Cfs1 furball

[rince33]

I recently decided to fire up Cfs1, and after changing some of the skins and cockpit textures, I loaded the first mission of Waco Jaco's BoB hurricane experience campaign. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed this session and the overall atmosphere of Cfs1 in spite of the retro graphics or maybe because of it. Pj's skins for stock aircraft are a must have. I lightened the hurri and spit textures slightly.

Here is a video showcasing a mission from this campaign, and an old sim that can still be entertaining after all of these years. Please excuse my non existent combat skills.

The campaign documentation:

The BoB hurricane experience stockplanes; 64 Battle of Britain CFS1 missions for hurricane. Combines reworked missions from Alberto Paoleschi, James Elwood, Richard Steel, Ron Lewandowski and Terry Baldwin alongside reworked stock missions and new missions with up to 170 planes and following more or less historical happenings. All is stock except the Blenheim Mk IV whom you can download from the aircraft pages (not included - not necessarily). May not work on the slower system. By Waco Jaco.

I've only played this mission so far, but it looks promising, maybe worth a Cfs1 reinstall.

 

[33lima]

Can't view here, comes up as 'video unavailable - this video is private'.

 

[hairyspin]

Shome mistake, shurely?

I'm assuming the OP meant to post this in the CFS1 forum, so I'm moving the thread to there. Anyone interested can follow the link left in the CFS3 forum to find it meantime.

 

[rince33]

I posted it on the Cfs3 site intentionally so that cfs3 fans give it a try. The video should be public now, sorry about that.

 

[mongoose]

Interesting! I forgot what the CFS1 ground scenery was like. Seems quite good. The rest of course is very dated. I also recognize the chatter which is now incorporated into CFS3.

 

[rince33]

I recently flew the latest il2 clod blitz version 5 and I find myself enjoying this dated sim just as much. I think the retro graphics remind me that it is a fun game, unlike flying ultra real sims. I don't recall Cfs3 chatter being this vocal. Aircraft visibility is also much better here compared to Cfs2 and 3 and I don't have to use the tactical hud for enemy locating, a big plus. I'm currently working on some alternate cloud textures. I've also found a better do17 model.

 

[33lima]

Gosh, that looks a lot better than I remembered it! Apart from CFS's excellent rural terrain textures (the urban ones looked a bit US), I always preferred EAW. But this looks quite decent, the awful canopy framing being the worst - I suppose those were the days when a 3d cockpit was a thing of wonder. Thanks for posting and maybe let us know and see how you get on if you continue the campaign!

 

[rince33]

I have an Eaw install on my computer, hadn't played it in a while. I just tried a quick mission and I must say that I prefer Cfs1 even though the EAW cockpits look better and use mouselook. There is a Spitfire campaign as well by Waco Jacko which I'll try after the 'hurri' one. If I find any good missions I'll make a video and send you a message. Great work with your campaign mission reports.

 

[Ivan]

Hello rince33,

Nice video. I don't think I ever played that many of the missions stock or otherwise.
It still seems to me that the gunners on the bombers are much more lethal than they should be and intercepting fighters are not much of a threat. I was working on solutions to that a while back....

You do know of course that there are aeroplanes available for the game today that much nicer looking than those that came with the game.

- Ivan.

 

[rince33]

Hi Ivan and thank you.

It still seems to me that the gunners on the bombers are much more lethal than they should be

A lot of sims suffer from this problem in various degrees. In Cfs3 it was suggested that lowering the ratelimit in the xdp file would improve this, I don't see the same adjustment in cfs1 dp file though.

I prefer using the virtual cockpit. I downloaded a few user built RAF aircraft with great skins and models but terrible vc's, so I settled for stock models with Pj's skins with the exception of the bf110 and stuka which I don't intend to fly, I downloaded nice models of these.

