Looking for PSP

grizzly50 said:
Hey, guys, for the record, and in addition to what Frosty has said, there are three PSP fields in CFS3 ETO Expansion 1.40, in the ACC_Airfields folder, in the ETO Expansion main game folder

1. ALG Bomber
2. ALG Fighter
3. ALG Transport

They only appear in Era 5, 1945. Two, A-2 and A-29, are listed in QC under France, and one, Y-29 is listed under Belgium.

I hope this helps.
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I had a look at these airfields in ETO1.5 and did not find the PSP mat appearing even if the airfield .xdp calls for SurfaceType="steel_mats" .
There are several SurfaceType= called for dependind of the airfield: steel_mats,tarmac,grass,dirt,concrete,planks. but the runway folder only holds 2 textures dirt an concrete so I guess the other SurfaceTypes are missing from the game unless they are listed elswere.
 
gosd said:
I had a look at these airfields in ETO1.5 and did not find the PSP mat appearing even if the airfield .xdp calls for SurfaceType="steel_mats" .
There are several SurfaceType= called for dependind of the airfield: steel_mats,tarmac,grass,dirt,concrete,planks. but the runway folder only holds 2 textures dirt an concrete so I guess the other SurfaceTypes are missing from the game unless they are listed elswere.
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For these airfields, the PSP was painted directly onto the ground texture. That's why the 'grey area' has such a 'blocky' appearance. Due to the scale of the ground texture the individual holes etc. cannot be seen. The runway definition file for the fighter ALG in the objects folder is called 'ACC_Runway1500_psp_Fighter' and does have 'steel_mats' as its surface entry. This last bit only controls aircraft reactions to the ground surface like tire squeaks and other effects. At the time, it was the best I could do.
All the info in this thread was never followed up on until now by creating a new PSP model with a fitting texture which is placed on the airfield (as described in the posts above). The result can be seen in the screenie thread. So there might be an update to those three ALG airfields with the new PSP model.

When I am done experimenting and satisfied with the result, I will probably upload a tutorial which explains how to create your own PSP runways etc. with the new texture and some example PSP gmax models. It's not all that difficult but I think it's good to make sure that the PSP is of the same scale overall. Right now, the texture covers an area of 6x6m (2x16 planks, slightly narrower - 0.375m instead of 0,381m - than the real-life thing) and the model (a plane) should be 1 cm above the ground.

BTW, I have replaced most of the painted PSP with the new PSP model on the fighter ALG. From the air there's actually hardly any difference besides a slight colour change, so the ALG airfields in v1.50 were not that bad after all. It's on the ground, when you look out of your cockpit, that you now really see that your on PSP. So it's expensive eyecandy (polys) for the UI and airfield lovers...
 
@ Joost

A big bump for this thread!

There's a new airfield in the works, RAF Bolt Head which used bar and rod matting.

Unfortunately I've lost all of the textures for this project, did anyone manage to keep theirs, Joost maybe?
 
Ah, a new airfield - I like!! :encouragement:

I do have some unfinished Square Mesh Tracking texture files that I could send over, if you want. You could use that to texture a runway plane in gmax. It shows a SMT surface of 10 rolls wide and 2 rolls long, laid in a half-brick pattern. A single roll of SMT was approx. 3.25m (10ft 8in) wide by 23m (75ft 6in) long according to Wikipedia but I am not sure I used those exact dimensions: This would make the texture 32.5 x 46m while CFS3 likes power-of-two textures (so the texture should show a square surface).
The notes I found with the files mention other dimensions than those on the Wiki page but I did not save the sources I got them from, so I can't consider them reliable anymore. They also say that the individual mesh squares on the texture are three times larger than they were in real life which I think is correct. IIRC at the time, I found it impossible to find a combination of the correct mesh scale, historical roll size and looks plus a decent ingame resolution etc. All in all, I was not happy with it and with my present knowledge I probably can produce something better. But you're free to play with it.

However, ready-to-go is a finished tutorial on creating the PSP surfaces you might have seen in some of my screenies or the P-47 development thread. It comes complete with the necessary texture files, gmax sample files and illustrated instructions to create PSP surfaces of any dimensions. You could use that as a placeholder until a better SMT texture file becomes available.

BTW, If you are referring to the airfield itself; I am sorry to say that I don't have anything on it. I think it was one of your projects, not one of mine.
 
I do have some unfinished Square Mesh Tracking texture files that I could send over, if you want.
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Yes please Joost! I've managed to get some Sommerfeld tracking down but no decent screenies as yet, I'm still tinkering with the Z position to stop the flickering.
 
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