Support for 24-bit custom skins?

[Spudkopf]

I’ve been AWOL from the forum for some time only dropping in on and off to check on the progress of TD’s superb patches, only recently getting back into the enjoyment that is IL2-1946. As such I missed out on some pure gems that have been raised by members of this forum.

Always looking for ways to enhance this enjoyment I recently pulled some defaults skins out of the game to use as base layers to create some personal skins, I was somewhat bemused (surprised in fact) to learn that the defaults skins were actually of RGB quality and not indexed, and as I have mentioned in another posting I've since been frustrated in my attempts to try and then use modified efforts due to major loss of quality that indexing delivers.

I was just about to ask some questions to TD in regards to the restriction of indexed colours for users skins when thought I take another look at former post to see if anyone else had raised the issue when I found Herra Tohtori posting that put the whole issue up far more skilfully and technically than I could.

Elation turned to despair to learn that the questions (a real revelation in my mind) asked in the above post seem to have gone by unanswered via any official response and worse still that the notion was not championed by any other members here (not even a casual +1), as it would seem on the surface to be a fairly reasonable and achievable request from my non-expert and uninformed standpoint. In my humble opinion these questions were then and still are very pertinent in regards to this excellent sim’s ongoing future.

Just like native wide screen support, if higher bit value images could be implemented then this would greatly enhance the ongoing enjoyment of the sim and may even revitalise the non-hard core custom junkies of the community. Personally I'd even settle for 16bit .BMPs (which seems to have very little loss effect on the altered default skins by the way) .

So please excuse me for dredging up this topic back up from some 10 months ago, but I for one wish to bring this post back to the forefront of the discussion and hope that it may receive more attention this time around.

[Mysticpuma]

Well worth a +1 from me

[Treetop64]

A very well-expressed post, Herra Tohtori.

[Ace1staller]

Yes we need support for those skins, or other wise, the skins we made in 24 bits. Then we convert it to 256 bits will make our skins look terrible

My guess is the skins were limited solely for dial-up multi-player. The problem with that is to this day most servers don't allow skin downloads because of perceived download lag (or, they just don't like bozo skins - sorry, bozo). I've never really experienced it and personally would actually like to see more skins.

[Treetop64]

I would love to see higher resolution skins in a higher color depth. And high-res bump mapping.

Though I'm afraid that, even though it could potentially make the planes themselves look even more fabulous, it would contrast so much from the look of the rest of the game that it would be a distraction, actually. One would have to significantly upgrade the fundamental rendering of the entire environment to balance things out.

[Mysticpuma]

It's a risk I'd be willing to take

[Spudkopf]

Originally Posted by Treetop64

I would love to see higher resolution skins in a higher color depth. And high-res bump mapping.

Though I'm afraid that, even though it could potentially make the planes themselves look even more fabulous, it would contrast so much from the look of the rest of the game that it would be a distraction, actually. One would have to significantly upgrade the fundamental rendering of the entire environment to balance things out.

The thing is I'm not asking for a higher resolution, I can still live with 1024 x 1024 (just) but what I am asking for is to have the same colour depth for the user skins as we already have assigned for the default skins, so if anything the look would be more uniform and less of a distraction (for my eyes anyway).

As said in my original post, I'd even settle for 16bit, anything to ditch this reliance on 8bit index colours for user skins, which the more I think about just plain sucks.

As far as resolution goes I think the only resolution upgrading required is to progressively ditch anything that is still using 512 x 512 or at the very least any aeroplane that still is.