My first AI

[col1948]

I was thinking the other day of my first AI aircraft.
Going back many years I was festinated by how the AI aircraft worked, how did they do that, I would love to do my own?

So one day I asked on a forum how do they do that, I would love it if we could do our own, then a guy answered and said you can do your own. After a few posts back and forth he shown me what to do, at first I thought this is complicated but I carried on.
My first aircraft was one at the time I had never seen as an AI, it was a Hercules C-130, so I did as this guy told me and I waited at the right time and it appeared and landed.
That was it I was hooked, so then I did more and was getting in to it, I then learned how to watch them taxi and takeoff and also follow, you will be laughing now because you all know this but at the time this was a major breakthrough for me.

Anyway moving on I have since got in to painting textures and most of mine are fictional, just something I like to do, I can get the real life textures anywhere so I started doing my own. Some realists don't like them but some do but that's their choice, I know next to nothing about military aircraft, let alone the paint schemes.
I will admit I have done a few that to me look OK but probably they are totally wrong, I probably have aircraft flying to places they never go as well, that is why I welcome it when someone has added the flight plans or put some up for download.

Col.

[Firebird]

Although I am not a painter one of the things I leaned from them was to get hold of the actual paint colours that they use. Once you have the BS or FS number then you need to convert that colour to an RGB number. Although what you need to do is reverse the process and compare your results against good sunny pics of your subject. You may need to adjust to take into consideration things like like colours fading due to weathering.
One of the most useful places to find these colours are the plastic modelling community. It was surprising what they get hold of for their pursuit for accuracy. Thank god for the IPMS.

[John Young]

This is a very good source of FS colours. If you click on the swatch you are interested in, it will open up to give further information, including the RGB values:

https://www.e-paint.co.uk/federal-stand ... -chart.asp

This is the equivalent for BS Colours:

https://www.e-paint.co.uk/BS-4800-colour-chart.asp

Beware of sampling from photographs in bright sunlight. Daylight has a predominantly blue cast. What I sometimes do is sample 4 or 5 photographs, record the RGB values of each sample and then average those values to compare against the FS or BS swatch. Fading/weathering is a further complication as Steve says, so it's always a matter of judgement.

John

[col1948]

Thank you Steve & John, I do actually have a few colour charts that I use from time to time when I want a particular colour, something a bit different.
John you may remember a while back I was trying to get a seaplane flying and it was you that helped me, you sent me the right parts I needed like the contact points, weight and balance plus the air file, after that it worked great, I have never forgot that.

These are some of my paints, like I said a lot are fictional but some are real world: https://imageshack.com/a/qg7l/1

Col.

[Weescotty]

I have a Macro enables XLS file I made when simmerspaintshop was still going.
It includes their slightly modded values (looks better in-game) and the www.e-paint.co.uk RGB values.
Includes in total -
FS10000
FS20000
FS30000
BS 381C
RAL

You can change the RGB values and click the Update button to change the swatch and see what the modified RGB values look like.
In a few cases there will only be values for one of simmerspaintshop or www.e-paint.co.uk

Will see if there would be a problem putting a XSLM file into the library.

[John Young]

That's really useful Kevin. I'm sure if you zip it it will be fine, but did you mean XLSX? I hope so.

John

[gsnde]

XLSM extension means it contains macros.

[John Young]

Thanks Kev. Just confirmed I can open such a file.

[Delboy99]

That looks like a really useful document. I would like a copy if that's possible.

Thanks

[Weescotty]

Lets see if will let me attach to here.
If it is found useful I will upload to the library.

Remember it has a macro to update the swatches so you will probably get a warning when opening it.
I wrote the macro it is 100% safe and accesses the XLSM file only.

[Firebird]

Quality stuff, Kev. Thanks for making this available to all.

[Delboy99]

Thanks Kev

This is going to be really useful.