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Norseman

Not sure how the art files work, but it it possible to tweak the actual instrument faces on the Norseman?

People complained about the dark panel, but the light panel background shows the actual readability issue is the lack of contrast between the markings on the instruments and the background. Looking at period photos of the real Norseman, the instruments have much more contrast between the white markings and the dark background.

Someone could improve things a lot just by improving the contrast on the instrument faces. But not sure if that's a matter of finding an image file and changing the dark/light levels, or the much more complicated task of editing the actual instrument coding.
 
Denny, the lack of contrast of instruments is pure texture work. Big Radials made some small, but important mistakes on DEFAULTMATERIAL ALB.PNG.DDS and with the PBR composite textures of COCKPIT PANELS COMP.PNG.DDS and GAUGES COMP.PNG.DDS. Nothng more.

I changed only these textures and I hope Big Radials will find the glue with my repaint for next update. No need to ask for permission if you want to use them in your liveries.

Thomas
 
DennyA said:
Not sure how the art files work, but it it possible to tweak the actual instrument faces on the Norseman?

People complained about the dark panel, but the light panel background shows the actual readability issue is the lack of contrast between the markings on the instruments and the background. Looking at period photos of the real Norseman, the instruments have much more contrast between the white markings and the dark background.

Someone could improve things a lot just by improving the contrast on the instrument faces. But not sure if that's a matter of finding an image file and changing the dark/light levels, or the much more complicated task of editing the actual instrument coding.
Click to expand...

Certainly agree with you. Somehow i can't get in flightsim.com so i haven't installed the new cockpit textures by Tiar yet. I also think the Norseman gauges could do with some brightning and contrast. The background of the gauges' faceplates has just about the same dark grey'ish color as the panel itself and could be quite a bit darker. At 'normal' cockpit zoom the gauges are hardly readable. If you like you can have a go yourself at giving more contrast to the gauges faceplates. Open the Norseman's texture file by going into Community/bigradials-the-norseman/SimObjects/Airplanes/bigradials_aircraft_the_norseman/texture.

Scroll down to about half the page. There you'll find a bunch of dds and json files of which the names start with 'GAUGES'. "GAUGES.ALB.PNG.dds" is the one you want. There are a few paintprograms that can open dds texture files straight away. I use 'Paint.Net' myself. You can download it for free here: https://paint-net.softonic.nl/

I read in another thread that you are flightsimming for about 40 years, right ? Surely you must've opened a texture file or two during that period ?.... If not, here's your chance. :)

Before working with the texture file in question you should always begin with making a copy of the orginal and name it the same but with the addition of _orginal or something similar. After having installed Paint.Net you can then just click on the texture file at hand and choose Paint.Net from the list to open it. There you have the dds texture file with most gauge faceplates on it. Really all you'd have to do now is select 'Adjustments' from the top menu and shove the Contrast Slider a bit to the right until you like what you see.

Safe the file with the new contrast parameter (same name as the orginal file, remember you saved the original under a different name) and check out your work in the sim. That's all there's to it. ;)

Well, actually, it's not.....

First place some devs use a glass texture for their gauges. I know all about that re FSX/P3D but nothing about that re MSFS. For the time being for me it's all guess work when it comes to MSFS. Of course i tried everything i told you above myself and i have to say i don't see much difference. Still the same dark grey'ish faceplates so this needs much more looking into. You have f.i.noticed it's not only the gauges faceplates there on the gauges.alb.png.dds texture file but also some other stuff that goes along being givin more contrast/getting darker. Maybe that other stuff has something to do with the glass texture, we don't know and have to figure that out.

In any case, Denny, give it try. Two know more than one and it keeps you off the street :teapot:
 
TiAr said:
Denny, the lack of contrast of instruments is pure texture work. Big Radials made some small, but important mistakes on DEFAULTMATERIAL ALB.PNG.DDS and with the PBR composite textures of COCKPIT PANELS COMP.PNG.DDS and GAUGES COMP.PNG.DDS. Nothng more.

I changed only these textures and I hope Big Radials will find the glue with my repaint for next update. No need to ask for permission if you want to use them in your liveries.

Thomas
Click to expand...

Thomas, could you please fill me in what exactly 'GAUGES.COMP.PNG.DDS' does ? Could this be the famous PBR material texture ?

Could this also be the reason of the rather 'flat' looking gauges and thus giving the faceplates bitmap more contrast has no noticeable result ?...

Thank you ! :encouragement:
 
it seems, the problem comes if you have two and more "overlayed" PBR texture sets (albedo and its composite). I can see it in several models, not only in the Norseman. The only solution I found (with the current SDK) is quite simple and I did it on the SE-CBC repaint: put the albedo material texture fully transparent and reduce the underneath whole composite-texture of the gauge to pure yellow.

Thomas
 
Thomas and Javis, thanks so much for the info! I have not messed with repainting yet, and this sounds like fun to fool with. I have Photoshop, etc. but the whole PBR channel and opening files to see vibrant crazy colors for the various channels just confused me the few times I poked around. Your posts clear some of that up, so I'll have to dive in. And maybe copy your panel files to a few other liveries, TiAir!
 
Javis said:
Thomas, could you please fill me in what exactly 'GAUGES.COMP.PNG.DDS' does ? Could this be the famous PBR material texture ?

Could this also be the reason of the rather 'flat' looking gauges and thus giving the faceplates bitmap more contrast has no noticeable result ?...

Thank you ! :encouragement:
Click to expand...

Yep, so basically.
If you're looking for the PBR portions of a texture look out for something like "COMP" in the name, meaning "composite".
It's in RGB format but basically is each color channel treated as a separate greyscale image.
Red channel is ambient occlusion. This affects lighting/brightness/shadowing when the surface is not hit by direct light.
Green channel is roughness. Black is shiney, white is rough.
Blue channel is metallness. Black returns no metall effect at all, white is full metall jacket.
 
Thanks very much Thomas and Mathias ! That clears up a lot. Fantastic !

Always wanted to look into this magical new PBR material but MSFS itself makes it hard to stop flying it and do some serious investigation, certainly now i have the opportunity to experience it all in VR ! ;)

This is a good chance to shelve that VR helmet for a while and do some work. Let's see if we can get brighter and more readable gauges into that Norseman cockpit. She deserves it ! And so do we. ;-)

Thanks again gentlemen ! :encouragement:
 
All of these new skins are excellent. I appreciate the RCAF one especially.

I think that some of the wing textures are missing on the wheel version of USAAC 35174. They are there in the float version, so I copied them over, rebuilt the layout.json and have it working fine pending an update.

August
 
K5083 said:
All of these new skins are excellent. I appreciate the RCAF one especially
I think that some of the wing textures are missing on the wheel version of USAAC 35174. They are there in the float version, so I copied them over, rebuilt the layout.json and have it working fine pending an update.
August
Click to expand...
Thank you, I've uploaded an update
 
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