VDU is back! For those that don't know, this is the handle our past Patch bringer goes by.

After a long hiatus from Fighter Squadron, I e-mailed VDU (The bringer of Patch enhancements from the past) in the hopes that something could be done with the awful texture banding we are getting with modern-day graphics cards. See, the problem stems from the fact that all of the recent graphics card offerings have axed 16-bit dithering support... This makes the textures in-game band instead of smoothly transition throughout the gradients.

VDU has been hard at work, and so far this problem is now fixed in the OpenGL32 renderer. He is still at work on fixing the similar problem for the D3d HAL T&L renderer. This one is a bit more complicated, and thus is taking longer. Also added to the mix, is support for 16:10 and 16:9 widescreen monitors. This makes Fighter Squadron look great at 1680x1050 on my 22 inch 16:10 flat screen monitor!

After these enhancements, I will ask if he wants to continue further with other bug fixes and features to the game. One can hope this will keep Fighter Squadron going for a good many year!

You can view screenshots in 1680x1050 here: http://www.openplanesim.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5270

Any progress on this, I would love to see smooth skies again.

Yes actually. We have OpenGL 32 fully working with 32 bit textures and wide screen resolutions. VDU is currently working on revamping the D3d engine to handle 32 bit textures properly. He applied a blanket 32 bit support mode for D3d but the performance hit was HUGE, thus the need for a revamp. Because of this, it's taking longer...

I assume this patch can be applied to your fs-ww1 installment.
If thats the case, we'll be in heaven.

Yes, it will be able to do just that.

Good luck!

I hope this will eventually fix the FSWW1 tendency for AI to try fighting in the vertical when they are too close to the ground. If this is true (and AI can be taught to generally not to zoom climb faster than their energy will allow when low to the deck)... well, it will be very exciting, won't it?

Ah, that's not going to be a part of this patch. But, I will ask if it can be done.

You have any screenshots? Would love to try it out, but would like to view first.

This new patch is not ready yet, but screen shots of the game itself as it is now can be had here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/fighter-squadron-world-war-one/images

Thanks for doing this. The banding had caused me to abandon playing this sim a while ago. It will be good to get back into it.