Military AI Works

Lovely, Tim. Reminds me of The Joy Of Painting. Bob Ross would be proud

I’ve been giving some thought to the suggestion to include PBR texturing on the KC-390s in P3D.

First off, done properly it’s a lot of quite complicated work, as we found with MSFS PBR. The results though, in that sim, were outstanding. I might be satisfied with the result in P3D too, but I’m far from sure about that. I have fought ever since I purchased P3DV4 to get a decent graphics result because the scenes on my screen often appear gloomy with a high degree of contrast. I’m not the only one with that result, because there are pages and pages of posts on the P3D forum from users also trying to tame the beast. That is usually by tweaking shaders values with third party programs, or by adjusting graphics card settings. I don’t want to go that route because I want to design for the default P3D so that I don’t have to direct users down the same path. I also don’t want to have to keep switching graphics card settings for my other applications when I switch out of P3D.

P3Dv5.3 did show an improvement over previous versions. I’m not sure, however, that I want to take the gamble and purchase 6.2 to see if that’s better. Again, I wouldn’t want to recommend users to have to upgrade to get a better result with what I am designing. Stipulating a specific P3D version just reduces the potential user base.

These are the KC-390’s in P3Dv5.3 at the best settings I can manage. I can increase the brightness further but at the expense of higher contrast:



I’m not sure that adding PBR will improve things much in any case. The textures already have an Ambient Occlusion layer in them that produces the ray-based shading. I don’t need a strong metallic channel on something that is essentially matt. If I did, I can also achieve that in the Gmax Material settings.

Then there’s the wider issue of repainting. The KC-390 is in its infancy, with orders placed by other nations in presumably, different paint schemes. Like the users, I don’t want to complicate life for the re-painters here, who might want to tackle those new schemes as they appear, by having to contend with PBR textures.

I think I'll give this can of worms a miss, if you don't mind.

John

John, I had the brownish hue/gloomy issue with P3Dv5 when I did have HDR enabled. Once I disabled it I get much better, more realistic colours without any shader mod. I also purchased P3Dv6 and the HDR colour problem is the same there. Even worse, LM removed the option to disable HDR so I will stay on P3Dv5.4.

My screen shot was with HDR off Henk and indeed that does improve things a tad. It's a pity that LM can't provide something as basic as a contrast slider, particularly if forcing HDR on in P3Dv6. FSX doesn't have one either, but then I don't have a contrast problem in that sim.

Sad to say, but for me, FSX gives the best all round result for AI design than any of the other MS-related sims.

John

To be honest, P3D hasn't improved in any significant respect since v4.5 for our purposes. The ability to create sloped airfields is largely unnecessary, and the changes in graphics capabilities haven't improved the experience at all. The last major improvements were going to 64-bit and Dynamic Lighting, both of which are excellent features. PBR textures are wonderful on flyable aircraft where it doesn't really matter if the aircraft file is 1Gb or more - especially when it's hosted outside the sim, as most payware aircraft have been since the latter years of FSX. The limited PBR capabilities of FSX are probably sufficient for anything we want to do in the FSX/P3D ecosystem.

I've re-done the paintwork on the KC-390 to match the RGB values used by Ray on his Brazilian camo. It's quite a bit lighter and will help with the P3D gloom. This is FSX:



John

It's got real 'Thunderbird 2' vibes!

FAB Tim!

John Young wrote: ↑26 Feb 2024, 16:23FAB Tim!

Of course!!

I like that John

No chance for FS9, I guess.

I think that John has stated on more than one occasion that his FS9 modelling days are complete.

Your guess is absolutely right asdro. FSX and P3D designing takes up so much time, particularly with packages like Brazil, of which the KC-390 is part. I have no further time or energy to exacerbate that by adding FS9 back into the mix. Tim will feel the same.

John