As most of you know through my work with IL2-MAT Manager I'm commited to trying to provide you with historically correct aircraft markings. There are however certain things that I cannot achieve because of the way that the game handles such things. Below are examples of the sort of things that I'm referring to.
1. Aircraft only use a MAXIMUM of two MAT files to load national markings. This limitation causes sharing of such markings between fuselage and under-wing such as appears on RAF aircraft and, in the worst case the markings are shared between all three positions, fuselage, under-wing and upper-wing as is the case with all late-war Luftwaffe fighters such as the Bf-109G-14,Bf-109K,Fw-190D, Ta-152 and Me-262 etc.
2. Luftwaffe unit emblems don't appear on both sides of aircraft such as the Bf-109, Fw-190, Ju-87, Ju88, He-111 etc. but bizarely do on the Ju-52, Fw-200 and Gigant so I know it's possible.
I'm asking for your support in requesting that the above issues be fixed by providing three MAT files per aircraft grouping to enable loading of idependant national markings graphics in the three locations described earlier (if no marking was used in a particular location the the relevant MAT file could load the standard "Null.tga" graphic) and that an additional MAT file be used for all Luftwaffe aircraft to load the unit emblem on the starboard side of the aircraft in the same location as the port-side emblem graphic. Lastly I request that all Italian national markings MATs not only include additional under-wing MATs but that they mirror the markings correctly as they do on the Macchis.
If we could achieve this then it would be possible for me to provide you, in a future version of IL2-MAT Manager such things as :
1. Correct RAF under-wing roundels (not shared with fuselage).
2. Correct Luftwaffe balkenkreuze markings shemes for many alternative wartime periods and aircraft types.
3. Correct Italian national markings on all aircraft types especially Bf-109s and Stukas.
4. Many additional possibilities for correct markings on other nationalities for which IL2-MAT Manager uses "surrogate" nationalities ie. Italian ANR markings etc.
I'm making a final plea for your support in this as there's nothing more that I can do and I fear that we may never have the possibility to achieve these things with the IL2/FB/ACE/PF series nearing the end of development. So if you share my interest in correcting these errors please give your support below and spread the word.
Best regards
Leigh/Aces
PS. Mods any chance of making this a "Sticky" for a while please ?. Thanks
