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JHS_Italy_revised airfields by Achim27619!

Rami

Rami

Administrator
Staff member
Good morning,

Achim has been generous enough over the last several months to revise the bitmaps, and in more than a few cases, completely revamp the airfields in his Italy package. This includes two new airfields in the Po River Valley, not too far away from Kelticheart.

This package now contains a total of thirty-one airfields, both on land and on points from the water. All airfields have been blended beautifully into the surrounding terrain, and certain specific airfields, such as Palermo on Sicily, have been beautifully reworked. There is also a correction in this package for the airfield at Decimomanu, which had part of its GSL layout missing in the previous version.

Just like in North Africa, there are instructions and a separate section on how to remove the older airfields, so that they do not interfere with the installation of new airfields.

Enjoy, and thank you very much, Achim!
 
Rami said:
Good morning,

Achim has been generous enough over the last several months to revise the bitmaps, and in more than a few cases, completely revamp the airfields in his Italy package. This includes two new airfields in the Po River Valley, not too far away from Kelticheart.

This package now contains a total of thirty-one airfields, both on land and on points from the water. All airfields have been blended beautifully into the surrounding terrain, and certain specific airfields, such as Palermo on Sicily, have been beautifully reworked. There is also a correction in this package for the airfield at Decimomanu, which had part of its GSL layout missing in the previous version.

Just like in North Africa, there are instructions and a separate section on how to remove the older airfields, so that they do not interfere with the installation of new airfields.

Enjoy, and thank you very much, Achim!
Click to expand...

HI RAMI,
A SILLY QUESTION : THERE IS A WAY TO USE THESE AIRPORTS/SCENERIES IN FS9 ?

:wavey::wavey::wavey::wavey:
 
Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!

THANK YOU, ACHIM!!!!

:applause: :jump: :applause:
​

Verona-Villafranca and Ghedi-Montichiari near Brescia were among the most important fascist Repubblica Sociale Italiana airbases during 1944-45.

I can finally send in retirement GZR's frame-hog Ghedi scenery!

Since you did already Treviso, Reggio Emilia, Ferrara and Piacenza, now we have all the necessary airbases to build the entire Italian campaign, from the Sept. 9th, 1943 armistice to the surrender of the remaining German forces on April 25th, 1945.

Lots of non-Italian historians consider the Italian Allied liberation campaign as over when Firenze and Tuscany was liberated at the end of 1943. The Italian front a secondary one.Nothing is further from the truth.

At that point Allied HQ decided to avoid the risk a 1943-44 winter campaign among the Appennini mountain chain, whose territory favoured greatly ambushes from Whermacht forces. They had learned it the hard way, through the bitter Montecassino siege and the guerilla-like desperately slow march North through the Italian boot, marked by the presence of countless WWII military burial grounds.

The Po Valley, therefore the entire North of Italy, remained in German and fascist hands for the entire 1944, up until the end of April 1945. Better known as the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, a German-controlled puppet state as Chinese Kuomintang was in Japanese hands, for the civilians living in this part of the country, the most populated part of Italy, these 16 months were a nightmare. With WWII still going on, a civilian war flared during those months, among those who embraced the Liberation cause and those who choose to stick to the old regime. Brother against brother, fathers against sons, partisans fighting the nazi-fascist troops which, in turn, took bloody revenges on the civilians. Whole villages and families were wiped out.

Those months were also the theatre of an intense Allied aerial campaign, designed to burn the ground in Northern Italy behind retreating German troops, in the hope to shorten WWII and force Hitler to surrender by Christmas of 1944. Southern Italy became also the base for intensifying the Allied air supremacy bombing campaign against Germany and we have already a great CFS2 Tuskegee Airmen campaign to cover part of that era.

This is where CFS2 comes in the picture, for all of us lovers of WWII aviation history. Thanks to great Achim, we now have the primary Luftwaffe-R.S.I. air bases in Northern Italy to start building the very last slice, so much overlooked, part of WWII aerial warfare history. We have all of the aircraft models involved and their correct repaints. Among the tactical air-to-ground missions, the defence missions and the strategic bombing missions, there's plenty of inspiration to create for both opponents involved.

Since my CFS2 field of expertise does not cover mission-campaign building skills, I'll gladly volunteer for gathering info and whatever material necessary to our campaign gurus in order to build a 1943-45 Italian aerial campaign/s. All of SOH Italian members are invited to join in.

