A WIP preview

[kelticheart]

Nice!

These Jpeg,s are the result I came up with , certainly not up to your standards of perfection , but a slight improvement I like to think over the stock ones , for Ai usage ,
and i,m sure your aware that the cfs-1 model canopy,s can be cleared via Martin,s tool,s , and even shades of tint applied, green , blue , what ever ,

Mmmmm...they do look improved....How did you manage it?

Did you add an alpha texture lightening only the blurred blade sections (this is how I tried a zillion times to correct them)?

You used MDLmat to clear the canopies, didn't you? Good job, they almost look like CFS2 models. The Bf109G-6/R6 (or a G-14/K-4, judging by the shape of the rudder) looks real good, where did you find it?

Cheers!
KH

 

[mksystem]

Amazing! Just when I think something is perfected, someone takes it to a new level!!

 

[Allen]

The CFS1 prop use pallete colors to set transparnt.

http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/info/PropProg.txt

Go to http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/ and try Bmp2000 or BmpExt.

 

[Sarg Willy]

Hi Kelti , You should be able to save the second proppelle from the screen shot , as it,s a BMP , the first one ,s a Jpg , back up the old and give it a try , of course the screen shots from a Pre-historic Voodoo 3 card , and w98 , so I can,t vouch for the same effects , displayed on your current Hot rod machine ,

Allen your suggestion , would probably work too , but I used a colour program from raaf 662 , CFS_bmp, not sure it would run on Xp , it,s so old ,
Just the stock 109_g with G-Crew wing support Kelti ,

 

[kelticheart]

Sarg, try these

Hi everybody!

What amazes me is that a simple subject, like blurred prop discs, can stir so much interest. The love for CFS2 is still hot around here!

Sarg:

What do you think of the below shot? It's Alain L'Homme's splendid (for those ancient times) Spitfire MkIA for CFS1, repainted in BoB-era QJ-J livery and MkIIA D-B, Douglas Bader's mount colours, converted to CFS2. I downloaded the pack twelve years ago from Simviation.

It had a few issues, (for ex., in the original pack the two repaints could not work separately), which I resolved and I enjoyed a fantastic AI BoB Spit MkI ever since, apart from the prop texture, of course. You can put 100 of these Spits in the air and the fps remain the same as if there were the usual "finger-4" patrol!

The same goes for L'Homme's P-51D Mustang, repainted by Sopwith Chameleon. The best AI P-51 bubbletop for huge bomber formation escorts over Europe! Again, apart from the prop texture!

But the conversation we are having here led me yesterday to trying a new approach. The attached *.zip includes both the generic CFS1 prop texture you indicated me and the specific prop texture for L'Homme's Spitfire MkIA.

The new textures work more like a CFS2-standard texture, with an alpha channel texture providing the transparency and the blurred effect. A while ago I discovered that, if one saves any texture as an alpha channel texture with DXTBmp, the regular texture is turned into a greyscale texture that can be worked on to make whichever detail transparent, semi-opaque and so on. This is how I mask out unwanted details, permanent droptanks or payloads, in FS9 aircraft converted models like Mr. Kazunori Ito's or J.R. Lucarini's.
I simply created an alpha channel texture from the original, I replaced the blurred textures with mine and then joined the two, a CFS2 standard for prop textures.

Try the attached out and let me know what do you think. If they are rubbish, just dump them and I'll try something else. Although I don't really know, at this point, what else I could do to improve them, considering the obsolete material I have to work with which, for example, prevents from creating a full blurred disc. The below is all I can get.

Cheers!
KH

 

[Sarg Willy]

Your screen shot looks good , I tryed both on my Nividia A-open card , on the B-17 , and I,m not getting your Spit blades quality , So it,s my old hardware , I,ll hang onto your version props till Xp arrives ,

 

[kelticheart]

Bad news.....

Your screen shot looks good , I tryed both on my Nividia A-open card , on the B-17 , and I,m not getting your Spit blades quality , So it,s my old hardware , I,ll hang onto your version props till Xp arrives ,

I am sorry Sarg, but what you are showing me doesn't have anything to do with your video card or old hardware. I wish it were that. Anyway I think that, in terms of sheer texture and transparency, my texture looks a little bit better than the stock one.

The small extra triangular pieces of blurred texture, displayed in your stock CFS1 B-17 prop discs, are parts of the alpha textures that are "trespassing" the mapping limits set in the aircraft *.mdl. The reason why it's working on the Spit is because, since the prop texture file looked almost the same as the stock CFS1 one, I assumed both textures worked the same.
Evidently they do not and L'Homme must have improved the stock texture on his models. I should have thought about it, since there's a dedicated prop disc texture among the Spitfire texture files, the model does not use the stock ones. Exactly as how CFS2 works.

