QC-only Pilots?

B

Bullethead

Guest
Is there a way to make a QC-only pilot? Somebody whose sole purpose in life is test-flying planes and muling my in-progress skins? Somebody who's immortal without having to make everybody immortal, who can fly any plane on either side, and who can just go fly without all the campaign stuff about his squadron's AI pilots going on in the background the whole time?
 
Just make a new pilot and call him Test Pilot. Before you fly QC or campaign you have to select the right one. That's all. I do it that way. I have a campaign pilot and a German Test Pilot as well as a British Test Pilot.
 
Gremlin_WoH said:
Just make a new pilot and call him Test Pilot. Before you fly QC or campaign you have to select the right one. That's all. I do it that way. I have a campaign pilot and a German Test Pilot as well as a British Test Pilot.
Click to expand...

I second that. Life is to hard aver the frontline, to throw your DiD-Pilot away, for a QC. Most of them are called "Flieger der Luftfahrtschule FFA-32" oder "John Doe" or "Seargant of Fighter Pilot School". I NEVER fly my campaign pilots in QC since I drilled one into zhe ground in an EIII in QC.

Regards
 
Make a pilot for QC specifically, make him active, then go to workshop and set pilot never dies?
 
I already use the pilot that can never die, for Normal Campaign Duty

Soooo I merely create a:

German Test Pilot

British Test Pilot

French Test Pilot
 
Yeah, I've been through a bunch of QC test pilots, as you all describe. However, this has several drawbacks, especially if you're making skins and are frequently checking them out in QC, then tweaking them outside the game, etc.

The drawbacks of doing QC-only pilots as it stands now are:
  1. Every time I want to make a QC test pilot, I have still go through the whole pilot creation thing as if he was a campaign pilot.
  2. Every time I use the QC test pilot, my QCs are always interrupted by the whole campaign engine running in the background telling me what's happening to the rest of his squadron.
  3. Because the standard QC test pilots are in a campaign squadron, they can only fly planes for 1 country. Thus, I have to create separate QC pilots for each nationality, which clutters up my dossier book.
  4. The "never dies" option appears to be a global setting for all pilots instead of applying to the 1 QC-only guy.
  5. If I set "never dies" for the QC-only guy, I know someday I'll forget to set it back for my campaign guys.
  6. If I leave the mortality setting for the campaign in place, then my QC-pilots die nearly every flight. So next time I want to check something on a skin, I have to go through the whole pilot creation process again.
What's killing all my QC-guys so fast is just looking at my skinning efforts. For instance, positioning ribs. This requires drawing some lines on the skin, taking a quick look in the game to see if they're in the right place, ending the flight, going back to the graphics editor and tweaking the lines, repeat. Over and over. It's a total pain having to create a new QC-pilot every iteration.

So what I'd like is a way to set up a pilot for QC that avoids all the above problems without having any effect on my campaign guys. Such a pilot must be immortal without making campaign pilots immortal, and should be free of all campaign connections. No campaign engine running in the background, and no restrictions on what planes he can fly in QC.

Alternatively, maybe some talented person here could volunteer to make me a separate skin viewer program. Aces High has/had an utility for this that you ran without running the game. It just showed the plane with the desired skin on it in a blank 3D space. You could not only rotate the view around, but also strafe it in all directions, move the control surfaces with sliders, make the prop disappear, etc. The view strafing was about the best feature, because it enabled out to work out along a wing, say, while looking straight at it, instead of always having to look at an angle from the cockpit.
 
Life's a Beach . . . Such Complications ! . . :toilet::crybaby::ernae:
 
Bullethead said:
Yeah, I've been through a bunch of QC test pilots, as you all describe. However, this has several drawbacks, especially if you're making skins and are frequently checking them out in QC, then tweaking them outside the game, etc.

The drawbacks of doing QC-only pilots as it stands now are:
  1. Every time I want to make a QC test pilot, I have still go through the whole pilot creation thing as if he was a campaign pilot.
  2. Every time I use the QC test pilot, my QCs are always interrupted by the whole campaign engine running in the background telling me what's happening to the rest of his squadron.
  3. Because the standard QC test pilots are in a campaign squadron, they can only fly planes for 1 country. Thus, I have to create separate QC pilots for each nationality, which clutters up my dossier book.
  4. The "never dies" option appears to be a global setting for all pilots instead of applying to the 1 QC-only guy.
  5. If I set "never dies" for the QC-only guy, I know someday I'll forget to set it back for my campaign guys.
  6. If I leave the mortality setting for the campaign in place, then my QC-pilots die nearly every flight. So next time I want to check something on a skin, I have to go through the whole pilot creation process again.
What's killing all my QC-guys so fast is just looking at my skinning efforts. For instance, positioning ribs. This requires drawing some lines on the skin, taking a quick look in the game to see if they're in the right place, ending the flight, going back to the graphics editor and tweaking the lines, repeat. Over and over. It's a total pain having to create a new QC-pilot every iteration.

