Jason Williams and the Combat Pilot team are back with a new developer diary focusing in on a few different items. Whatever you choose to call them, be it external textures, skins or liveries, are part of the fabric of most flight sims and we learn a bit about how Combat Pilot is going about it. There’s also some new images of the IJN Hiryū and there’s a discussion and video about refraction. Let’s check it all out!
The Zero gets a splash of colour and textures are on the menu
If you’re a fan of a sim like IL-2 Sturmovik, Rise of Flight, DCS World, Microsoft Flight Simulator, X-Plane or many other modern sims, you’ll know that liveries help make the game world seem plausible and fun. Its not just the liveries that ship with the sim but the ability to add more to the mix that helps keep things fresh.
Jason explains in his latest developer diary that they are thinking about this in the long term for Combat Pilot. The old school method involves painting the textures on a 2D file, usually in Photoshop (or Gimp or Paint Shop Pro). Modern game development has moved to painting in 3D using Substance Painter. Jason reports that they intend to support both methods in Combat Pilot and that they will make sure that an object viewer will make it easy to see and export images of your work.
We also plan to eventually have a very nice object viewer in the UI so you can easily see and export images of your handiwork. Painting your aircraft is an important component of the combat flight-sim hobby so we plan to fully support it.
Good foundational work here combined with long term thinking on how Combat Pilot hopes to evolve over time.
Jason also reports that they are working on new textures for the A6M and F4F with the A6M getting this splash of green on this version and a grey version, more accurate for Midway, also underway.
Refraction?
Some of you are already going to know what this next segment is about. If you were on the old Ubisoft forums in the early 2000s, you may remember a lengthy debate on the subject of refraction in armoured glass. This was almost entirely specific to the Fw190, with its thick armoured glass forward canopy, and just how much distortion the glass provided the pilot with a slightly better view over the nose. As it turns out, its a relatively significant change to the visual.
Carlos from the Combat Pilot team has started doing some research to see if its something that is possible in Combat Pilot. The UE5 and modern ray tracing and shader technologies make this kind of thing possible. While the team report that a Fw190 isn’t something they intend to do any time soon, they are thinking long term. And the Fw190 is not the only aircraft with thick armoured glass. Check out the explanation in this video.
Hiryū makes progress
And for the final big piece, we get an update on the IJN Hiryū. The carrier is beginning to get some textures applied to it and there are a ton of details in place on the ship. Work on the flight deck is the next part of the effort.
Hiryū was famously attacked by dive bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown. It was struck by four 1,000lb bombs causing significant damage to the ship and starting fires from stem to stern. The carrier ultimately sank the next day.
Read about all of these items and more over on the Combat Pilot forums!
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