It appears that the "reflection", or the ability to "reflect" has to be programed into the original model, otherwise no amount of shine will reproduce that effect. The T-33 is an old model. . .a great one, but an old one and doesn't have the ability to "reflect", so it isn't gonna happen with this model.
It's linked to the programmation of th original model indeed, but not only.
It's all about the Alpha Channel it I understood right. The alpha can define the amount of transparency if the 3D surface was defined to be transparent, or the amount of reflectivity if the 3D surface was defined to be reflective.
In that way, we could see in the past, for some models, some repaints that had a "full chrome" effect... but still, that never looked like real bare metal at all.
If you want to accomplish a good bare metal effect, I think you will have to combine two things:
- an appropriate reflectivity (and the envmap is the texture that is used for "painting" the reflection)
- a photo-real metallic texture, just like the Mustangs from Warwick Carter for example, or the Beech D-18 from Milton.
You will not get a good metallic impression using only reflections in FS9. The FS9 graphical effects are not good enough. In FSX, you can get something a little bit better, thanks to the bump-mapping (the Acceleration Mustang, or the freeware L-159, are perfect examples) and a good texture.
