Indeed, especially with Oleg stating that the formation dynamics are scalable and that planes further away from the player are simplified in terms of mesh AND flight model.

Maybe another big improvement that was sent to the back burner?

I'm sure access will be granted to the weathering layers eventually and i'm also sure that we'll be able to ' mod' the weathering templates very very soon after release!

Sounds like a good idea for online play given the size of the skins, I don't think modded weathering templates will effect online play if it has the same file name?

Oleg and Ilya know what amazing skinners IL2 has.

Well I'm sure they do, I'll agree with you on that one. But by taking alot of the guess work out of this it should allow for a better finished product. And besides, I was referring more towards the average user being able to make skins that they want, when they want them. Otherwise you have to go somewhere and make a skin request, and maybe it just doesn't turn out the way you want it. No offense to those who are skinners, but I would just rather do it myself instead of possibly getting "lost in translation" if you will. But I would expect the skinning community to stay alive. There are simply alot of users out there that just won't want to deal with making skins.

Another thing. With the insanely accurate and high detailed plane models, I would imagine that if the skinning process was the same as in previous versions of IL-2, than it would be a bit harder and alot more time consuming than it already can be. But of coarse, I'm no expert on this. ;)

Originally Posted by philip.ed
A bomber-formation of 21? I understand if the user can increase this, but that is just pathetic

21 bombers on the screen at the same time, that is amazing, things just keep getting better, counting the days

Yes, for those who have a passion for skinning, I'm positive that there will be options in the future to make the process more detailed. But like I've said, at least the average user will have the option to make their own skins now as well. :)

Exactly.

I was (actually for years now) waiting for official info on that aspect, but never found any word from the devs, so I don't consider this another "promised feature". If all planes on the map have the full flight, damage and AI models (with all the pros and cons of that approach) it's obvious that we won't get several hundred planes at once in a mission. A bit unfortunate that the Battle of Britain is the starting point for this new series, because some Eastern front scenarios wouldn't suffer much from such a restriction.

On the other hand it's nothing that raw CPU power won't fix on the long run.

I understood that part; hence me feeling that as a base-line it was still quite low (IMHO), and that I hoped the user could easily increase this ;)

They could simply leave them out of the online skin transfer and keep it offline only. After all, online problems only affect people playing online :-P

An unfortunate decision and I hope they reconsider it. Having the rivets/bump maps and the weathering layers available for skinners would open up completely new possibilities, especially if it was possible to increase the size over the default ones. I don't see what possible problem that could be for anyone.