Chinese Tanks' camouflage: Why thy looks So "Un Chinese"?

[Misaka19802]

I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but the Chinese tanks’ camouflage in the game looks very different from those in reality. In the real photos, we seem to have never seen a Chinese tank painted like what they are in the game. I think this should be a mistake made by Gaijin.
First,the standard green camo:

In the game, the standard green used by China and the Soviet Union is the same color, while in reality, the standard green of Chinese tanks seems to be darker.
standard Chinese green in reality:

Compared to the Soviet green in the game, the standard Chinese green seems more like the Japanese green in game, with a darker color and a slightly darker appearance.
japanese green in game:

Compared to the inconspicuous camouflage of standard green, The tricolor camouflage in the game looks more bizarre.

It’s color seems to be correct, but the combination of color blocks is very strange, the proportion of various colors is very weird, and the color blocks are too small. Even if we zoom it up to the maximum, it still looks strange.

still looks not like a Chinese tank in real life.

In reality, its color block distribution should be like this:

The yellow color blocks appear to be much fewer than in the game, and the overall distribution of the blocks tends to be slender, rather than a large, approximately circular block in the game.

Then the most weird camo:
Green yellow black camouflage

I have never seen a Chinese tank carry out such a painting until I found some pictures of Chinese testing new tanks in the last century:

Given that this is a photo from the last century, there may be some color cast, which makes it look strange.It may just have the same camo as tricolor camouflage, but it looks a bit strange due to color cast.

may be it just this camo but old photo makes it darker:

That’s all I have to say about the strange Chinese camo in the game. PLA has many unique camouflages, and I hope Gaijin can fix the existing camo errors and add more interesting camos into the game.

[Misaka19802]

It should be pointed out that many community creators have created correct Chinese tank camos in WTlive, and many disguises are better than those created by gaijin themselves. I hope gaijin can use the correct camos in the community as a blueprint to remake the game’s incorrect camos, making them look more “Chinese”.
standard green

Tricolor camouflage

Green yellow black camouflage

[Misaka19802]

Of course, there are also unique camouflage that have not appeared in the game (although their camouflage effect may not be good)
Marine camouflage:

Two tone camouflage:

Digital Winter Camouflage(already in market but just for ZTZ99A):

Digital Desert Camouflage:

Green white black Camouflage(tested just on ZTZ96A):

Standard Digital Camouflage(now in game just ZTZ99A have it can buy by GE, we need it for more vehicles):

[llSolitairell]

iirc there was a discussion a while back about the wrong colours on camouflages though I can’t remember for which nation (I think it was the modern JSDF Bicolour). The quick summary was Gaijin can be very meticulous when it comes to using the right colours, down to the hex value, but the games lighting engine causes it to appear different; usually brighter or over saturated. Live skinners have more freedom and can adjust the colours so it appears more accurate in the game engine.

A pet peeve of mine is the Post-War Fleet Air Arm colours, where the Sea Gray is more washed out than it appears IRL, and possibly the worst example is the German Panzer Gray which appears significantly brighter than it should.

[Misaka19802]

The situation in China is quite different. It seems that they just copied the standard Soviet green without creating a new one for China, while Tricolor camouflage is a problem of color block distribution, all of these can be solved.

[llSolitairell]

@Misaka19802

The situation in China is quite different. It seems that they just copied the standard Soviet green without creating a new one for China,

It’s quite likely, the Chinese tree ended with the ZTZ59D when introduced and there’s not a lot suggesting the Chinese used a different green for tanks like the T-34s, IS-2s etc.

while Tricolor camouflage is a problem of color block distribution, all of these can be solved.

It can, but bug reporting camouflages is a nightmare without very specific details of pigment and hex values if the existing colour isn’t really far off, since the colours in pictures can change drastically depending on day/artificial light and the age of the paint itself.

[Misaka19802]

I do have official documents of the PLA painting scheme on hand (not classified), but I submitted them to the bug report section several months ago and have not received any response. I don’t think this is helpful, so that’s why I am posting here.

[Intrspace]

@llSolitairell

and possibly the worst example is the German Panzer Gray which appears significantly brighter than it should.

I’ve heard that Gaijin made it brighter on purpose so that the tanks don’t look destroyed

[jaded_sakura77]

Yea, saw a couple threads saying the same thing, true dunkelgrau is actually quite hard to see

[soymilkman]

The generic copy paste camos definitely need some work, and not just for china. The camos made by players are so much nicer. China has very interesting camos.

[45号均制钢板]

Because Gaijin is lazy, changing colors doesn’t bring them much benefit

[巴拉莱卡]

“not a bug”
:)

[SpeclistMain1]

@Misaka19802

still looks not like a Chinese tank in real life.

At least this one can mostly be fixed by rotating/scaling the camo so that the tan part isn’t on the turret cheek.

[pegabug]

Looks like a case of bad texture mapping, they have the material too flat and non-metallic/shiny. The color itself, at least for the standard green, is also off. It’s too saturated/bright. I never understand how game devs mess up colors in the modern day. They can take an image, put it in paint, and use the eyedropper to extract the color code… If it looks different in game still, then the lighting itself is messed up, or like I said, the texture mapping is effecting it.

[llSolitairell]

@Misaka19802

I do have official documents of the PLA painting scheme on hand (not classified), but I submitted them to the bug report section several months ago and have not received any response

Do you have a link to the report?

[Misaka19802]

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/ce5TgWcNGlVl
here
they ignored many issues i sent，I’m pretty sure they won’t answer it now.

[Misaka19802]

I tried, but it’s difficult because the color blocks made by gaijin are circular patterns. Whether I enlarge, shrink or rotate them, they look much worse than reality. As you can see from the photos I posted, the camouflage in reality is similar to irregular amoebas or long strips, not the circular-like patterns made by gaijin.

[llSolitairell]

I think it’s too vague. There’s not much to action on the specific colours as there’s no values in the source (just as an example Panzer Gray is hex value #555c5f).

I think you might get the patterns fixed through a seperate report, though you may have to clarify where those pictures are sourced from (book ISBN code/the name of an archive/web link or photograph of the cover if it’s a manual).

[Misaka19802]

In fact, I have provided the complete document, and the first page is this:

The meaning of the title is “National Military Standards of the People’s Republic of China”

This is not the problem. Gaijin’s management of the bug report block always like this. cannot expect them to seriously check every issue. In a sense, publishing an issue there is almost meaningless without enough support from people. Administrators will not come to see it, and even if they do, they will not take it seriously.

[Misaka19802]

As for color, that’s not a big deal.In reality, colors may have color cast and there are no completely identical colors on different tanks（especially those that are not sprayed in the same location）. However, as a country that has been a part of Warthunder for five years, China should have its own standard green instead of directly copying from other countries. For multi-color camouflage, it can be changed by changing the shape of the color blocks through the materials and images I submitted，also have no technical difficulty to fix.