Twin Otter VC textures

[croftspardon 4]

Hi,

I raised a post on this some time ago, but I can't find it now.

I felt the twin otter gauges lacked contrast. Shaun suggested I had a go myself (I am a landscape artist), but I couldn't find the gauge files.

I found them last week and I made the following changes:

Darkened everything except black glareshield panel, to give more of a feeling of being within an enclosed space.

Restored the tonal contrast of the instruments.

Removed incorrect shadowing from around engine instruments, reworked tones on that panel.

Re-typed too pristine and spread-out lettering on capt's panel (but I need to re-do it to match night textures).

Reworked individual lights, decals, switch gaurds, blanking panels and flags to correct tonal errors.

Applied shadows on upper part of capt's panel.

Sorry there is no before screen shot, but I have attached a low-res jpg of the modified VC. I have started the night textures, as they are too bright. If you want to use them, i'll do another couple of hours to try and nail it tonally and I'll pass them on. They make a bigger difference than the screenshot suggests, if you want to try the textures at this stage let me know.

Regards Keith Harvey

[Paul G 13]

Around 90% of the Gauges in the Otter are 3D, and thus the Gauge files can not be found because they're not there to begin with. However it is possible to change the textures on the Gauges. But to edit the Gauges would require modification to the mdl., which IS NOT advised in the slightest.

[croftspardon 4]

Hi,

as you say the gauges are not rendered in the typical way, they have their own textures on a .bmp in the fallback or airline texture folder. It was only the visual qualities I was interested in and I was able to edit those as I wished.

I personally think this is the best way to render gauges. The Maddog MD80, PMDG JS41 do it the same way and it leads to a better result (being bigger textures).

[croftspardon 4]

I decided to do some more 'helpful' screenshots.

In both cases the modified version is the lower picture.

The main picture should reveal the original is:

too pale to believe it is in an enclosed space.

lacking contrast on the instruments (look ghostly), although bottom right RMI is perhaps too contrasty.

has odd shadowing around the engine instruments which is the wrong tone and too extensive.

has infeasably red parking brake handle, whilst the switch gaurds have lost their colour.

Indication lights are too pale when off, to the extent that you don't really know if they are on or off.

(I think the before picture includes an already corrected prop auto-feather light which might be in a gauge file)

The lower picture hopefully shows these corrected, although looking at it now I think I could push the contrast a

bit more. (gauges like carenado aircraft for instance usually have too much contrast to look realistic- but they

look better like that than being too pale. I might try putting on some reflections perhaps). There is still a lot

to do, including new night textures.

The 2nd picture shows the ceiling, with corrected decal tones, more subtle lettering and generally darker interior.

As I say, if there is enough interest in this, I'll put in the hours to complete the job.

Hope it all makes sense.

Keith

[Snave 466]

If for one would be interested, and thank you for your efforts. But you will need to get permission to upload - there's a question of copyright as I'm sure you are aware, but if they were uploaded here then I can't see the harm - there has always been a contrast, er, contrast between the panel bitmap and the gauges and alternatives are never a bad thing. I can see what you find grating and agree it would be a nice choice.

One thing I would suggest though is avoiding the Carenado `too dark` look - I find their aircraft cockpits to be consistently unrepresentative of the latent light that one gets in a real aircraft, failing to pick up on the `universal source ambient` that is a feature of aviating in many cockpits of GA - things are different by design in airliners which is one reason for the small windows and the forward-mounted windscreen. People think that you get a strong single-source light at altitude in a small plane when the truth is the exact opposite. Direct sunlight is actually LESS directional when one is a few thou up.

[Shaun Fletcher 571]

Hello Folks,

I'll ask Mathijs about any issues regarding uploading

[croftspardon 4]

Here's the final screen shots of the day textures.

One shows the cockpit at it's darkest one at it's lightest (accroding to heading). The dark is too dark and the light is too light, but they maintain their tonal balance at these two extremes.

(the lightening/darkening effect is a pet hate of mine. If the panel lightens due to sun, the instruments should do the same (they don't) futhermore the shadows should become darker (they don't) This effect only looks goodish when you are changing heading, at all other times the VC never looks as good as it could do. Some aircraft completely white-out, which is bad news if you start your flight from a stand facing the wrong way!)

If you want to compare it with the original, look at things like the nav flag, which now appears to 'sit within the instrument'. The stall light when off is now solid instead of over-exposed. There are many such changes.

It wasn't my intension to make it any tattier than it was, but there was a difference between the centre panel and the two pilots panels. For the sake of consistancey I've introduced similar textures on the the pilots panels that were found on the centre panel. This was quite important to get some sort of seemlessness accross the screen.

I say it's the final screenshot because once I start the night textures it will be difficult to make further changes to this. If any one can spot any issues please let me know asap. Dozens of pairs of eyes are better than one.

I know there may technically be a copyright issue, but in practice I have done VC repaints for other developers and there is usually no problem at least in publishing them as an alternative on AVSIM etc. Since the original has 'issues' it would be nice to do this officially though.

Keith

[Snave 466]

Liking the improved depth perception a lot, particularly around the fuel pump switches.

[swedddr 0]

Hello Folks,

I'll ask Mathijs about any issues regarding uploading

I have the Twin Otter and the textures in the VC are blured.

Can anyone help me ?

[Snave 466]

I can help. Use the search function, subject word `blurred` and you won't have to invade a thread for another purpose to find answers that already exist.

If you try all the various suggestions and none work, start your own topic but this time state what you HAVE tried, what SYSTEM you are running FSX on and try to THINK about what other information you could supply that might help someone help you. At this point we can not even be sure whether you want help to explain the problem, solve it - or possibly make it worse.

[croftspardon 4]

I'm progressing the night textures, but there seems to be alot of 'ambient' light coming from somewhere else forcing the VC to become too light.

Presumeably it is a darker version of the day textures bleeding in. Does anyone know where it is coming from and how to reduce it?

Keith