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[pdittrich]

New version! More planes supported! More reticles!


From the readme:

pdittrich's somewhat better but nonhistorical nightfighter reticles.

This mod replaces the bright, large reticles in some nightfighters with night vision friendly, small, greenish reticles. (In fact, they are the same colour as your cockpit instruments.) Simply drop/extract it in your mods folder, which is MODS, #DBW, #UP# or something else respectively, depending on what version of IL-2 you are using.

Supported planes:

UK:
Mosquito Mk. XII/XIII, XVII, XIX
(sputnikshock, author of these, says their reticles are optimized for nightfighting by default. refer to the "notes" section below for advice on how to "toggle on/off" this mod for individual planes - in this case, all the NF-Mossies.)

US:
P-61 "Black Widow"
P-38M

GER:
Bf-110G4/NJ; G4/radar; H4/radar
He-219 "Uhu"
Me-262B1a/NJ
Go-229A3/NJ

NOTES:
Obviously, to be able to use these reticles, you need to have the according plane istalled on your system first. They may come in a modpack such as DBW or UP, or literally in single file. ( see what I did there?  )
Don't worry, if you don't have them, this mod will do no harm. Nothing at all, in fact. I hope. 
Also, if the plane was a single download, make sure this mod loads before the plane's folder itself.
If you don't like one of the reticles, but want to keep all the others, it is sufficient to disable (i.e., put an "-" in front) the according folder in 0_pdittrich_n8f8r_reticles_v2\3do\cockpit.

ATTENTION PLEASE:
Most P-38 use the same reticle, the one that came with the P-38J. It is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE that using this mod gives you green, night reticles in EACH AND EVERY P38. As of now, I don't know a way around this problem and will advise you to disable parts of this mod accordingly, if the need arises (see "Notes" section above).

Matter of fact, this could happen to any plane without me having a clue why. If so, too bad.

NEW in v2.0:
-more planes, obviously
-->I also checked out the Ar234 NF version, but I thought the periscope was good enough. No sense in fixing something that works fine.
-different reticles per country
-->german planes use the crosshair like thingy, as shown in the picture
-->american planes use a simple circle with a sufficiently small dot in the middle
-->british planes also have a dot in the middle, but instead of a circle, there is a rounded Y around it

NEW in v2.1
-even more planes
--> Andytothed's improved Bf110 with radar and other cool stuff


The planes can be obtained from the following packs/sources:
Bf110G4/NJ, He219, Me262, P38: UP/DBW1.71. You should be able to find this on yourself
Bf110G4;Bf110H4; both w/ radar: Andytothed's "somewhat improved" Zerstörers - I think that is what is called an "understatement".
Go229: Paulus @ the SAS(this is one of the 2 Go229 planes he has there)
P61: 101tfs @ the SAS
MossieNF:sputnikshock's "Microwave Mossies NF Pack", also @ the SAS.

If someone (especially for the first four planes) thinks he/she is not properly credited or I should stop using/"redistributing" his/her files, I will do so as soon as notified. I write this because the .mat files in this mod are about 90% identical to the original ones taken from said packs/planes. The .tga files are still about 40% the original at average. In the latter case, I mostly cut stuff away, so if someone is uncomfortable with this use of his file, I can also redo them from scratch, I just didn't do it for the moment.


Download v2.1 here.
PATCH from v2 to v2.1 is here.

No idea what to do with it? Problems? Suggestions? Think another plane needs this, too? I'll try to help as best as can.



Original post for reference on version 1 and posts:

As of recently, I have been starting to participate in the Nachtjagd with the nice new c&c objects. However, I could hardly see where I was flying, let alone make out a target, because of our shining bright daylight recticle on the ReVi. So I said to myself, there's got to be a way to make this better suited to dark nights. Turns out there is.

Before:
[img /img]
After:
[img /img]
Both pictures are from the Me262.

This "mod" replaces the bright, large recticles in some nightfighters with night vision friendly, small, greenish recticles. (In fact, they are the same colour as your cockpit instruments.) Simply drop/extract it in your mods folder, which is MODS, #DBW, #UP# or something else respectively, depending on what version of IL-2 you are using.

Supported planes:
Bf-110G4/NJ
He-219 "Uhu"
Me-262B1a/NJ
P-61

[blahblahblah]

I am not sure how to think of it - is it a mod? Because it's just some files placed strategically, not much to it.
Well, whatever it is, you can download it here.
No idea what to do with it? Problems? Suggestions? Think another plane needs this, too? I'll try to help as best as can.

Oh, btw, admins: If this is the wrong section, feel free to move whereever appropriate, as usual. (I would've put it in the Cockpit/ReSkins section, but it wouldn't let me.) Edit1: obviously moved. Thx crazyflak.

Code: (edit2) [Select]

For those of you wondering:
Author == pdittrich (yes that's me :D )
Historical == false (that means it is not)\\also see my next post.



