All repaints I made using OCR - with original UNSAVED text elements.

[mage]

I have noticed that various text elements created by the one-click repaint have not survived the "save" operation. Consequently I have gathered the DDS files together and have created a bunch of repaints that still have these text elements in them. These are what I was intending to create and are much better than what ended up being saved.

e.g. If you look at PH-DON on the OCR link for that repaint, and the one in the collection linked here, you can see that the registration has no white panel beneath it on the link, but the one I saved at the time it was made looks much better. It is things like this and the text elements of repaints such as the Swiss Flying Club repaint just below this posting (which has all the text on my version but not on the OCR link I provide) that will be improved.

If you downloaded any of those repaints at face value, you will almost certainly have a better version in this file of collected liveries.

If I've missed anything out, let me know here and I will upload it for you.

If you use BMP format as I do, you can use my DDS2BMP converter that is up on Flightsim.com - just look for it either using that title, or by author name - Matthew Ministry - which isn't a real name, but there you go. In future I think I'll just post the DDS to avoid this problem that providing the link incurs.

[charlymorton]

I'm checking to see why the registration background element is not added via the share link. As far as I can see, the information is saved.

[mage]

Does the appearance of PH-DON indicate that you figured what was happening? That version you posted the link to looks much better now!

[charlymorton]

Yes, for some reason I had explicitly coded the text background element to not be drawn as part of reloading the paint through the share link. I don't know why I did this. I also noticed that some the checkboxes were not saved when saving a paint. I have fixed some of them, but not sure if all have been fixed yet.

[mage]

 

Great that you identified the problem and got a fix organized that quickly.

I was hoping that my text elements that I added to (for example) HB-CQM (Swiss Flying Club) would all reappear, but it seems that they are still gone. I'd added the text "SWISS Flying Club" on the fuselage side and "SWISS" on the engine area (together with a tiny Swiss flag instead of the airine logo) but those were apparently not saved. It might be that none of the paints done since I started are as I'd originally designed them. It was fortunate that I have saved all the files and could repost them as originally designed in here.

It might make sense to delete all my posts except for the one with the file, to save anyone from going to an incomplete repaint, although I notice that text for HB-CQZ has survived okay (just the word "Skylane").

The odd thing about HB-CQM is that the tail red band is partly made from text characters (the "full block" character) and has survived, just the readable text has gone. Perhaps it had too many text elements?

[charlymorton]

That's a great hack, using the text element to add extra blocks. I hadn't even thought of that way to use them.

Although there isn't a limit as such to the number of elements you can add to a paint, there is a limit to how much information is saved. I have increased this limit, so that you should comfortably be able to save around 30 elements per paint.

This is just a quick-fix to be honest, and I should probably have a rethink on how the repaint information is saved to make it truly unlimited.

One thing to note as well, if you have any paints that you forgot to download and not all information has been saved, I would be able to retrieve the bmp/dds files for you.

Edit: Also, I think I've just fixed the issue with the black boxes when resizing logos.

[mage]

When I make these, I immediately download the texture as DDS (I'm an FS9 user but the setting to choose BMP format doesn't "stick" when selected - but that's okay since I use the DDS2BMP converter to get them into BMP). It does at least mean the ones I uploaded are in the best format for detail.

Saving elements is difficult space-wise, because they can vary in number quite a lot. The Swiss Flying Club had about ten or twelve if the blocks to create the tail band are included (it was a bit of a brainwave to think to look for a block character, and luckily there was one). Storing the random amounts of "elements" would be wasteful in a fixed format and to make best use of space on disk would be in a separate variable length data array - tied to the main one with some index value. It depends how your database is set up and the software that uses and creates it. At least then something with 12 elements has 12 associated element records and something with just 1 takes up a lot less space. So, a variable number of associated elements in a related table and perhaps even variable length records in that table (at least when saved). The problem with variable length records I guess is when a user then adds or removes characters from it. Using a symbol or flag would probably just be an index out to the relevant graphical element and take up even less space.

