A very bad learning tool.....

[TheGrunch]

Server admins typically set these settings in the server's server.cmd which is loaded once when the server is started, or using FBDj (which initialises these settings when it connects to the server). These settings are the same for all players on the server.

Offline, you can create a file which Il-2 will load periodically to refresh these settings (offline they are reset when a mission is loaded). Most people call it something like icons.rcu. This means that it is not in the control of the mission builder, rather the player can alter these settings on their own machine if they wish.

The contents should be your chosen icon settings, followed by a timeout which loads the file again, e.g.:

mp_dotrange FRIENDLY TYPE .1 ID 2 RANGE 00.1 COLOR .01 DOT 10
mp_dotrange FOE TYPE .01 ID .01 RANGE .01 COLOR 0000.01 DOT 10
timeout 60000 file icons.rcu

The timeout is in milliseconds so the above represents 60 seconds.

The DOT setting determines the distance at which the dot model of an aircraft first appears. The ALTCOLOR and ALTSYMBOL are relatively new, I believe and allow aircraft to be highlighted by a symbol without providing extra information. The others are all fairly self explanatory. Looks like there's also a NAME setting which probably shows the player's callsign.

The above settings would make the dots appear at 10km. For friendlies the type (aircraft model) will appear at 100m, the markings (e.g. RS -A) at 2km, the range at 100m and the color (red/blue) at 10m. For enemies, the type will appear at 10m, the ID at 10m, the color at 10m. 0.005 or 5m is I think the lowest setting the game will recognise and basically means that the defined info doesn't appear, for all intents and purposes. 25km is the maximum setting for any value.

Once you've chosen your settings and created a file to load, open the game's existing rcu file and paste the following at the end:

@file icons.rcu

Source: Airwarfare

The single player defaults are as follows:

mp_dotrange DOT 14.0 COLOR 6.0 TYPE 6.0 ID 6.0 RANGE 6.0 ALTICON 0.1 ALTCOLOR None ALTSYMBOL +
mp_dotrange FRIENDLY NAME 6.0
mp_dotrange FOE NAME 0.005