Good hunting!
pdittrich

[max_thehitman]

This is an interesting look to things.
Is it real historical, or you invented it?
It looks pretty cool 

[LuseKofte]

This is a mod, it should go under modwork section. And yes it is really needed.
Max got some essential questions you need to clearyfy.
You did not spesify the author of this, not even if you did it 
We need to know, in order to keep it here.
The credits are the thing that start all wars in here.
Good job, we are most interested in this on all our nightfighters, historical or not, people can choose

[sputnikshock]

Good one. Thanks!

Another quick way to dim the reticles is to find the appropriate .mat file in the respective plane's cockpit folder, open it with a text editor and reduce the shininess value.

[SAS~Malone]

hmm, looks interesting. must say, i find the whole night-fighting thing a bit daunting, but something like this might help things along a bit.

[pdittrich]

This is an interesting look to things.
Is it real historical, or you invented it?
It looks pretty cool 

This is a mod, it should go under modwork section. And yes it is really needed.
Max got some essential questions you need to clearyfy.
You did not spesify the author of this, not even if you did it 
We need to know, in order to keep it here.
The credits are the thing that start all wars in here.
Good job, we are most interested in this on all our nightfighters, historical or not, people can choose

Oops. ??? Time for some explanations.

It's not historical, I don't even know that much about night fighting. All this is purely based on my imagination.
I did not specify an author because I thought it was obvious, I made this. Though I am suprised no one did something like it before, I mean, it is really simple.
About how I made it:
Many planes, fighters, bomber, really lots, use a file called Bf109F2Recticle.tga (something like that). Sometimes it is placed in a plane's cockpit folder (3do/Cockpit/plane's name/here it is) and the Recticle.mat (which, to my knowledge, always is there) simply calls for it. Like so:

Code: [Select]

[Layer0]
  TextureName Bf109F2Recticle.tgaSometimes, they just refer to it (probably not exactely, typing from memory here)

Code: [Select]

TextureName ..\..\Bf109F2\Bf109F2Recticle.tgaThe "new" recticle (humbly named pdnfRecticle.tga, pd=my initials, nf=night figthing) is a cropped verion of the big large one, basically just the middle part. Also, for not having it there mutliple times, it is placed in the superior folder (right word? I mean, "one folder above".) Like so:

Code: [Select]

TextureName ..\pdnfReticle.tgaAnd in every plane's folder in the Recticle.mat, the ColourScale property is appropriately changed to greenish. (As said, the value is taken from other night instruments.)

Obviously, to do this, I had to extract said files from their respective sfs files, up_cockpits02 and 03. Actually, I extracted the whole cockpits first, but not wanting to make a mod ~25-50MB large and just changing the recticle, I guesstimated no files were needed but the .mat and the .tga it calls for. And bingo, it worked. Though I don't know why and how, and this is also why the Ju88C6/NJ is not included - for some reason, it doesn't work this way with that plane. Or maybe I accidently RLE encoded the respective recticle.tga? Dunno, will investigate when I have time.

historical or not, people can choose

If I am not mistaken, you can even "turn it off/on", so to speak, by en/dis-abling folders in 3do/Cockpit, e.g.:

.../#DBW/0_pdittrich_nightfighter_recticles/3do/Cockpit/He-219Uhu 
//means pdnf ON for He219,
rename it to
.../#DBW/0_pdittrich_nightfighter_recticles/3do/Cockpit/-He-219Uhu
//means pdnf OFF for He219


Sorry for the slashes and backslashes going back and forth, this post was made on a Linux computer.

Cheers!
pdittrich

[pdittrich]

... we are most interested in this on all our nightfighters,...

wait, did I miss one?
...loading...
Oh, yeah, the Mozzies, anything else?
p.

[LuseKofte]

Well then I can only say thank you, I respect everyone making an effort to make this game better.

[LuseKofte]

hmm, looks interesting. must say, i find the whole night-fighting thing a bit daunting, but something like this might help things along a bit.

Nightfighting and bombing is the one thing IL2 is the best sim to do, it give a feeling of reality and to acomplish something. Taking off do the job and landing in one piece make you feel invinceable. The stable flightphysics that might be a fault in daytime make this doable for the average simpilot

[pdittrich]

v2.0 is out, I think now I got most of them - maybe I even managed proper style in the intro post... 

[sputnikshock]

Just for the record, the Mosquito NF.XII/XIII/XVII/XIX and NF.30, as well as the Ju 88G-6 have dimmed reticles optimized for nightfighting by default, so no need to change those, except for personal preference of reticle type of course.

[pdittrich]

Thanks sputnikshock, added to first post.
I didn't even know about the Ju88G6, imma d/l asap.

You and CY6 also deserve credit for being the ones that brought me to "the dark side"...