Na-ah, They’re ‘Einkels.

Posted on 2nd April 20192nd April 2019 by Ian P

Silly-billy Author’s note: Yes, this page originally said that the He111H-3 was made by Aeroplane Heaven when yes, it’s Virtavia. The forthcoming AH model is a P and not out yet to use as AI for screenshots. I shall repeatedly call myself a Muppet on the reader’s and developers’ behalf.

Having seen it more times than I’d care to remember, I am more than aware that in the film Battle of Britain, they were actually Dorniers that had been spotted by the two boys standing on the muddy banks of the receded Thames. In this case, however, they really are ‘Einkels – or Heinkels – in the guise of He 111 H-3s made by Virtavia, operating out of Lille-Nord airfield in Northern France, which I have finally got sort-of-ready for release for FSX. It also works in P3D (including v4) and all the screenshots shown in this thread were taken using Orbx scenery.

It’s all Hunsdon’s Fault!

Posted on 14th March 201914th March 2019 by Ian P

Yep, I finally pushed the “Update” button this morning and the All in One downloads are finally up to date.

Yes. It’s been well over a year this time, but good grief is there a lot in there that wasn’t before.

The Bedford QLs and Morris trucks are in, the gun posts are in, the new hangars are in, there are goodness knows how many new ‘small buildings’ and Nissen huts and Nissen combos and… oh, yeah, there’s one absolutely tiny hut, the TB “Balloon Filling Hut”, an aerial… At least I think the aerial is in there. If it isn’t, it’ll be in an update, hopefully less than a year away. What else? Well, Hunsdon, for starters, in the IJP Scenery folder. It’s not complete, I haven’t done any trucks, anywhere near enough clutter or much else yet, but if you want a place to start to see a lot of what’s been added to the scenery libraries, X2HU is a pretty good place to start. Try not to crash while you’re laughing at the AA machine gunner models.

Oh, one last thing… I added the surface elements of a Battle HQ this morning (for Flippin’ Hunsdon again…) – it’s in the new “Defences” library. I’m open to suggestions as to how to improve this, as I don’t think it looks particularly good, personally. I’m not sure how I can make it look any better, though.

Download links can be found on the “All-in-One” page, here.

Bunches of Bedfords

Posted on 3rd March 20193rd March 2019 by Ian P

The Bedford QLs that I have discussed previously are now bundled together in a nice new library called “IJP_WW2_Bedford_QL” and now number 6 in variants, although if I ever add the other umpteen minor changes and a couple of new variants then this library is going to get quite big.

Getting me angry…

Posted on 7th February 20197th February 2019 by Ian P

… is, apparently, great for productivity. Even if I can’t give out any of the results just yet.

Last post, I showed images of a way-over-poly-budget Bedford QL and a slightly mysterious airfield which, if you zoomed in enough, you might have seen was RAF Hunsdon, from where Operation Jericho was launched. Things have moved on since then.

Going Nowhere, Slowly.

Posted on 15th January 201915th January 2019 by Ian P

So, after a lot of poking, prodding, cajoling and peeking, it appears that ALL the internal WordPress links are already relative, rather than full, links. As a result, it appears that there’s nothing I can do to actually fix this problem. I’m passing it on to local Tech Support (also known as “Mrs. P”) to contact the domain host and ask them to remove the bleeping redirect. I don’t need this site to be SSL and their implementation of the certificate has caused hours of problems for absolutely no benefit whatsoever.

Net result: FAIL.

So I did this.

And this.

Yes, I’m aware that the field boundaries and roads don’t quite line up… I had a choice between making the airfield remains match the historical photograph or making the surrounding area match the historical photograph, so I went for the airfield option. If you take off the old photo, the airfield sits perfectly on the modern day imagery beneath it. Lens effect maybe? Not sure. Whatever. I now need to try and find a Aerodrome Reference Plan or something to place all the buildings, because while they are clearly visible on the old photo, they’re far from identifiable on it, unfortunately.

Or I could just guess!

Found the answer…

Posted on 8th January 20198th January 2019 by Ian P

“Please also note that you must link to images and files on your website using a relative link e.g. images/test.jpg rather than using an absolute link e.g. http://www.ianpsdarkcorner.co.uk/images/test.jpg. Using the latter will result in a security warning. “

You don’t say, webhost. You could also have asked me if I wanted this before just doing it, perhaps?

Where’s the “uncontrollable sobbing” emoticon when you need it? If anyone needs me, I’ll be deep in the innards of WordPress trying to convert every URL anywhere in my posting and page creation history. Or sitting in an even darker corner(tm!), rocking gently and hugging a Build-a-Bear borrowed from Youngest P.

Transparency Solidified

Posted on 7th January 20197th January 2019 by Ian P

OK, so it may not look that pretty, but I’ve solved the unreadable menus problem, using the “Additional CSS” tab, significant amounts of poking and prodding, plus a lot of scrolling through lists of colour names that browsers will recognise and display, then trial and error to find a combination that works.

Next up? Trying to fix the fact that certain AV programs still keep giving a “fail safe” false positive and insisting that my website is unsafe. I do actually have scenery to publish, but I have to get the site working, first!

Transparency Trials and Tribbles.

Posted on 5th January 20195th January 2019 by Ian P

Anyone who has visited my site recently will almost certainly have noticed that it “doesn’t look quite right”. Unsurprising, really, as it’s currently using a rather nice, but apparently far from perfect, downloaded Theme called “Sylvan“.

AV (Bit)defending a “Bit” Too Well

Posted on 20th December 2018 by Ian P

I’m aware of a problem that users of Bitdefender Free AntiVirus can’t get to the site at present. This appears to be because BitDefender – and only BitDefender – identifies apparently any JavaScript file within the new WordPress v5 installation as being malicious.
Continue reading “AV (Bit)defending a “Bit” Too Well”

HMS Tern: A Question of AI.

Posted on 21st October 2018 by Ian P

Right. Dragging my head out of The Dark Corner and trying to actually achieve something again – other than tidying the dumping ground that was dining room table, which I achieved at about one o’clock this morning!

HMS Tern was a RN Fleet Air Arm Fleet Requirements station in the Orkney islands. The airfield itself was actually named after an adjacent village, but if I use the proper name the major search engines will decide that I’m an adult content site, so HMS Tern it is! If you want to know where I’m talking about, the other adjaent village is Isbister, which would have been a much better name, but someone at the Admiralty clearly had a sense of humour!

Anyway, this isn’t a discussion about the name, it’s a question… I need to set up some AI to test the layout and would be interested to know if there are any WW2 Fleet Air Arm models that people would like to see included? No guarantees can be given that anything will be included – I have a handful of commercial ones installed and can use freeware ones, obviously, but finances (or a complete lack thereof) say very clearly that I won’t be buying any more payware to do this.

Oh, one other thing, this version of the airfield won’t include the unique tower which is still present on the airfield site. I’d love to model it, but it’s a long way down the list at present.

Let me know via the comments box or contact page (or by e-mail if you have actually read one of my readme files!) if you have any suggestions. Ta!