 

[Ivan]

Hi rince33,

I believe that a lot of the problem of AI lethality can be addressed by reducing the range of the flex and turret guns on bombers.
It makes no sense that a fellow with a single MG on a flex mount and just a ring and bead sight can have a longer effective range than a fighter pilot with harmonized MG and a reflector gunsight. I worked out some numbers that I believe make sense but have only ever released one "Bomber" type aircraft and never get much feedback on combat performance.
The gunnery response time can also be increased by facing the gun position in a direction different from that of the most likely attack.

If you know of a very nice model that needs some repair work for a virtual cockpit, perhaps it can be done.
My own recent releases have the viewpoints adjusted and canopy frames added for an internal view but that is admittedly pretty dismissive. Is a virtual cockpit view an important aspect of a model?

- Ivan.

 

[rince33]

Hi Ivan

. I worked out some numbers that I believe make sense but have only ever released one "Bomber" type aircraft and never get much feedback on combat performance.

Which bomber model was that? Maybe I can use your values as a template for the others.

I downloaded Stephan Scholz's dornier17z2 because the stock version is terrible. His model is great but I don't like the bright textures and want to edit them but the '.af' textures are a problem. I downloaded texture convertor which works pretty well converting to bmp format, but converting back to '.af' format is a problem, the textures render as either monochrome or pixelated. I've tried editing with gimp and dxtbmp as well as paint.net with no success.

Your me109e4 is a great model and Ive downloaded this as well. I edited one of the textures using dxtbmp and gimp which worked out well because of the bmp format you used.

Richard Steele created a 30 mission bob 109 campaign that I will try after Wacko Jacko's spit and hurri campaigns so it would be great to use your 109 model with a nice virtual cockpit. I Have some limited experience with 3dmax and blender, I have mdlconvertor and gmax so I may have a crack at creating a vc for it.

This is the link to the bob missions, the first one was quite challenging, during one replay I had at least 4 German fighters on my six and had to crash land in a field, at least I survived that one and could move on in the campaign.

https://simviation.com/cfs1missions16.htm

I've never been a fan of 2d cockpits, The artwork is great but the lack of even rudimentary lighting effects on the textures when flying to, or away from the sun always discouraged me from using them , as well as the snap views and jagged frame edges.

 

[Ivan]

Hello rince33,

The one "Bomber" I have released was the Blohm & Voss BV 141B-0. It is a cool little asymmetrical aircraft.
Besides the fixed forward firing guns, there are two swivel guns at the back of the "Pod". It is one of the few aircraft that I actually "combat tested" a bit before release, but that was quite some time ago and the damage values for the systems may not quite fit my view of things today.

Stephan (Aleatorylamp) and I were both working on Dornier 17Z at about the same time. I knew mine was going to get a bit complicated and need SCASM for final assembly. I got a bit hung up when working on the flap / engine nacelle interaction and never actually finished before I got distracted.
Aleatorylamp and I have started very similar projects multiple times. Generally he finishes his and I get distracted by something else nice and shiny. Same thing happened with the P-3 Orion.

The one case where I actually finished a similar project we were both working on was the P-39 Airacobra. He finished his almost a year before I released mine. I was looking for certain flight performance and handling characteristics that I did not know how to tune and had to do a lot of reading and experimenting before I got something I was satisfied with. My belief is that some of the documentation on the Airacobra is simply wrong.

Glad you like the Me 109E-4. How do you do on the landings? I still have trouble there.
Although there is more of my work in what is there now than the original author's, I still can't claim that project as my own.
It was derived from a AFX by Richard Osborne. It seems like the vast majority of Messerschmitt 109s out there today are derived from his AFX. The incorrect dimensions and some strange characteristics are pretty obvious if you have worked with the AFX.

Regarding Textures on the Dornier 17Z: You COULD simply edit the MDL file with a hex editor and replace the occurrences of the "something.?af" with "SOMETHIN?.BMP". If you do this, just make sure that your new file names are identical in length to the original names or the code will be shifted and break something.
Aleatorylamp has a tendency to include his source with his project releases, so you can work from the PCX files if they are also in the package. The conversion to BMP is pretty easy.

