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John Sowers

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    LIVERY_A.psd vs Base Texture

    in Repaints

    Posted

    On 6/26/2023 at 4:21 AM, Mathijs Kok said:

    I am late... on it.

    Hello Mathijs,

     

    I've seen that you are leaving Aerosoft. Thank you very much for all these years. Is there any chance you can upload the updated paintkit (or the liveries) before you leave?

     

    Regards,

    LIVERY_A.psd vs Base Texture

    in Repaints

    Posted

    Indeed it is close to Turkish Airlines (we follow the same livery rules by SHGM, Turkish state aviation authority) so thank you very much for this! This is great news, can't thank Aerosoft enough.

     

    Is it possible to get the livery files or we need to wait till release?

     

    Regards,

    LIVERY_A.psd vs Base Texture

    in Repaints

    Posted

    On 5/11/2023 at 4:30 AM, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    It's worth emphasizing that painting for MSFS operates differently from P3D. For smaller to mid-sized planes such as the 737 and A320, the traditional single-texture approach may suffice for achieving adequate resolution. However, for larger aircraft like the A330 and even the 747, the decal technique is necessary. This means that we are limited to a maximum of 2K resolution for the base textures, with fine details such as text labels, decor, welding lines, and rivets distributed through decals. While some developers may have opted to reuse their old paintings, we prioritize ensuring that our aircraft run seamlessly across a wide range of hardware platforms.

    And I completely understand this, FSLabs used the same method in P3Dv5 increasing the texture quality of the liveries and overall looks of the bus. This method is more powerful on MSFS platform so I totally understand support it.

     

    On 5/11/2023 at 4:30 AM, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    1. New decals for your custom registration would have to be created first in a unique model.

    Does this mean I need to see which one of the original has placements that are closest to our livery and use that model and Livery_A.psd to get highest quality?

     

    On 5/11/2023 at 4:30 AM, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    2. No.

    There definitely should be something for this. There will be default 5-10 (I don't know the exact number) liveries with high quality and the rest of the liveries we make will be like FS2004 liveries compared to the quality of the decals. It doesn't make sense to limit repainters to low quality textures...

     

    On 5/11/2023 at 4:30 AM, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    3. No. Creating 4K or 8K versions makes no sense for us in production as it exponentially makes things slower during development. However you can create upscales of the paintkit textures. But it will also significantly enlargen the graphics memory footprint

    Our VA is PC only, and we do not want XBOX and arcade things to mess with the realism of our VA so that is not a concern at all.

     

    As far as this conversation goes, I see there are only 2 ways to create this repaint:

    1. Use one of the original liveries Livery_A.psd and model to get quality decal and texture
    2. Upscale the fuselage textures to 4K or 8K to not lose detail for airframe specific livery/repaint.

    Honestly for a as big aircraft as the A330, not a good way to make livery for eye candy sim MSFS...

    LIVERY_A.psd vs Base Texture

    in Repaints

    Posted

    Hello Stefan,

     

     

    11 hours ago, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    The LIVERY_A.psd and so the content on the corresponding decals can be altered to create a manifold more variants for the airlines that are provided.

    Yes, it makes it easier for the repainter to create more variations of the airlines provided.

     

    11 hours ago, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    The decals provide also reserve space to use new aircraft names (especially Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa) or to exchange decorative paint (like the lady on Virgin Atlantic).

    Exactly, one can simple change few things and create more registrations.

     

    11 hours ago, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    Also giving away the original models wont work, as there are

     

    many months of research and hard work in them.

    Understandable as the source file is Aerosoft's IP and should not be distributed. Fully agree with you on that.

     

    11 hours ago, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    This is a downside of the new MSFS painting technique.

    I wouldn't call it a downside. It provides a way for aircraft developers to create more detailed and high resolution decals which increases the quality of the textures and overall visuals.

