The A2A Simulations Community

Daniel it is at Flightsim.com also, or you can pm me and I will send it to you.

I'll try the Sim-outhouse first, with my Gmail (since Hotmail is blocked). Then Flightsim.com if that lucks out better.

Is your worn-out cockpit repaint released under Creative Commons or some other similar license that allows other people to redistribute it (in case your own links die for example)?

EDIT: I'd recommend staying far away from Flightsim.com. That place is seriously infected with malware. As I said previously, I got some warnings that the domain was marked dangerous. I ignored them and now my antivirus doesn't even allow me to ignore it, because I stumbled on the very pages that are affected. "Exploit Phoenix Exploit Kit (type 2072)" with AVG (Grisoft anti-virus) gets reported on many, many pages within Flightsim.com domain, including weathered cockpit download. I seriously won't give my e-mail to that site.

Hence, I'll try Sim-outhouse only... probably with a faked e-mail. I may be paranoid but I really don't trust any download site with an e-mail I use. Reason is simple: they don't need my e-mail so asking for it is dubious alone. And even if they were honest people, hackers who target them, get all registration information from them whether they like it or not.

Red letters, must be really bad. I have not heard of anything from them and think that Nels would not let that happen. If there is malware at Flightsim.com he would know and take action. I will contact him and find out the facts.

As far as my textures go, yes anyone can upload them anywhere safe as long as credit is given and the original readme and textures are all that is uploaded and they remain freeware.

There's no widespread discussion on the net about malware on Flightsim.com so it leaves kinda mixed feelings. Some people over at Flightsim.com's forums have also noticed it:
http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthrea ... t-Detected (possibly malware contaminated link, use your own discretion) (It can be safe but I take no responsibility for opening it.)

The funny thing is, if I copypaste it to URL, I can read it. If I clicked the link on Google search to the very same thread on the forum, and clicking it got me blocked by AVG. I guess it's a link scanner feature to only interrupt links and redirects, and thus I get past it by doing it manually. Don't know how dangerous exploits they have but there's not many Opera browsers on some leaked stats.

I have no doubt Nels scans the distributable packs himself, and doesn't add malware to them himself either but the exploits can hide in iframes, banners, etc.
If you make contact with Nels you could refer him to this:
http://blog.trendmicro.com/now-exploiti ... rsion-2-5/

I don't really know if AVG scans any content from the page that is to be loaded or if it runs on blocklist basis (either up-to-date blocklist, or outdated one) but it gets blocked by AVG. If it's a known problem that has been dealt with, Nels might need to get into contact with Grisoft to get his site from the blacklist. Not all of his pages are on it, though. Only download pages (the part when it would ask to log-in) and forum. So it's the log-in part only, front page and list of packages aren't affected.

It's not the first time this has happened. In Avsim forum is a mention on 2002 being blocked by Lavasoft (and today, since August, it's been Grisoft and Avast). Back then, it was a malicious advertisement frame used for spying instead of advertising. (I know tracking cookies are everywhere but I've never had any antivirus alert pop up to block me from accessing site that has tracking cookies.)

__

EDIT1: And suddenly... it works again without blocking. Even from clicking Google links. I wonder what that was... maybe it was a malicious banner that changes over time ...or something else. Then again, it's just the blocking. There's still some fishy content.

For example this spam:
http:[BREAKING MY LINK]//www.flightsim.com/op-ed/download-free-malware-removal-software.php (Definitely fishy!)
Note: all links (even user profiles!) point to a place where SUPPOSEDLY you can get Malwarebytes (a legit anti-malware as far as I know) from a third-party server. With all likelyhood, the download is something completely different.

These spams are available to Google and they're hosted on Flightsim.com, under "op-ed" directory. From what I see Nels has a serious trouble with hackers. That site is swarming everything shady. It's not necessarily to be accessed through the main page (may be that it's only available through direct links or though Google) but there's still definite malware infestation.

EDIT2: Did a full scan on drive C: and found 10 trojan horses in my Java directory. Phoenix Exploit Kit (along with most other modern exploits) uses Java and PDF since browsers themselves are more secure than these plug-ins are... I can't verify for certain how long they've been on my hard drive and whether they came from Flightsim.com

I download regularly, there aren't viruses in any files I have downloaded. Its perfectly safe; remember, almost any website can have its downloads tampered with, especially since technology is getting better, and the programmers of these viruses get more creative, and skilled.

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© 2011 Peter J. Carlson, All Rights Reserved
"O! for a horse with wings!" -William Shakespeare

Like I say, the malware probably doesn't affect the files distributed, only the site itself. The website itself can have hidden code that attempt to use security exploits to make your browser act against it's owner. If the files are perfectly OK, but the site itself is compromised, then it's obviously difficult to download the files without interacting with the site itself... unless you have direct links to files themselves. And, alas, it's a registered only site, so there cannot be direct links for downloading.

The fact it, Flightsim.com hosts malware spam. Fact. What makes it more devious to the site's owner, it's not even apparent to the main page usability. It may be hidden code, and it can also be hidden only within "op-ed" directory which seems not to be linked to from the main site (i.e it might be perfectly safe for users of the actual site to never actually run into malware) . It's only there to get redirects from Google. This alternative "forum" with many "users" (=fakes) doesn't use the same layout as the Flightsim.com itself, nor the same users, and everything seems totally randomly generated and everything linked to malware that it's a perfectly independent hack that's merely running on Flightsim.com hardware without the owner knowing.