Therefore, whatever piece of texture is going over the border must be discovered and cleaned out. I'll have to dig out my CFS1 CDs, install a CFS1 stock model and experiment with it. Am I right the above is a stock CFS1 B-17?

I don't know if are aware of it but David Copley, the creator of the best looking CFS2 P-38 collection to date, had in his website two addon B-17AI models developed from the stock CFS1 ones. A B-17F and a G, with the same excellent fps performance as the stock CFS1 models, yet a better visual quality. I have no idea whether his website is still up or not, in any case I could re-upload his two B-17AI here for preservation.

I do not guarantee immediate results, as this project is side tracking me from what I am currently working on, plus the Italian scenery work I promised to both Rami and Captain Kurt. But I'll give it a try.

Cheers!
KH

 

[Sarg Willy]

Hi Kelti , No good buddy , I didn,t intend to increase your work load , Just an Ai I can live with the props as is , carry on with the rest , fine by me ,

Looking at some very old files , something slapped me silly , I can,t believe I let it slide on by , I actually tested it on the Hurricane , and canned it ,
not bright enough to connect the dotts , and realize the interactive potential , and sheer simplicity , when it,s right in your face , extreamly embarrasing , Gonna do some more testing , some screen shot proof,s ,
and a few of these

 

[kelticheart]

Better news....

Hi Kelti , No good buddy , I didn,t intend to increase your work load , Just an Ai I can live with the props as is , carry on with the rest , fine by me ,

Looking at some very old files , something slapped me silly , I can,t believe I let it slide on by , I actually tested it on the Hurricane , and canned it ,
not bright enough to connect the dotts , and realize the interactive potential , and sheer simplicity , when it,s right in your face , extreamly embarrasing , Gonna do some more testing , some screen shot proof,s ,
and a few of these

Sarg, try these. Simpler than the ones I posted above, yet working for the time being. It took all of my evening yesterday to figure them out, they aren't up to my standards at all, but I think their sight can be endured for AI planes.

I figured out which part of the prop texture is mapped for both the stock CFS1 B-17G and the Spit MkIX (tre and four blades); it's the one at the right upper corner of the texture file. Weird, as most of the things MS did, it does not display the blurred yellow trace left by the prop blade tips for Allied planes. One would think that part of the texture was done to cover Axis aircraft prop blades, painted plain black, but it doesn't.
So the blurred disc on both aircraft I tested is displayed solid black.
If my memory serves me right...., it's been a long time since I flew CFS1 but I did complete the British-side BoB campaign back then, the Hurricane, the Mustang and the Jug as well, displayed plain black prop discs in Free Flight.

In the process, also darkened the prop blade textures.

I could add the yellow, the problem is that I don't know, as of now, how the rest of four blurred textures, out of a total of five, will affect the other stock CFS1 planes. It'll take installing all of the stock CFS1 birds, convert their mdls to CFS2 and see what happens to the prop when the engine starts.

It'll take some time, but I get damn' stubborn when a program doesn't do what I want it to do! I will make the more detailed blurred prop discs, I attached first, work!!!

I also went back and ckecked Copley's AI B-17 and I must correct what I wrote before. He states in the readme that the model is something in between a F and a G, closer to a F model. What he did is uploading Olive Drab and Natural Metal separate textures to resemble, from a distance, an early B-17F and a later B-17G.

I did not understand what you talked about above, do you mean you just dawned on one of your great tweaks?

Cheers!
KH

 

[kelticheart]

Holy.......

A good day to everybody!

I think my earlier statements need to be adjusted a little. I checked how big the prop disc library had become yesterday and I couldn't believe it: so far it's 62Mb!
The library isn't zipped down yet for upload, yet I am not expecting it'll get very small at this point! An estimate of an average of 85% compression rate, for small extended bitmap files, brings the total down to 9.3Mb, but I haven't even tackled Japanese and Russian aircrafts yet. While I still have a lot of German, British, US and Italian models to go.

I have to reassess the whole projects, and the first things I'll have to do is break down the final upload into smaller files. For the time being, I thought to make two libraries: Allied and Axis planes.

Even so, I am expecting both files to get real big, no matter what. The amount of good native CFS2 addons produced over the years, plus models converted from civilian sims, is really huge and I didn't even downloaded all of them, only the best ones and no what-ifs!

Any suggestion?

Cheers!
KH