homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Battle of Britain + Battle of Britain II Here's what happened (Continued)

Folks,

MG:

Do not get those hopes up too high my friend. DeMille was also a North Carolinian it is true, but I neither agree with his politics nor do I have his great talent.

I have already hit a snag in making a movie of "Operation Vengeance" in that IL2 does not offer the precise markings for the Japanese planes that participated in the operation. There is no P38G modeled in the sim either. I find the markings for the 339th FS of the 347th FG are there. But again no P38G. OK I'll have to use the P38J. How many know the difference? Raise your hands. Right Dux the "J" falls precisely 3 letters later in the alphabet. I knew I could count on you to know.

The six zeros that made up Yamamoto's escort were from the 309th FS. The two Bettys of the 705th Bombardment Squadron were new and probably fall between the two versions modeled in the game. I am no modder friends and I have not even added mods to the sim from the blizzard of excellent stuff that is offered on the web. Oleg doesn't approve of that you know. Ignoring that, I might find what I need elsewhere if I decide to mod. Or I might spend most of what time I have in this veil of tears teaching myself how to do it.

Of course learning to mod ain't exactly like learning to tie your widdle shosies and making the changes would take quite some time all by itself even if I already knew how to do it. Granted I am quite familiar with graphics software like Photoshop and Illustrator so that might help. My interest is not in modding. It is in creating a movie and let me tell you, the learning curve for just that is rather steep if you expect anything worthwhile to come out of it. Provisions for changing paint schemes and markings have been made in IL2-46. All one has to do apparently is load one file for each plane you wish to mod into a graphics program and paint away. I'm not sure about pallets and what colors are permissible to use. I haven't found that in the documentation. I like the work already done in IL2 and I'd hate to try to change and ruin it with my mess.

The individual personal markings of the American planes will have to be left out unless I get stuck into modding them into IL2-46. As I indicated, I probably won't. For instance Lanphier's "Phoebe" or Barber's "Diablo", the nose art for which can be found online. There is in fact no provision for individual plane markings anyway that I have found so if I did that every plane of that type would have the same nose art. I'd better forget that then.

The action is fast in this scenario and I suppose these things are of far lesser importance than the action. Surprisingly few people can identify a WW2 aircraft even close enough to reach out and touch it. The "Fork-tailed Devil" is of course one of the most recognizable of the era. I'd guess that anyone interested in viewing such a movie might be expected to be far more knowledgeable than the average. Those like us might be disappointed to see the lack of authentic details. There is no map of Bougainville or Guadalcanal available in IL2 as far as I know either.

There are just not all that many people really interested in combat aviation I suppose. For example, we do not see lotsa dogfighting movies coming out of Hollywood today; do we? They figure there aren't enough of our butts to warm the seats in large numbers like for Avatar. They're right. In the past it was too expensive and difficult to find period aircraft to create the ariel action. Even though today that is unnecessary for any aircraft may be rather easily created using CGA few films including a dogfight that does not have at least 8 legs can be found. I can't find 'em. Maybe you can? I would love to see "The First and the Last" made into a movie or "Fly for your Life". How about "Full Circle"? Wouldn't you?

Until that fine day when Hollywood finally caters to our needs and our desires I will try to somehow do my bit in a small way... a very small way.