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[WxTech]

[WxTech]

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...

[henkypenky]

Looking great WxTech! If something that's unavailable can be a must have, than this is it. Thanksfor all your effort.

[WxTech]

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

[WxTech]

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.

[PapaG39]

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

[WxTech]

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.

[Knochenlutscher]

Awesome what you create, keep it up the good work
Tobias

[WxTech]

Mod released, in ModWorx (at last!)

[Kopfdorfer]

Thanks a bunch!

Would make sense to me to add the download link to the first entry in this thread.

Kopfdorfer

[WxTech]

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...

[WxTech]

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.