Shadow meshes are always lower quality.

Flares are small, so a 10-sided shape will still look good, especially with smoothing applied.

certainly not 10 sided in real life ... but is enough for il2 bomb ... that model with all details some over 280 poly already ... close to limit ...


shadow for lod0 is lod01 but painted in black ...
shadow for lod01 is lod02 painted in black to ...
you cannot see shadow from falling bombs closely ... when it falls down .. its goes too fast ... only in slowMo you can watch more detailed and its really immersion killer

I certainly did not expect it to have that many tris with just ten sides.

With regards to the shadows, I obviously meant the shadows that can be seen while the bombs are attached and the plane is on the ground.

tail parh have many detail ...
double sided stabilizer ... and other small things

Ah, I see. Thanks for the extra info :)

you are welcome)

Originally bombs and other ordnance didn't use shadow models at all. They were introduced for ordnance by DT. For a small bombs shadows are definitely not necessary, as they hardly will be ever noticed by player.

Shadow model usually is built from LOD+1 or LOD+2 model. All cavities on the shadow model should be covered with polygons, all internal parts removed.
Shadow model doesn't require any texture, therefore, alpha channel can not be used on shadow models. The material name for it should start with word "shadow". For example, you may have 2 materials: "shadow1" for 1-sided shadow parts and "shadow2" for 2-sided parts. Obviously, the 2-sided shadow should be used only on 0-thickness parts. On ground object shadow models all polygons, which are parallel to the ground and facing towards it, should be removed (as they won't be ever visible).
Building models do not require shadow models. They are generated automatically from building LODs by export tools.

Air to air bombs used by the germans were actually standard AB250 used by some enthusiast pilots. It was not an especific weapon.

That's correct. The Japanese had special air to air bombs, but the Germans used standard bombs with a timed fuze, that were dropped from around 1000 m above a bomber formation. So no new 3D model would be necessary for the German bombs, only a change to the AI by Team Daidalos and maybe some new explosion effects.

Adding a 37mm explosion effect instead would be reasonable, I think. That way, no new effects would have be created.