• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Best bump mapping?

Which model has the best bump mapping?

  • RealAir Spitfire

    Votes: 8 15.4%

  • A2A P-47 Thunderbolt with Accu-Sim

    Votes: 19 36.5%

  • Classics Hangar Fw 190A: The Early Variants

    Votes: 8 15.4%

  • RealFlight Hellcat

    Votes: 5 9.6%

  • Acceleration Mustang

    Votes: 3 5.8%

  • Other

    Votes: 9 17.3%
  • Total voters
    52
D

dswo

Charter Member 2011
A few days ago I turned in my AVSIM review of the Classics Hangar Fw 190A. It's now in the queue for editing. Inter alia, I said that the CH model's bump mapping was the equal of the RealAir Spitfire and A2A P-47 with Accu-Sim (another review that's in the pipeline). Then I read this:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=15721&page=2

Is there a consensus about this? For me, the Spitfire is still a touchstone. Are there better examples that I'm not aware of?

In responding, try not to write something that will get the thread locked, please.
 
I don't even know what bump mapping is....So where is the choice for me? LOL
 
For me one of the biggest mistakes in bump mapping is the orange skin effect that seems very popular. The RealAir spit and RealFlight Hellcat suffer very badly from this. This effect gives a very rough almost cast iron look to bumpmaps and IMHO should be avoided at all costs on an aircraft. I have never seen this effect on a real aeroplane.

I did the normal maps (bumps) for the A2A P-47 and I look at it now and can see it can be improved upon. In fact I think I will do that now :)
 
I believe often bump maps are overdone, making the plane more "Hollywood" than it really is. Most games I feel suffer from this.
 
I agree that bump maps are often overdone, with the Acceleration Mustang being a good example. Having said that though, I'd prefer overdone bump maps to no bump maps at all *cough*AH P-38*cough*.

My award for the best bump mapping out there? I'm going to go slightly left-field and give it to the Alphasim Hawker Hunter.
 
Digital Aviation!

do27x_10.jpg


:icon_lol:
 
I must remain silent then David , its considered unseemly for developers and those associated with production houses to make commentary upon the faults of other houses and i would prefer to remain a gentleman .<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:eek:ffice:eek:ffice" /><o:p></o:p>
 
How about Photo Real if bumpmapping is so bad on some models? But then again I'm like Harleyman, in the dark on bumpmap workings..... and the same for Photo Real skins. :redface: I do know tho that Photo Real skins are gorgeous.
 
DSWO as I don't know all models in this pole it is impossible for me to answer your question. I can't recall who did it but, I can remember somebody did a fine tutorial on bumpmaps based on Piglets P-7.

Cheers,
Huub
 
Once upon a time I was a happy person that didn't know anything about making aircraft for FSX (or any other sim if that matters). All models looked nice to me. Sure, some of them were "nicer", but I wasn't paying too much attention to details, I was satisfied with "average" quality.

Then I lerned how to make a 3D model, how to texture it with bumpmaps and speculars. And suddenly I started to see flaws in almost every airplane I've seen (including mine of course). Things like bad geometry, improper shading, misplaced textures, wrong animations, low resolution, too much to tell.

Same with systems programming. I am a software engineer, so I know a bit about it from my "real" job. When I learnt how it is done in FSX, and what CAN be done in FSX, many aircraft I have lost in my eyes, because it turned out that they use only systems from default Cessna or 737, just have different labels on switches. Same systems everywhere, just different package.

Martin is a perfectionist (just like me) and he spent great amount of time working on textures. So I think he sees more flaws in textures that anyone else.
 
I am with Huub on this. I do not know all of these models, so I cannot in full honesty ansere this.

But the best bump mapping, which includes metal fatique waves (especially), will go with the Aerosoft Hawk bush plane. That thing is amazing in bump mapping technology and in graphics. I havent seen full use of graphics exteriors brought to such a level in a plane yet, but I havent seen some of the planes listed here, so its not a proper vote on my behalf. Feel free to remove it if you like.

One awesome plane. There is a tutorial on how they did the bump mapping on another webpage and there you can see the extent of all the work they did on it to make it as realistic as possible.



Bill
 
huub vink said:
DSWO as I don't know all models in this pole it is impossible for me to answer your question.

Cheers,
Huub
Click to expand...
that i agree with
im sure many do not have most
so do we go with the ones we have
that would be unfair
H
 
I can only answer from my experience, but I agree with Bill, the bump/specular mapping on the Aerosoft Bush Hawk XP is very nice, and the paintkit is a dream, extremely user friendly and well done. Makes it very easy for non-skilled painters to make quality looking repaints!

I do wish that FSX developers wouldn't release products w/o bump and specular mapping, even if they don't use it themselves, lots of great repainters have done wonders. The Carenado 182RG default paints don't make use of the bump mapping, but the Orbx FTX HD repainters brought it out to full effect, which would have been impossible had Carenado not even mapped out the textures. The Sibwings SAAb Safir has one model with bump mapping, but the other 3 don't even have the option, and none of the models have spec. All of them look good, but you can definitely tell the difference between the one model with bump and the ones without.
 
The newest Aero Vodochody L159A for FSX sp2 and acceleration from Vit Storch has the best bump-mapping I've ever seen on any plane and any screenshot, and it's freeware !! :jump:
The metal reflections looks so real, perfectly reminding me of the various real aircrafts I have seen. The effect is most impressive on the wings.
 
Panel lines are often way overdone by bumping. Like those old Matchbox kits. Some FSX bumped planes look like they were vacuformed from plastic, with those bumped lines.
I'm sure bumps would look great on a T-55 tank turret...
 
Piglet said:
Panel lines are often way overdone by bumping. Like those old Matchbox kits. Some FSX bumped planes look like they were vacuformed from plastic, with those bumped lines.
I'm sure bumps would look great on a T-55 tank turret...
Click to expand...

Amin to that..I,ve seen a very revered P51B with rivets and panels so overdone it looked like a sausage.Aerodynamics nightmare.
I love the L159 :applause:, but in FX specularity it,s way overdone..shines like a shoe.But again it,s a matter of personal taste ,so this ranking is very subjective.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top