FS2004 Boeing 747 Classic

[arwasairl]

Aaron: I don't know whether this will help, but could I suggest downloading the sd2gau42 documentation from here: Creating C Gauges and reading the section titled 'Understanding how P3D treats Bitmaps and Colours in Gauges'; specifically the sub-section 'This is Where it all Goes Wrong'. I have some suggestions in there on how to defeat the night banding.

Yes, I am aware of this but there are actually 2 different factors when it comes to FS9 and our panel:

I am using GDI+ and not the older MAKE macros, which means that the sim itself never touches our actual bitmaps. Each frame's presenter instead rasterizes the bitmaps with the CPU, but in terms of unconditional compression, it does not happen in the load stage but in the rendering stage.

FS9's panels are limited to 5 bits per color channel, though I noticed while reading the texture's pixel rasterizer that they include dithering, which I didn't include in my render code which can improve the appearance at the cost of noise

        void ConvertBackToImg(Gdiplus::Bitmap* back, PIMAGE img,
                              int rx, int ry, int rw, int rh)
        {
            if (back == NULL || img == NULL || img->image == NULL)
            { return; }
            const int dimX = (int)back->GetWidth();
            const int dimY = (int)back->GetHeight();
            int x0 = (rx > 0) ? rx : 0;
            int y0 = (ry > 0) ? ry : 0;
            int x1 = rx + rw;
            int y1 = ry + rh;
            if (x1 > dimX) { x1 = dimX; }
            if (y1 > dimY) { y1 = dimY; }
            if (x1 > img->dim.x) { x1 = img->dim.x; }
            if (y1 > img->dim.y) { y1 = img->dim.y; }
            if (x0 >= x1 || y0 >= y1) { return; }
            Gdiplus::BitmapData bd;
            Gdiplus::Rect rc(0, 0, dimX, dimY);
            if (back->LockBits(&rc, Gdiplus::ImageLockModeRead,
                               PixelFormat32bppARGB, &bd) != Gdiplus::Ok)
            { return; }
            for (int y = y0; y < y1; ++y)
            {
                const unsigned int* src = (const unsigned int*)
                    ((char*)bd.Scan0 + y * bd.Stride);
                char* dstRow = img->image + (UINT32)y * img->pitch;
                const unsigned int* bayer = kBayer4[y & 3];
                if (img->format == IMG_15_BIT)
                {
                    unsigned short* dst = (unsigned short*)dstRow;
                    for (int x = x0; x < x1; ++x)
                    {
                        const unsigned int p = src[x];
                        if ((p >> 24) < 128) { dst[x] = 0; continue; }
                        const unsigned int r = (p >> 16) & 0xFF;
                        const unsigned int gg = (p >> 8) & 0xFF;
                        const unsigned int b = p & 0xFF;
                        const unsigned int d = bayer[x & 3];
                        dst[x] = (unsigned short)
                            (0x8000 | (Dither5(r, d) << 10) |
                             (Dither5(gg, d) << 5) | Dither5(b, d));
                    }
                }
                else if (img->format == IMG_32_BIT ||
                         img->format == IMG_32A_BIT)
                {
                    unsigned int* dst = (unsigned int*)dstRow;
                    for (int x = x0; x < x1; ++x)
                    {
                        dst[x] = src[x];
                    }
                }
                else if (img->format == IMG_16_BIT)
                {
                    unsigned short* dst = (unsigned short*)dstRow;
                    for (int x = x0; x < x1; ++x)
                    {
                        const unsigned int p = src[x];
                        if ((p >> 24) < 128) { dst[x] = 0; continue; }
                        const unsigned int r = (p >> 16) & 0xFF;
                        const unsigned int gg = (p >> 8) & 0xFF;
                        const unsigned int b = p & 0xFF;
                        const unsigned int d = bayer[x & 3];
                        unsigned short v = (unsigned short)
                            ((Dither5(r, d) << 11) | (Dither6(gg, d) << 5) |
                             Dither5(b, d));
                        if (v == 0) { v = 0x0821; }   // near-black
                        dst[x] = v;
                    }
                }
            }
            back->UnlockBits(&bd);
        }

 

[arwasairl]

@DragonflightDesign After applying dithering, the banding doesn't look nearly as terrible.

The "noise" solution you presented in sd2gau works as its a more manual form of dithering, but either way, I am much more happy with this result... Thanks for the mention about it.

 

[DragonflightDesign]

Good!!!!

 

[arwasairl]

One of the last pieces of the 2D panels is adding some lighting and details. The left is the old panel, the right is the new panel bitmap.

The new panels comprise of 4 new aspects; panel staining, dust/debris, specular highlights, and ambient occlusion. The latter two are rendered using 3d recreations of the 2d panel projected onto a plane that is the same resolution as the original bitmap.

The first two consisted of both manual photoshop work and automatic scripting tools. The boundaries for crevices were defined both by the ambient occlusion map and a height map, both generated from the 3D software. These images then feed into heatmap generators to programmatically define exactly where dust, debris, hairs, and small particles should land. Each individual type of dirt is biased towards a specific portion of the panel and some panels receive more dirt than others.

Staining consisted of marking specific parts of the panels and then running a hue/saturation filter over it plus a fractal generator that inverted the operation of the that module's filter. This results in bright and dark spots of the panel, simulating topcoat degradation or UV exposure.

These items are then combined and composited to the final image you see above.

 

[FuelJettison744]

that is unreal, how did you manage to get all those little details dust parts right? I assume hand drawn?

 

[arwasairl]

that is unreal, how did you manage to get all those little details dust parts right? I assume hand drawn?

Yes, though I used a variety of dust brushes in Photoshop and cropping random scraps of paper, egg shells, and bread crumbs. Hair was taken from black and white film damage and I just used line debris as hair.

 

[FuelJettison744]

Yes, though I used a variety of dust brushes in Photoshop and cropping random scraps of paper, egg shells, and bread crumbs. Hair was taken from black and white film damage and I just used line debris as hair.

wow well it looks extremely realistic!

 

[ozzman1997]

Yes, though I used a variety of dust brushes in Photoshop and cropping random scraps of paper, egg shells, and bread crumbs. Hair was taken from black and white film damage and I just used line debris as hair.

Looks a lot more natural than my method of using a dust brush to unmask photos of garbage dumps.