Rowan BoB Introduction

Overcoming the problem of pixel distortion.
Having studied the colour schemes involved in the real Battle for many years, I set about bringing the correct camouflage colours, codes and emblems into the sim, starting June 2001. I soon found that the Rowan team had been working with a somewhat limiting palette of in fact only 12 ranges (light to dark) of colours, and just to make life a lot harder, had other odd things happening on some parts of at least the two aircraft tackled by me so far, e.g. every other row of pixels on the port me109E wing contracting, with similar happenings elsewhere, stretching some files and not others. Angled views of the aircraft cause the combining of pixels rows, two adjacent same colour pixels become a visible blob of one colour.

The effect of all this on the pixels on skins is to cause blotching or patches of one or other colours that together were intended to make up the camouflage colour. To avoid this I set about testing many different hand created pixel patterns, the rule being to avoid two or more pixels coming together if the row between were to vanish. These were observed at different magnifications in photoshop. Those that passed that test were then flown until I hit upon the best possible patterns. The result is the minimal amount of blotching possible in Rowan. Application means pasting the pattern into a selection area, as opposed to painting out a visually correct colour then seeing (often alarmingly !) how it converts into 256 colour mode via the Rowan palette.

Structural considerations:-
In order to correct panel lines and other structural defects outside of the realm of altering the wireframe, I initially skinned the aircraft in a lettered/numbered alternate pixel grid. Flights were made taking many close up shots using the sims pause and mouse Move/zoom controls and paths drawn in photoshop showing the area of the skins that get mapped onto the aircraft. Accurate aircraft GA drawings were then distorted to fit, and panel lines and rivets then applied in a shadow/highlight manner for the former.

For those that have never tried skinning, all I shall say is that the work involved is tedious but highly addictive, seeing how your own artwork looks in flight. My work has seen thousands of 1 pixel changes being made to fix problems and overcome what the 256 conversion process ruins. For those that have experience of skinning, they will fully understand what I mean when I say words alone cannot describe the work and time involved. Thanks are due to CptFarrel for initial guidance on x8 converting, (also for giving us a decent complete set of aircraft, ), VonManstein for his clever batch conversion file unravelling all the x8's in one go, anyone else who may have answered the occasional posting of where do I find this or that, (still looking for the external prop skin !) and not forgetting the team at Rowan for their creation and willingness to allow the Rowan fraternity to continue and enhance their flight sim. Lastly thank you to fellow skinners for all the hard work done so far, and to come, in improving this lovely flight sim and last but not least to Gareth for invaluable help in the use of DHTML and tables.