If I remember right, with a Left-Right Texture, to get from PCX to BMP would be a flip of the Top Half Left to Right and then rotate the entire image 90 degrees clockwise.
For a Top-Bottom Texture, just flip the Bottom Half Left to Right.

Regarding Gun Positions and Ranges:
A Powered Turret with a good gunsight has an effective range about the same as typical Fighter armament: 500 Yards.
An Unpowered Turret or Swivel Gun has a range AT MOST of 300 Yards.
The arc of fire, viewing area, and position and comfort of the Gunner may reduce that range from 300 Yards down to about 150 Yards.
I will use the B-17G as an example.
From the front....
The gun in the Nose Cone (may be present in earlier models) only has range of 200 Yards.
The cheek guns have a range of 150 Yards.
The Chin Turret has a range of 300 Yards.
The Top Turret / Engineer has a range of 500 Yards. Default direction is facing aft.
The Radio Operator Gun has a range of 150 Yards. He really can't see much or track targets easily.
The Waist Gunners have a range of 200-250 Yards depending on whether the positions are staggered or whether they are constantly bumping into each other as in the early models.
The Ball Turret has a range of 500 Yards. Face it Forward by default.
The Tail Gunner has a range of 500 Yards.

Numbers are just my opinion and open to discussion.

With the Dornier 17Z, the aft part of the cockpit has a single MG sticking out each side and one out the back.
I would give the rear facing gun a 200 Yard range and the side guns only a 150 or 100 Yard range.
The big problem with their arrangement was that there was only ONE gunner moving about between the three positions unless another crew member took over one of the guns. The guns look impressive but could not fire at the same time at different targets. Their arcs of fire also were not so good, so although the gunner may be able to visually track a target, switching guns isn't going to track a target with fire.

Hope that makes sense.

- Ivan.

 

[rince33]

Hi Ivan

Thanks for the useful info!

I haven't gotten so far as landing a me109 yet, quite difficult I believe with that narrow undercarriage. I'm more of a Raf flier and always mean to fly the 109 in a campaign but never seem to get around to it.

I downloaded every Cfs1 me109 that I could find and I noticed that Richard Osborne's name pops up quite a bit in the read-mes.

HE didn't include pcx files so I'll do the hex conversion.

German bomber defence was inadequate due to those peashooters. Douglas Bader's favorite tactic was to take out the gunners first before shooting down the aircraft, he must have gotten pretty close to do this.


Thanks again.

 

[Ivan]

Hello rince33,

2D cockpits aren't that bad if you have the simulator configured to view your own aircraft from the cockpit. The snap views then give a more or less appropriate view if the model is done correctly. Of course as soon as you use the "W" key to show only the HUD, the rest of the model goes away too.

You might want to look at each downloaded 109 model using a tool such as DPED which can tell you the size of the model. The overall dimensions and errors there may tell you a lot about the origins of the model as will the shape of the wire frame. On one Messerschmitt 109F, I found that the new designer had not even bothered to edit the original squared wing tips from Osborne's 109E-Trop. All he did was to graft a set of rounded tips to the ends of the squared tips to replace the caps which meant that the wings were a couple feet too long.
Some people also created better flight models for the 109 than others. The first Me 109E Trop that I released a few years back was a lot easier to land because there were a few of the really nasty 109 features that were not reflected in the AIR file (The wheel track is a couple feet too wide). Since I was re-using the original textures, I did very minimal remapping so almost none of the textures is really "square": If you draw a circle in the texture file, it won't look like a circle on the aeroplane.

The German "Peashooter" LMG such as the MG 17 and MG 81Z in 7.92 caliber were no worse than the .303 cal Brownings used by most British fighters of the time. The British and German guns were near identical for performance. A few of the German bombers even carried a 20 MM or two as swivel or turret guns.
The other problem that shows up worse in bomber intercepts than in fighter versus fighter combat is that the relative hitpoints and gun power are skewed heavily in favor of the defense.
The weight of the ammunition for the guns also doesn't match what it was in reality but that just affects flight performance and performance of the stock aircraft is pretty far off anyway.