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:
 
Reply...

mvg3d said:
HI RAMI,
A SILLY QUESTION : THERE IS A WAY TO USE THESE AIRPORTS/SCENERIES IN FS9 ?

:wavey::wavey::wavey::wavey:
Click to expand...

mvg3d,

I'm not sure, to be perfectly honest. However, I do know that Achim keeps the scenery assembler (.sca) files for his own reference, so perhaps you could send him a PM (achim27619) and ask.
 
cfs2 airfields in FS 9

Hi mvg3d,

honestly I don't know at all. I never had FS9 on my pc so I never built any airport for it. I know that FSSC can build airfields for FS2002 but again I never did it.

Does someone know who is building airports for FS9 and can provide a way of contacting that person???????? Every single souce file I created would be available for converting.

Sorry

Achim
 
Vielen Dank Achim!

I cannot wait to install them into the Tuskegee Airmen Campaigns.

But, I suspect that Rami may be ahead of me on this.:ernaehrung004:

Lee
 
Reply...

Devildog73 said:
Vielen Dank Achim!

I cannot wait to install them into the Tuskegee Airmen Campaigns.

But, I suspect that Rami may be ahead of me on this.:ernaehrung004:

Lee
Click to expand...

Lee,

Already done. Any mission that involved an actual changed airbase was altered accordingly. He also did a lot of revised bitmaps, these do not alter the layout of the base, but allow it to blend better into the surrounding terrain.
 
Rami said:
Lee,

Already done. Any mission that involved an actual changed airbase was altered accordingly. He also did a lot of revised bitmaps, these do not alter the layout of the base, but allow it to blend better into the surrounding terrain.
Click to expand...

Achim is truly amazing! :encouragement:
 
Plagued by wrong landclass

Rami said:
....He also did a lot of revised bitmaps, these do not alter the layout of the base, but allow it to blend better into the surrounding terrain.
Click to expand...

Well, this is one hell of an issue, where I doubt if anyone will be able to come up with a solution.

Italy has a dramatic change of scenery textures, travelling north to south, that I was never able to display correctly. I did countless cocktails with various sets of available textures, but the results were always poor. The issue is as follows:


  1. The North and the Po Valley are very well portrayed by SdC's ETO textures,
  2. the central portion of the land (from Florence to Naples) is something in between SdC's and Pactex "rest of the world" textures. Some ETO area stock terrain texture tiles do display Central Italy correctly but, when mixed with SdC's one, they screw up the North;
  3. South of the Mason-Dixon line (eheheheh....), Sicily and Sardinia come out well with Pactex desert textures, yet they are a bit too desert. Anyway, when combined with northern ETO textures, the result is poor once again. Desert patches or forested areas pop up where there shouldn't be any and vice-versa.:disturbed:

This is a landclass problem, not correctly distributed over the entire country. I don't see how it can be fixed.:dejection:

The only way I got around it is with two different CFS2 installs. One for the first part of the war, where MTO action was in Southern Italy only and the South, South-Eastern Med. Yet Italy, and Greece at that, both come out looking like Libya and it's not good.

Then an install for the 1943-45 theatre, where I get hardwood forests south of Rome! :biggrin-new:

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:
 
EZ Landclass 2

Stefano,

Your issue can be solved, no need for separate installs. If you can collect together 3 different texture sets (& they can be partial texture sets), you can use Russell Dirk's EZ Landclass to create new landclasses for each area. It's time consuming, but it can be done.

Load them into the sim, each as a separate scenery layer (Italy Central, Italy South). Put the appropriate texture set in the texture folder for each layer.

Just like I did with my reefs & atoll scenery layers, knowing the game engine loads any scenery layer terrain bitmap & only checks the defaults if it doesn't find one allows us to multiply the different bitmaps we can use.

Go fly, & using the FSUIPC link to EZ Landclass, slew around the map & check the edges, where one terrain set butts up against the other. If the game is being asked to blend two different bitmaps with the same ident, the hard edge will show up. Change one of the offending tiles to something else, recreate the bgl in EZ Landclass. Exit CFS 2, copy the new bgl to the correct location, load the sim 7 go fly to check results.

It's tedious, but it can be done - you just have to want to do it.:witless:
 
Kelti with a pail and shovel...

No matter how hard we try to stay in the workshop, we always get dragged into the garden.

