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Quick question for the Vets

Michael_Espinal

Michael_Espinal

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us-newyork
Is it possible in either versions of FS, to create a script that would be able take info from flight simulator and use it as a variable to define what 'main' texture is displayed on the aircraft
 
Humm, interesting question. I think the answer is no though, the texture is not something that can be changed on the fly AFAIK.
 
I Like to imagine that it would be possible to in essence by-pass the default rendering engine supported in 9/x and instead provide ( paying the price of file size) pre-rendered texture files already 'shadow-tailored' to the position of the sun in lets say 4, 6, or even 24 directions, and using information such as the heading and time, the module would then be able to calculate the sun in relation to the model [aircraft] and load up the appropriate textures for it. What do you think?
 
I would not pretend to know what you are talking about, but I have noticed this. I have replaced some textures in FSX. I.E. put some realworld (United) textures in place of default (Orbit). In one case I left the OE specular file in place, and as a result, in certian lighting, there is a ghost of the Orbit texture showing.

Bob
 
bobbyjack said:
I would not pretend to know what you are talking about, but I have noticed this. I have replaced some textures in FSX. I.E. put some realworld (United) textures in place of default (Orbit). In one case I left the OE specular file in place, and as a result, in certian lighting, there is a ghost of the Orbit texture showing.

Bob
Click to expand...

That would be caused by a different scenario, basically there are different types of texture files that flight simulator reads or that we create. A main texture map one that gives colour information ( your United texture), and now incorperated (even though the technology was created a good time ago) Specular maps and bump maps. More importantly, specular maps are another type of texture file still in the same format (extended bmp)(I believe don't quote me on that) that tell flight simulator which parts of the plane to reflect light off of, and which parts not too. Essentially this would be used in any situation where say there is dirt, rusted or peeling paint, the specular texture map would tell flight simulator that in that area there is to be no reflection of specular light (to a certain degree defined by the artist of the texture), As in real life dirt doesn't shine.

What I would like to create is lets say 8 complete texture folders. Each of them having the same colour information (lets say a continental airliner). How ever each of them would have different shadows painted on them (and maybe different specs and bumps info?) from the 8 basic directions that the sun could be coming from, the textures of course generate on a render to texture basis first. And then using information like heading direction and time we could then call on flight sim to load the particular texture according to that information, thus having better looking textures that where pre-rendered instead of relying on the FSX or 9 engine to generate the shadows for us. Of course doing this there could be a bit of static-ness with the textures since we wouldn't have the resources to reload or store more "angles".

Now as Arno Pointed out it would take a while for the textures to be reloaded how ever I haven't tested that out or taken notice myself. And it would be cool if it at least gave some good response on someone who did have an close to high-high end computer.
 
Hi,

I don't think I said reloading would take time, I said that I do not believe you can change the textures of an aircraft after it has been loaded.

For scenery it could be done by hard coding all the options into the MDL file of the object (FS2004 only), but I am not sure if similar tweaks can be made for aircraft MDL files.
 
arno said:
Hi,

I don't think I said reloading would take time, I said that I do not believe you can change the textures of an aircraft after it has been loaded.

For scenery it could be done by hard coding all the options into the MDL file of the object (FS2004 only), but I am not sure if similar tweaks can be made for aircraft MDL files.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry for the mis-interpretation, I thought you where referring to how long it would take FS to load the textures (making it efficient or inefficient)

So say the possibility did exist for the codding to be done do you think it would be worth it?
 
Hi,

I am not completely sure yet what the effect is you hope to achieve. It looks like you will get a lot of trouble and I doubt the result will look more realistic than the normal way of doing it, because you will always get hard "edges" when changing between two sets of textures.

What in the normal way of shading do you not like? Maybe there are other ways to improve that.
 
arno said:
Hi,

I am not completely sure yet what the effect is you hope to achieve. It looks like you will get a lot of trouble and I doubt the result will look more realistic than the normal way of doing it, because you will always get hard "edges" when changing between two sets of textures.

What in the normal way of shading do you not like? Maybe there are other ways to improve that.
Click to expand...

Specifically Adding global illumination shadows to the model with out having them fight the regular shadows generated by FS
 
Hi,

I am not sure what you mean exactly with global illumination shadows, but if you would tweak the normals of your model so that they are the same then the default shading will be constant from any side. Would that help you for what you are trying to achieve?
 
Michael,

That is a pretty heavy concept. Nice...! Out-performing the stock FS shading engine with your own shading engine or effect/texture system.


I see that it might be glitchy though with only say 8 or 24. Mind you that you are not always just turning, but banking as well, so the shadow is always moving, not just sideways, but up and down on the axis' as well; dual axis that is, like a gyro sphere.

Who knows though.. Might work after all! and look dang cool. And run fast on FS!


Bill
 
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