Perhaps I will go look at Aleatorylamp's Dornier 17Z. I don't know if I have ever looked at it since we were both in the development stage.

- Ivan.

 

[rince33]

For general free flight and testing aircraft I can see that using a good 2d panel may be acceptable but not for playing campaigns or missions where snap views don't cut it for tracking an enemy and immersion.
I'm not all that fussy about model dimensions as long as they are reasonably good. I do prefer a high quality skins with artistically rendered light and shadow like PJ's skins. I'm also not too fussy about whether a skin is totally historically correct, maybe also within reason. During missions and campaigns you don't really get close enough to spot fine details.

I suppose I'm more of a bob era enthusiast than a general flight enthusiast. I have a lot of the older fight sims, jet, ww1 and other theaters but my main interest has always been bob and I tend to focus on sims that showcase that era, like bob2wov for which I've created a lot of terrain mods, and others that feature the era like the cfs series. I'm always on the lookout for good missions and campaigns and cfs1 has some good ones as I have recently discovered and it still looks good in my opinion.

Two interesting documentaries that contain tests of browning damage effects, in the first one the footage begins at 11:12. https://youtu.be/BpTrygZfC-g in this one at 53:58 https://youtu.be/i7Zebpu2nS4

 

[aleatorylamp]

No-complications Texture converter

Hello Rince33,
Here´s a Texture to bitmap converter (and back), which is quite straight forward to use, with no complications, that I´ve used for years. It also caters for .R8, by the way.
Now you can convert the Dornier´s .xaf (or .R8, for that matter) to .bmp, rework the bitmap and
re-convert it to .xaf textures. You don´t even need to use the AFX and re-work the .PCX textures!
You only have to check you are in the right directories!
Have fun!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
P.S. Just in case: The bitmap format that this version of Texture Converter uses is 256x256x256, and it doesn´t cater for extended bitmaps.

 

[Ivan]

Hello rince33,

Regarding cockpit views, our objectives are quite different. I am really going for flight performance and handling.
Perhaps I also don't know how to use the V-cockpit views very well, but I find the snap views to be a quicker scan because I know the direction I was trying to look and can change it instantly rather than pan to another direction.

Regarding the two videos:
The first video seems to show a US .30 cal Medium MG which has a cyclic rate of about HALF what an aerial Browning .303 would have. If this is a US .30 cal, then it could be firing M2 Ball which is not really comparable to the heavier British bullets but goes quite a bit faster. The US .30 cal aerial ammunition was closer to the old standard of M1 ammunition with a similar weight bullet to the British .303 AND moving about 150 FPS faster.
Note also that the 20 mm hits were probably not with explosive shells. The holes would have been a LOT bigger with explosive shells. At that stage of the war, I don't believe the Germans had fielded the "Minengeschoss" which crammed as much explosive as possible in a very thin walled shell and had an even greater effect on a soft target like an aeroplane.

The second video is showing a "Ma Deuce" .50 cal BMG which is a LOT more powerful than the .303 Browning and has a longer barrel than the aerial .50 cal and sends bullets out about 100 FPS faster.

Guy Martin is quite an amusing character to watch.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Cannon Hits

This is more typical of what a 20 mm hit would do.

 

[rince33]

Hi aleatorylamp Thanks for this and the great model. The only thing that I would change is the cockpit cage frames, they appear to be slightly too narrow when compared to photographs(then again that could just be my eye), otherwise a nicely modelled cage and nose.

The texcon version that I downloaded was provided by Kai Wang-Erlandsen and it didn't work that well. I've already converted the texture files to dds and to bmp using the hex editor and dxtbmp and am almost done with the retexturing.

I used sections of an avHistory Cfs3 texture and after much resizing cutting and pasting and cloning this is the result so far. I won't create textures from scratch as there are so many good aircraft textures out there that are better than anything I could create. I'd rather edit and use them and give credit where it is due.

I will upload the textures and edited mdl file on this thread when it is complete. Thanks again!