All kidding aside. It would be a good project for someone.
 
Sorry for being the usual pest!

Achim,

I deeply regret it, but I have to report a problem with the Ramitelli location in your Italian scenery. I feel real bad because it seems that, after all you did for providing us with a decent Italian WWII airport scenery, I come up with some problem, thus showing poor gratitude for your volunteered efforts and hard work. :icon_redface:

Yesterday, as soon as I completed the installation and corrected my airbase.dat with the new entries (B.T.W.: I could not find entries for the two new Ghedi and Villafranca airports), I took a VFR flight to enjoy the scenery. I took off from Ghedi, flew over the Garda Lake and over Villafranca and then headed for Ramitelli.

I was very surprised when CFS2 map showed me that Ramitelli lays just South-West of Ancona. I stopped the flight, went back to the installation and checked my airbase.dat entry through MB. When I saw that it was not just a wrong airbase.dat entry, as zooming in the map of area showed me the actual bitmap of the airport lays near Ancona, while it should be hundred of miles south near Foggia instead, I felt sick. I deleted everything in the scenery database, re-installed Italy again, this time using an empty CFS2.gsl file containing only your scenery, but Ramitelli sat again in the wrong place.

As far as I knew, all of primary 15th USAAF bases in 1944-45 were located in the northern part of Puglia region, province of Foggia (the spur of the Italian boot). All of what I read about the Tuskegee squadrons indicated that they were based around Foggia, Ramitelli among them. But I did not trust my brain data banks, so this morning I did some research and this is what I found.

I used "Ramitelli" as a Wikipedia search key, Wiki came up with a page that talks about the "Foggia Airfield Complex" right here:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complesso_aeroportuale_di_Foggia

I was lucky enough it displays an original Allied map, attached below, where even all 15th USAAF fighter and bomber squadrons using the "Foggia Airfield Complex" are clearly indicated, including Ramitelli for the 332nd F.G. Wiki's page says that the exact number of airports and strips of the "Foggia Airfield Complex", built there first by the Regia Aeronautica and the Luftwaffe, expanded and enhanced by the Allies after their liberation, was never calculated exactly but about 30 is the current estimate.
Follows a list of the airports and the description for Ramitelli goes as follows:

"Located near Campomarino-Termoli. A temporary dirt strip, built at the beginning of 1944 and home of the 332nd FG, 15th USAAF, famous for being the first all-Black pilots USAAF fighter unit. Paved with Marsten steel matting with a parking dispersal area, it was used by the 332nd FG until the end of WWII. Used by the 523rd Air Service Group and the 949th Air Squadron Engineering after May, 1945, it was closed in October, 1945 and the airfield dismantled. Today traces of the main runway can still be detected from aerial pictures, the land being completely restored to farming."

I tried locating the traces of the main runway on the Google satellite picture of the area without success. I bet it would be possible, with the help of a more detailed WWII miltary map.

If I didn't do anything wrong with my installation, the problem with your Ramitelli location remains. Can it be fixed without a huge effort?.... Please? :adoration:

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:
 
Thanks!

UncleTgt said:
Stefano,

Your issue can be solved, no need for separate installs. If you can collect together 3 different texture sets (& they can be partial texture sets), you can use Russell Dirk's EZ Landclass to create new landclasses for each area. It's time consuming, but it can be done.

Load them into the sim, each as a separate scenery layer (Italy Central, Italy South). Put the appropriate texture set in the texture folder for each layer.

Just like I did with my reefs & atoll scenery layers, knowing the game engine loads any scenery layer terrain bitmap & only checks the defaults if it doesn't find one allows us to multiply the different bitmaps we can use.

Go fly, & using the FSUIPC link to EZ Landclass, slew around the map & check the edges, where one terrain set butts up against the other. If the game is being asked to blend two different bitmaps with the same ident, the hard edge will show up. Change one of the offending tiles to something else, recreate the bgl in EZ Landclass. Exit CFS 2, copy the new bgl to the correct location, load the sim 7 go fly to check results.

It's tedious, but it can be done - you just have to want to do it.:witless:
Click to expand...

Thank you for your suggestions UncleTgt!

I haven't got EZ Landclass, where can I find it?

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:
 
Reply...

Good morning,

There were a couple of airbase.dat entries missing from the package, so I included them here. I also updated the package...
 
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