So what I'd like is a way to set up a pilot for QC that avoids all the above problems without having any effect on my campaign guys. Such a pilot must be immortal without making campaign pilots immortal, and should be free of all campaign connections. No campaign engine running in the background, and no restrictions on what planes he can fly in QC.

Alternatively, maybe some talented person here could volunteer to make me a separate skin viewer program. Aces High has/had an utility for this that you ran without running the game. It just showed the plane with the desired skin on it in a blank 3D space. You could not only rotate the view around, but also strafe it in all directions, move the control surfaces with sliders, make the prop disappear, etc. The view strafing was about the best feature, because it enabled out to work out along a wing, say, while looking straight at it, instead of always having to look at an angle from the cockpit.
Click to expand...

Ahem, Bullet? why dont set the start of QC to "field"? So your bird is on the deck, and you can watch him in Freeflight easily. Or did I missed it somewhere?
 
Lt. F.P.S. Tester has served me well, dying countless deaths in the name of progress.
 
Don't use off manager?

Make cfs3.exe desktop shortcut. Properies, Target : "x:\OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\CFS3.EXE" -m3dview
 
Giant2111 said:
Ahem, Bullet? why dont set the start of QC to "field"? So your bird is on the deck, and you can watch him in Freeflight easily. Or did I missed it somewhere?
Click to expand...

When you're making a skin, you have to see the bottom of the plane. This is impossible on the ground because the external POV won't move under the plane. Thus, to see what you've done to the lower surfaces (including of the upper wing), you have to have the plane in the air so you can get the POV down low enough to look up at it.

When I hit END FLIGHT while in the air, the pilot often dies. As a result, I have to go through the whole process of making another pilot to take another look at my work. Repeat ad nauseum. It adds up to being a huge waste of time.

Perhaps you've never made a skin so I'll explain why this is such a pain. To make a good skin, you have to take the wing's ribs into account. Many of the 3D models have the upper surface ribs sculpted into them, so all you need on your skin up there is the rib tapes. But these have to be right over the 3D ribs on the model. Thus, you have to slap down some lines on the skin at your best guess of where the ribs are, then have a look in the game. You're going to be off by some number of pixels, so you make note of this and make the appropriate tweaks on the skin. Doing these tweaks takes less than a minute, but you have to repeat this process many times because the 3D ribs aren't all spaced the same, at least as to how the skin overlays the model.

Same thing on the bottom wing surface, which you really can't do until you've got the top lines down. Your goal is to make the ribs on the top and bottom line up exactly at the leading and trailing edges. This also requires many iterations of tweaking all or just a few of your lines and checking the results. And so on for things like fuselage panel lines, upper and lower stabilizer ribs, you name it. Having to start the checking process by making a new pilot most times is a total pain.

I spend more time making pilots than I do making skins. I suppose I'll have to break down and make all my pilots immortal, but I know I'll forget to turn that off someday and hose up my campaigns. It would be nice, therefore, if the Workshop mortality setting could be make specific to individual pilots instead of global.
 
Polovski said:
Don't use off manager?

Make cfs3.exe desktop shortcut. Properies, Target : "x:\OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\CFS3.EXE" -m3dview
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip, but unfortunately it doesn't work.

When I tried this, I got several dozen successive error messages saying that "ImguiX" couldn't load various fonts and .bmp files. Hit OK (the only option) and there's another one.

Once I finally got through all the error messages, all I got was a very small, tan rectangle on top of my desktop, a little left and above center, with nothing showing in my task bar. So I hit the shortcut again and it said "Another copy of CFS3 is already running". Then I checked Task Manager, and it showed nothing running. The only way to convince it otherwise, and also get rid of the little tan rectangle, was to reboot. Did this a couple of times.
 
gimpyguy said:
I already use the pilot that can never die, for Normal Campaign Duty

Soooo I merely create a:

German Test Pilot

British Test Pilot

French Test Pilot
Click to expand...

How about that - me too....out of desperation, frustration to the point of madder'n hell, cussin', wife complaining "close the door - I can't hear the TV"...
 
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