanks so much!
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 2 [updated 2018-09-04]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on December 27, 2018, 11:36:10 AM
You're welcome ;)

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on July 23, 2019, 08:48:48 AM
Version 3 of the Skinpack is available in first post.
It's pretty much up to date (last skin updates were about a week ago) and contains almost everything that's available on the net, minus the A&A Paintworks stuff which is still useless online due to the explicit request not to share their skins.

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: JonRedcorn on July 24, 2019, 11:09:12 AM
Did you put this together? Quite impressive, although I am extremely sour at the delayed p-51. First time I've been actually pissed a the il2 devs.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Ghost129er on July 24, 2019, 07:33:27 PM
Quote from: JonRedcorn on July 24, 2019, 11:09:12 AM
Did you put this together? Quite impressive, although I am extremely sour at the delayed p-51. First time I've been actually pissed a the il2 devs.

I've seen some Lagg/Yak skins painted like P51s. Kinda funny but then I realized I'd do the same until I can get me a P51. :'( 
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3
Post by: Mission_bug on July 25, 2019, 11:08:16 AM
Quote from: SAS~Storebror on July 23, 2019, 08:48:48 AM
Version 3 of the Skinpack is available in first post.
It's pretty much up to date (last skin updates were about a week ago) and contains almost everything that's available on the net, minus the A&A Paintworks stuff which is still useless online due to the explicit request not to share their skins.

]cheers[
Mike

Thank you very much Mike, really appreciated. ;D

The skin system for the GB series is difficult, most images take a age to load so you can see what is available and then it seems every skin has to have a individual link, maybe the artists need to know which are the most popular, who knows, putting everything into some kind of pack is always more preferable and easier for the user as we can delete anything that is not to our liking or needs.

Take care.


Wishing you all the very best, Pete. ;D
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on July 25, 2019, 11:10:36 AM
I think the biggest caveat of the IL-2 Great Battles custom skins is that they cannot be transferred to other clients automatically like they do in IL-2 1946.
This means that whenever a user wants to use a custom skin online, all others have to have that same skin file too in order to actually see the skin.
No way to get it transferred automatically and no way to download and install it after the game started.
That's a half-baked solution unfortunately, but I don't think the devs care.

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: JonRedcorn on July 26, 2019, 05:34:42 AM
Their reasoning is anti cheat, ala team dildos.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on July 26, 2019, 06:14:36 AM
At first glance, the only possibility to cheat with custom skins that would come up in my mind was transparent skins.
But that would be an easy thing to solve: Just set a certain threshold value for the average alpha value, e.g. if a skin's average transparency is more than 20% then there's something wrong with it.

The opposite way (high-visibility skins) might be tempting for squad members to see "who is who", but in that case, synching the skins across the net would actually make things better.
Because the way it is right now, squads can use high-vis skins online (if the server is set to allow custom skins at all that is), but only the squad members themselves will benefit from this, for all others the planes just carry their (camouflage) default skin.

In that sense, custom skin network sync is an anti-cheat mechanism in itself.

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: too-cool on August 30, 2019, 05:09:37 AM
H, Mike

I seem to be having a problem with this download, I can download but can't seem to open any of the files, I.m currently using winrar 5.71. Maybe I'm just not understanding how to download and install into BOS or BOB. TC
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on August 30, 2019, 05:44:04 AM
Maybe your downloads are simply corrupted?
Either try to re-download one of the files for testing, or use the Torrent (which is corruption proof in itself).

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3
Post by: Flying H on August 30, 2019, 01:34:18 PM
Or get 7zip, that program has solved all my unpacking issues!
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on August 30, 2019, 11:24:42 PM
Winrar 5.71 is supposed to work as well, considering that it's been what created the set ;)
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: dpeters95 on September 21, 2019, 02:15:30 PM
Thank you for this Mike!
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3
Post by: SAS~Bombsaway on October 12, 2019, 11:23:12 AM
Would anyone have any P-38 skins? :)
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3
Post by: Venator77 on October 21, 2019, 02:33:49 PM
Someone please help, can't open the rar files with 7zip.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3
Post by: Flying H on October 21, 2019, 03:19:16 PM
@Venator77, have you got the latest 7z? Have you set it to open .rar files in the settings menu of 7z?
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3
Post by: Venator77 on October 21, 2019, 05:44:52 PM
Quote from: Flying H on October 21, 2019, 03:19:16 PM
@Venator77, have you got the latest 7z? Have you set it to open .rar files in the settings menu of 7z?

Yes, but it still won't open
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on October 21, 2019, 11:15:00 PM
Just checked and of course 7zip does open the files.

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3
Post by: Venator77 on October 22, 2019, 05:51:29 AM
Yeah, but I can't. 7zip keeps saying can't open archive.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on October 22, 2019, 06:02:07 AM
Yes that's understood.
Try re-downloading the files.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3
Post by: Venator77 on October 22, 2019, 09:58:40 AM
Redownloaded the files again. Still can't open and/or extract the file.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3
Post by: Flying H on October 22, 2019, 10:00:50 AM
Is your 7z set to read only in the proprties for the inifile?
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on October 22, 2019, 10:14:54 AM
7zip extract these files without issues and without any special setting, period.
No idea what's wrong with your PC Venator, but judging by the number of things that work for anyone else but not for you, it might be time to do a "format C:".

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3
Post by: Venator77 on October 22, 2019, 10:49:33 AM
I'm gonna try winrar instead, perhaps 7zip thinks the files are corrupt or something, idk
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on October 22, 2019, 10:55:59 AM
Mind you, 7zip works for anyone else.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Ghost129er on October 22, 2019, 12:17:09 PM
Anything in the 7z log or so? You might have to resort to downloading via torrent then.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: redwolf on November 13, 2019, 08:03:04 AM
Just confirming I am getting the same problem as Venator77 with the OneDrive downloads. With both 7-zip and Winrar it is telling me there are errors in the zips - will have to try torrent.
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: tacheles07 on November 13, 2019, 11:59:45 PM
Same problem here - no luck extracting these files with 7z...  :(

tacheles07
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on November 14, 2019, 01:08:13 AM
Torrent is your friend, how often should we repeat this?

]cheers[
Mike
Title: Re: IL-2 Great Battles Skin Pack Version 3 [updated 2019-07-23]
Post by: SAS~Storebror on November 17, 2019, 10:36:58 PM
MediaFire link has been added to first post for your convenience.

]cheers[
Mike