If in addition to malware being spammed on hacked webpages running within Flightsim.com domain the security exploit attempts to hack into users via advertisement frames on the actual pages, that's a possible separate issue. It's not clearly confirmed yet. Either way, the site has been semi-hijacked. The hackers probably let the main site go with little alterations as to disguise their presence and to operate the "op-ed" alternative "forum" for spamming.

It isn't Malware. You were just reading one of Peter's aircraft reviews...
(just kidding )

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1)i7 980x 4.35 ghz, gtx 470s SLI, Matrox th2go, Creative x-fi
2)i7 2600k, Gigabyte z68x, gtx 285s sli

Just downloaded. I love the "lived in feeling" more immersive for me.

Thank you kind sir!

Top notch work! I'd be interested in having that.

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All the best - Flyboy4612
Private pilot/tail-dragger endorsed

No I don't. So I guess I'm not welcome then?

Anyway I finally got cockpit pack. Had to trick myself in with 10minutemail since my Hotmail and Gmail are both blacklisted domains. Do they think they can keep spammers and hackers away by blocking common "anonymous" mails and leaving temporary email services (read: thousands of domains) unblocked? Hackers know better. All Sim-outhouse seems to be doing is blocking regular users from accessing the site features.

I'll post more when I've tried it.

EDIT: quote tags required quotation marks around the "user".

Ok. I installed them on my Princess Pat.

Unfortunately the image quality of loading lossy compressed DDS, colour correcting and editing then re-saving it to lossy DDS has degraded the picture quality. The skins have pretty bad blocking. I can seem them even in the daylight, but in night scenario they become very apparent. It's a shame as colour choices are very good and greasy fingerprints and all are in the right place. It's not like the stock cockpit has anything wrong in accuracy. Even the sickeningly yellowish paint is within limits colour used in B-17s. Many restored B-17s have been repainted that way. It looks pretty horrible even in real-world pictures... No colour in the analogue world can be strictly defined. For example German feldgrau could be anything from grayish green to grayish brown. Bluish hints too. Even the more clearly defined colours are subject to dispute and occasionally misunderstood systematically (like "green" colour (PC.10) in British WWI fighters which was in reality grown that could have looked greenish while newly applied). Ok, sidetracked enough, back to the topic.

There's a few mistakes for the night cockpit, too uniformly lighted gauges, high-luminousity stains. They're minor problems. Unfortunately blocking ruins it. This is why they say one should always use the paintkit and not edit the DDS files as they've already been compressed once and twice would make them look horrible. Unfortunately there's nothing we can do as paintkit only includes externals. This page explains how and why DXT encoding (used in DDS container) rapes colours:
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=DXT_date_rape_explained

That is, unless A2A has them and is willing to provide any lossless textures to be worked on. Even flat ones (merged layers) would be OK. PNG, BMP, PSD, anything but DDS. I'd at least want to attempt to make a weathered cockpit. As it's now, the choices for repainting are: edit and get blocked, or do everything totally from scratch.

Interesting that you are having these problems. I am a graphic artist and know all about texture degradation and I can assure you my originals are crisp with no such traits. I do all work on a color corrected Sony 60 inch monitor from five feet away and I am more picky than most, especially of my work. I know for a fact that these textures will look different on other guys setups and monitors. So many monitors with so many settings not to mention what graphic card they use and how that is set up and what driver version they use. No two will look the same.

I can send you the 32 bit files if you want but they will cause the cockpit textures to load a bit slow in FSX. Most developers I work with demand the that the version they sell should be in DXT5. The Connie Livery pack I did for Just Flight had to be DXT5 as the 32 bit really took it's toll in FSX because there were so many texture files to load. The planes I do for Golden Age Simulations are done in 32 bit and it seems to work for most. DXT5 is the best choice between texture loading, frame rates and fairly clean textures but it is a compromise.

I am glad the most of guys that have this so far (around 500 at last count) are very happy with it and because of that I hope to do a couple more in different color sets and styles.

PM me for the 32 bit textures but they might cause slower cockpit loading when switching views. By the way I fly my B-17 with my textures in DXT5 and they look great.

@Warbirds
I'm sure the originals look good since the official A2A skin looks good (only compressed once). As you took that as the basis for the repaint and made changes using 32 bit image editing, I have no doubt it looks perfect as long as it stays 32 bit. It's just that it cannot be exported (again) in 8-bit DXT5. I could try the 32 bit texture originals (PM sent). How do I export them so that they'll recognized by FSX? 32 bit DDS (such as 8.8.8.8 ARGB within DDS) or does FSX also accept 32 bit BMP as texture? I mainly stay inside the cockpit so I'm not sure if increased load times would bother me much unless I try.

Also, I might try to re-export it to 8 bit DXT5 after some application of grain/smoothing/smudge or some specialized deblocking filter even though that would have been better applied to a layer between original B-17 paint and any hand drawn alterations. The blocking of Boeing logo on the steering column looks odd, though. As it's not part of the original A2A paint, how can it be so hideously blocked considering it has been compressed only once...

The Cockpit is very great, very funny to fly with this pit.
Big Big Thank you for your phantastic Work.
Best Regards Daniel

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PIC of:
WOP: B17G/Accu-Sim - P47/Accu-Sim - Spitfire/Accu-Sim - P40/Accu-Sim - P51D/Accu-Sim
WOS: B377/Accu-Sim/COTS - PJ3/Accu-Sim

Thanks, glad you like it.