     

    11 hours ago, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    But be warned, that this may work at high end graphics cards / PCs, but the effect on low end machines and XBOX may not be acceptable

    We do not have any pilots that use XBOX. Neither our ACARS software nor VATSIM works in that environment. Hence they would not be able to do all the procedures and our SOP using XBOX as well.

     

    11 hours ago, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    While on small to medium aircraft you can partly achieve high end looks by using 4K resolution textures, on larger aircraft this is a no go because of the much larger total surface area of the aircraft

    That is correct however the PSD/Texture files provided are 2K resolution? PMDG textures are 4K and Fenix is 8K. Yes they are smaller than a A330 but the performance hit between 2K and 4K is not that much especially in a modern platform like MSFS (unlike P3D)

     

    You can find our livery below, both on PMDG 739 and Aerosoft A330 (P3D, there's bit of reshade which seems the colors are different but on texture, they are the same)

     

    FlightSimulator2023-02-2000-18-46.thumb.png.31de9d77922c3e4a269b78154d089c6c.png image.thumb.png.020ed588fe66f0e8ea5feb1bb0ac4a09.png

     

    Well in this case my questions would be:

    1. As far as I understand from all the discussion we had, there is no DECAL we can use to use LIVERY_A.psd technique for our livery?
    2. Is there any other way to paint the smaller registration and livery specific items without losing quality?
    3. Is it possible to get native 4K or 8K version of the PSD as 2K is too low. As textures are 2K, small details such as name of the plane, flag, registration etc. resolution will be very low and they will be pixelated.

    Regards,

    • Like 1

    LIVERY_A.psd vs Base Texture

    in Repaints

    Posted

    Hello Stefan,

     

    Thank you for taking your time and for your response.

     

    15 hours ago, Stefan Hoffmann said:

    Note that texturing for MSFS is different to texturing for P3D or FSX. While in the older case you painted ALL content directly in one map, you now can only paint low to medium resolution stuff onto the fuselage anymore.

     

    All really fine detail like small text labels, screw, rivets and seams all reside now inside extra decal geometry mesh floating above the base fuselage and are rendered in a special pass to not create a flickering effect as for depth tracing inaccuracies.

    I know that but if the decals and special geometry can only be used by Aerosoft then whats the point of explaining it or creating it in the first place? Surely it looks amazing and increases quality to never before seen levels.

     

    Your response confirms everything I understood from this paintkit and the manual. Now, one big question though is that how can I as a repainter use LIVERY_A.psd. Is there a way implement custom decal geometry to map my custom decals? Surely us repainters are not locked to old system and have to create these low resolution textures for MSFS? And surely there must be a way to use this system (especially doing 14 registrations with base livery being the same).

     

    LIVERY_A.psd vs Base Texture

    in Repaints

    Posted

    Hello! I'm painting our VA liveries and we have 14 A330-343s. I was reading through the PDF and looking at PSDs, making comparisons with the pictures that were shared in the forum. I have read that a painter can either use LIVERY_A.psd or paint livery specific things on the base texture. Now, since all of our liveries share basic such as main livery, flag etc. it makes perfect sense to use base texture for these and then use LIVERY_A.psd for registration specific things. Sounds great right? However there is a big issue, the LIVERY_A.psd file does not seem to be consistent.

     

    I checked SWISS, EUROWINGS, TAP and VIRGIN ATLANTIC liveries and they all have different LIVERY_A.psd file. And by different, I mean different placements. For instance in VIRGIN ATLANTIC case, nose registration can be seen on the top, whereas in Eurowings, the file has completely different placement. Am I missing something?

    image.thumb.png.73435b7e6fbadc7c5cd73da237cc589d.png image.thumb.png.cf61e99a7b3e1f4f3d8d8ef636fc82ea.png

     

    I would appreciate all the support as I really don't want to use the base texture for these things since single file for livery specific details such as registration, name etc would make life SO SO much easier. In addition, since it's using DECAL system, the quality of the livery would be exceptionally higher than the base texture version.

     

    Regards

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