While I'm here, I may already have mentioned that the color picker no longer remembers any pallette colors that are set up, at least on my system at home (I'm not there presently). It makes color matching a bit hit & miss.

A possible future enhancement would be the ability to rotate elements as you can with registrations, giving us angled text on fins, as well as angled color bands when using those block characters to create areas of color. But then aliasing needs to be done to avoid jagged edges on slopes... I'm not sure how a line of color blocks would deal with a slope, it probably moves in steps and could never be made to work properly. But it would at least work with text.

Sadly, this very capable online facility is not getting the attention of people, I guess because there are only a few simmers interested in bespoke AI (as compared to total FS users), and the vast majority of those people are only interested in the airlines. Of the few people left, only a few actually have any real commitment to making stuff using it. I have graphics software and I'm getting used to it and making more paints for myself (and sharing a few), but for people without graphics programs or not wanting to get into that side too much, this would be a very useful facility to have.

As it is, now that I'm using a graphics program in my limited way, my main use for OCR is when I'm mobile and fancy having a go at making another light GA without having a graphics program around.

[charlymorton]

Made this topic sticky, so your repaint collection won't get lost in this board. 

I'll see if I can get it to remember the selected format. If you have selected FS9 when you click save, the downloadable file should be bmp, however it's not ideal that it reverts back to the default setting every time you click Update.

Having the elements stored in a separate table is the way to go, just have to ensure backward compatibility.

With the colour picker, do you mean the option to add custom colours? This works ok in Firefox for me but not Chrome or any other Chromium-based browsers, so I'm not sure I can fix it.

As for rotation and similar to the additional text elements, that's something I'd like to add soon.

GA is definitely overlooked by most and I think putting the effort in to make something for others is something that very few people do.

[mage]

Thank you, Charly. It also saves anyone interested in these GA paints from a lot of clicking, I guess.

I'm fine with saving in DDS since I wrote a converter (also using Imagemagick) to flip-resize-save as a variety of BMP formats from a DDS file (and also preserve alpha channels from the DDS, if any). It then at least means that a higher-resolution format is also useful to me, provided I convert it first (takes seconds).

"just have to ensure backward compatibility" - well, either that or port the data into a newer format by reading the element data out into a new table as well as creating a new "core record" for the standard components and indexing them to each other. But then I don't know the database software being used or the formats involved, so it's easy for me to sound confident!

With the color picker, I meant adding colors to the pallette so that they can be recalled for other parts of the livery that need the same color. I work around it by copying the RGB values and posting them into the new area that needs that color (normally fuselage stripes etc, and the registration may often be a livery color as well). It used to work for me (in Firefox) but suddenly stopped a few months ago. It may have been a Firefox "update", of course. It often is.

Rotation of elements is a "nice to have" but there are plenty of aircraft out there to be done, so it's not a restriction.

"I think putting the effort in to make something for others is something that very few people do"

The nature of hobbies probably hasn't changed that much, but there's a cultural change to get something for nothing that eats away at the heart of what hobbies traditionally were. The nature of people has changed. Partly perhaps because the internet is now seen as the source of a load of free stuff that comes into existence by magic. In the past 20 years, the company I used to run has had a progressively harder job finding people worth hiring, people who'll put the work in, think for themselves, and know when something is only second-best. This is certainly true for the UK, at least. Hopefully other countries are making a better job of turning out "citizens".

In fact that's what hobbies are increasing short of, citizens.

[charlymorton]

It took a bit less work than expected so here is a nice addition to the text elements: https://oneclickhangar.com/oneclickrepaint/share.php?id=QB8ppXWg3zDgXV6PqMZw

It's not tested completely so there may be bugs in the code.

It's possible to shear text both horizontally and vertically, and to rotate text. Shearing is applied before rotation.

I think the colour picker this is just a functionality that as been removed in a browser update. Even though I can add to the palette, it doesn't remember it in Firefox. I use Chrome as my main browser and there the functionality to add to palette has been removed entirely.