[MOD] Additional Helmet Liveries

[DetCord]

The test phase is over, more or less. This is the actual release of the mod. Included are 15 liveries, now with mip-maps and proper asset scaling. Some are generic while others belonged to actual pilots like General Daniel "Chappie" James Jr., a former Tuskegee airman and veteran of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam as well as James "Joker" Wild. More will be added at a later date as well as any necessary future adjustments or fixes.

 

 

LIVERIES DOWNLOAD

TEMPLATE DOWNLOAD

 

DO NOT ALTER, EDIT OR UPLOAD THIS MODIFICATION TO ANY WEBSITE WITHOUT MY EXPLICIT PERMISSION.

Edited August 16 by DetCord

[Mark_Krieger]

Oh! a Chappie Helmet! I'm Flying the 12th FBS career with him. Saw a pic of the period on the net and thought he used a non modified helmet because I saw it white, but that's a nice detail. thank you very much!

Edited August 24 by Mark_Krieger

[MJones]

Love it, Det!  I'll be watching for updates.

[Justicier10-7]

Awesome work!

Now I can anger the PLAAF pilots with my rising sun helmet when we get in a knife fight 😂

[Cocker]

I was away from the computer from some times, what a neat surprise this is! Thanks a lot, @DetCord!! 

 

[DetCord]

No worries, gents. 

On 8/19/2026 at 10:27 AM, Mark_Krieger said:

Oh! a Chappie Helmet! I'm Flying the 12th FBS career with him. Saw a pic of the period on the ned and thought he used a non modified helmet because I saw it white, but that's a nice detail. thank you very much!

Photo's are sketchy at best. I came across lots of images where the helmet was plain white and two where it was painted, but next to impossible to tell how it was painted. The descriptions I found stated that he had multiple helmet liveries. One version had lightning bolts in red on white and another where the base color was red with white lightening bolts. All of these descriptions stated that the lightning bolts faced forward while others said they faced to the rear, consistently contradicting each previous description. 

I had to take some artistic license here and there.   

[LukeFF]

@DetCord, if you need inspiration for another design, these are pics I took at the Palm Springs Air Museum last year. Apparently, the pilot had been assigned to VMF-311 during the war.

 

[DetCord]

I like that one. I'll give it a go but it will be difficult without access to the mesh, trial and error and all that. 

[Snipermanx]

In terms of helmets and variations, I am in talk with team what we can add there, when I have more news I will share it 🌚

[Cocker]

The helmet posted by Luke is post Korean war, though. This is an APH-5, and it has been introduced for service in 1956, and seen this one is using the Hardman oxygen mask attachment, it's even a tad later, 1957 at the earliest.

[Elf]

I've installed these nice helmet liveries into game's files, but cannot see their preview pics in pilot's settings. Can this be enabled?

[migmadmarine]

Unfortunately in this and the last sim there is no way include previews

[Stonehouse]

On 9/27/2026 at 8:19 AM, migmadmarine said:

Unfortunately in this and the last sim there is no way include previews

It seems you actually can. I've done a test preview which worked ok. I just kept the same dimensions and compression as Detcord's helmet dds's (1024x1024 DXT5). Test preview is first on the left of the custom liveries. Others are just Detcord's helmets copied into the correct location.

Per LukeFF 

Spoiler

At the moment, there is no way to add previews for aircraft skins, but there is for helmets.

For example, if the main texture is data\graphics\Skins\Pilot_1950_USAFprop\SomeNewHelmet#1.dds, the preview should be data\NSData\Assets\BotSkins\Pilot_1950_USAFprop\SomeNewHelmet#1.dds. 

 

 

 

[Elf]

9 часов назад, Stonehouse сказал:

It seems you actually can. I've done a test preview which worked ok. 

 

Per LukeFF 

  Скрыть содержимое

At the moment, there is no way to add previews for aircraft skins, but there is for helmets.

For example, if the main texture is data\graphics\Skins\Pilot_1950_USAFprop\SomeNewHelmet#1.dds, the preview should be data\NSData\Assets\BotSkins\Pilot_1950_USAFprop\SomeNewHelmet#1.dds. 

 

 

Thanks for the data! Does it mean that Helmet Liveries Mod files should be somehow altered? If yes, I believe you must get a permission from mod creator first?

[E69_julian57]

@Elf

The creator, Detcord, has provided a link above to download his template.

[Stonehouse]

58 minutes ago, Elf said:

Thanks for the data! Does it mean that Helmet Liveries Mod files should be somehow altered? If yes, I believe you must get a permission from mod creator first?

I didn't modify Detcord's files. I simply chose a helmet and took a pic in game and turned it into a test case for a helmet preview to see if it would work. I imagine @DetCord may wish to add previews to the mod now that it is possible. As for the other previews, while I wait for Detcord to add previews I simply copied the main helmet dds files to the appropriate place to give an interim preview for each to make my life easier. I don't intend to publish what I have done as it is Detcord's mod.

As Julian said - you can make your own using Detcord's template.

Edited Wednesday at 12:32 PM by Stonehouse

[E69_julian57]

Hello @Stonehouse
I’ve had a look at your helmet mock-up and tried to do the same, but Photoshop tells me I’m doing it wrong.
How did you do it?

 

[Stonehouse]

7 hours ago, E69_julian57 said:

Hello @Stonehouse
I’ve had a look at your helmet mock-up and tried to do the same, but Photoshop tells me I’m doing it wrong.
How did you do it?

 

Selected a helmet, did a quick mission starting parked, climbed out of the aircraft and used external camera to take a close up of the pilot. Edited the close up to get to a 1024x1024 pic of the pilot's head and saved it as a DXT5 dds allowing mipmaps to generate (no idea whether this is required). Created the folders mentioned by LukeFF in the mod folder (as below), copied the saved dds to the two pilot folders and named it the same as the helmet I had chosen. eg usafjet_camo#1.dds in the jet folder and usafprop_camo#1.dds in the prop folder

Reenabled the mod in JSGME and checked the preview was present as expected. The NSData folder is my addition. The graphics folder is Detcord's unaltered mod.

 

Edited Wednesday at 09:13 PM by Stonehouse

[E69_julian57]

@Stonehouse

Thank you for your reply. 
I created the folders within the game from the NSData /Assets/BotSkins/pilot_1950_usafjet/ new helmet #1 folder.
I see you’ve created a mod.

The problem I’m having is when creating the image of the pilot wearing the helmet at 1024 x 1024 in Photoshop.
I select the image, save it as a PSD, flatten the image and save it as a DDS, and this appears.

Am I doing something wrong?

Edited Wednesday at 09:58 PM by E69_julian57

[Stonehouse]

41 minutes ago, E69_julian57 said:

Photoshop

I'm using Gimp 3.2.6. I'm no CGI artist and don't know Photoshop. It'd be 15 years since I last tried it. My screenshot is PNG. I exported the DDS without saving the GIMP version of PSD.

I'll send you a sample dds via PM.

Yeah I turned Detcord's mod into a JSGME install. I do that for everything pretty much even aircraft skins when it is something like Migmadmarine's campaign skins.

 

<edit> PM sent.

Edited Wednesday at 10:39 PM by Stonehouse

[E69_julian57]

@Stonehouse

Thank you very much – I’ve now managed to create the images.

Edited Thursday at 12:21 AM by E69_julian57