SOLVED! Specular Textures in Windows 7

gecko

gecko

Charter Member
Before you get too excited, it does take a fair bit of work and may not work for every aircraft, but I have been getting good results with all the ones I've tried so far.

It involves using the shaders specular enable that is well known, but overcomes the issue faced with most of the aircraft where the texture get washed out by excessive shine.

The level of shininess is controlled in the m3d of each aircraft and has a different value on each one. This can be adjusted through hex editing the m3d, for details see my last post in the knowledge base thread. With a bit of experimentation I have been able to reduce the shine to a much more reasonable level that allows you to see the details of the specular texture allowing for some parts to be shinier than others instead of a uniform gloss. The drawback is that this edit must be made to every single aircraft m3d and many of the cockpits as well, but as far as Im concerned it's worth it.

Ive also found it helpful to increase the contrast of the specular textures to make the differences in materials (fabric vs metal, painted vs polished metal etc) more pronounced.

This may also work for people with ATI cards, but I don't know for certain.

More details and pics later this evening.

Daniel
 
Alright, pics as promised.

First off, standard cfs3 on windows 7 - no specular effects on the textures, kind of flat and boring, though John's skin does help it a great deal.
View attachment 76834
Here it is with the shaders.xml specular shine tweak enabled -way too much gloss!
View attachment 76835
This shot shows the specular texture applied to the model. I used a test pattern to clearly show that it is being used.
View attachment 76836
After hex editing the model, the shine is now greatly reduced. Note the difference in the intensity of the shine between the painted area and where paint has chipped off.
View attachment 76837
Final tweaking, way better IMHO.
View attachment 76838


I'd like to compare these with shots from someone who has CFS3 running on XP with an nvidia graphics card, preferably on the same model (Reg's Hangar Hurricane I), just to see how it measures up. I'd appreciate your input.

Thanks,

Daniel
 
Getting better at this and I think it's safe to say that every aircraft that uses a specular texture that shows when running on XP can be made to also show with essentially the same appearance in windows 7. I'm still fine tuning the values and will post a tutorial as soon as I have explored all the possibilities. It is not a difficult edit to make, and anyone who knows how to make a standalone shouldn't have much trouble with it once you know what to look for.

Would still like to see some XP shots of the specular effect to make sure I am getting all the detail that is possible in XP if anybody is interested in helping out.

Thanks,

Daniel
 
I'm not sure, but if so, just make sure everyone playing has the same version and there should be no problem.
 
That's showing step one of this mod, but I think it makes the planes way shinier than they would have been when they were used in combat. The next step is to tone it down to what I think is a more realistic level by editing the m3d.
 
guess , based on all and computers and win7, xp, vista and win8 im just happy in win7 im polished and shiney to the skies .... as you play with such and all see how the end game reflects

tks

joshua
 
Hmmm, think your totally missing the point of the topic there, not to mention all the work and time put into it!

Anyhow, great work Daniel, it's a very nice workaround, screenies look spot on!:applause:
 
Thanks John, glad I finally got this figured out even though it was only an accidental discovery, especially after my dual boot attempt ended in utter failure!

I made another discovery while trying improve on this. The glass on certain aircraft, most noteably the AvHistory and JF BoB Spitfires among others, have flat blue or brown tinted canopy glass in windows 7, but in XP they have a dynamic shine/glare effect. Make this edit to your shaders.xml to bring back the glass glare effect for these aircraft if you are using windows 7:

First, open the shaders.xml in notepad.

Then look for this section, it should be near the top:

<ModelEnvironmentMap Desc="Vertex Lighting + Vertex Environment Map blended by TFactor"
Lighting="True" SpecularEnable="False"
SrcBlend="SrcAlpha" DestBlend="InvSrcAlpha"
ZEnable="True" ZFunc="[ZFunc]" ZWriteEnable="True" ZBias="0" FogEnable="True"
AlphaBlendEnable="[AlphaFlag]" AlphaTestEnable="[AlphaFlag]" AlphaRef="8" MultiSample="True"
ColorArg10="Texture" ColorOp0="Modulate" ColorArg20="Diffuse"
AlphaArg10="Texture" AlphaOp0="Modulate" AlphaArg20="Diffuse"
Texture0="0"
ColorArg11="Texture" ColorOp1="BlendFactorAlpha" ColorArg21="Current"
AlphaArg11="Current" AlphaOp1="SelectArg1" AlphaArg21="Current"
Texture1="1" TexTransformFlags1="[EnvMap]"
/>

Change the "0" in the Texture0 value (in bold above) to a "1" so that the section now looks like this:

<ModelEnvironmentMap Desc="Vertex Lighting + Vertex Environment Map blended by TFactor"
Lighting="True" SpecularEnable="False"
SrcBlend="SrcAlpha" DestBlend="InvSrcAlpha"
ZEnable="True" ZFunc="[ZFunc]" ZWriteEnable="True" ZBias="0" FogEnable="True"
AlphaBlendEnable="[AlphaFlag]" AlphaTestEnable="[AlphaFlag]" AlphaRef="8" MultiSample="True"
ColorArg10="Texture" ColorOp0="Modulate" ColorArg20="Diffuse"
AlphaArg10="Texture" AlphaOp0="Modulate" AlphaArg20="Diffuse"
Texture0="1"
ColorArg11="Texture" ColorOp1="BlendFactorAlpha" ColorArg21="Current"
AlphaArg11="Current" AlphaOp1="SelectArg1" AlphaArg21="Current"
Texture1="1" TexTransformFlags1="[EnvMap]"
/>


Save and exit and that's all. You should get results like this:

Before:
View attachment 77037
After:
View attachment 77036

Enjoy!

Daniel
 
gecko said:
That's showing step one of this mod, but I think it makes the planes way shinier than they would have been when they were used in combat. The next step is to tone it down to what I think is a more realistic level by editing the m3d.
Click to expand...




Sorry and please accept my apologies for my comment in the ... These little misunderstandings happen so easily and are forgotten in an instant....


i do understand and hope for work to be enjoyed by the masters of masses in all/


tks

joshua
 
After a bit more research on some of Corrado's findings posted in the knowledge base, I've found that it is possible to change a specular texture to a reflective one and vice-versa for an aircraft that has one or the other. This is useful for skinners if they find that one of the effects is better suited to the skin they are painting they can use either one on almost any model.

Here are some examples:

Same razorback P-47 as before, but now with a reflective texture that better replicates the appearance of polished aluminium:
View attachment 77107
Here's a V-1 chasing Spitfire XIVE, the reflective texture needs some work still as it was intended to be used as a specular texture and as such is being somewhat miss-used here, but I thought it had a wickedly awesome look to it so I posted it anyway.
View attachment 77108

p.s. John, would it be too much trouble for you to revisit that skin and give it a proper reflective texture if I sent you an appropriately modded .m3d?
 
Sounds great John. Right now I'm trying to fix a bug with the wheel well bulge on this model that has apparently been mapped differently, but I'll send it on after that. Thanks!
 
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