How about a community skinpack??

[Kling]

How a about a skinpack that is made by the community?

As as understand it, persnoal skins are off on the server side because the create too much lag on the server.
Well, how about if ATAG released a skinpack that people can and should install on their own computer so its already in the system when people fly online? This way there should be no lag right since their would be no downloading of the skin while flying.
Rise of flight does this very well and there you can meet planes of various colors and it looks great and causes no lag.
And if people would chose a skin that is not in this official skinpack released by ATAG then noone wont see it except for the player using it just like it is now. It would be nice to see some different personal skins online that just the default ones.

There should be some rules however that the skins uploaded are as close to history as possible.

Is this possible??

Regards
Kling

[DUI]

Nice idea!

I have no knowledge about the technical effects of personal skins. But at least I know that this feature is enabled on the ACG server. With 100 pilots flying in the Storm of War campaign missions I never experienced any negative effects and just enjoyed the positive ones. It adds a lot to the immersion if your squadron members have the same, unique skin and it also is a tactical advantage if you are able to identify them faster.

[Osprey]

Yes Storm of War is skins on, and ACG have some beauties - all historical, largely made from photo's of the real thing. Here are some samples:

It doesn't quite work like you say though, we've experimented with caching and the effort is massive, it's not a case of just having the skin in your paintschemes directory. *I think* small pauses occur when you get a skin but we've all hung around with each other to pick up the skins from each other now. It's really fantastic to meet in the air and recognise the crew you are fighting against, the Hungarians in particular we can see with thier bright red white and green tails :D Even better is recognising a person by their squadron and staffel number :)

I would not be happy about silly skins appearing in the server though, please keep it historical.