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FS2004 Poly vs night texture mismatch

Kekelekou

Kekelekou

Resource contributor
Messages
226
Country
france
Hello!

I am flying back again with FS9 on the superb Aeroworx King Air 200 which is a very nice addon indeed.
Yet one little glitch is bugging me and I have not been able to solve it on my own so far.
That's why I am posting here to have your input about it.

What is the issue ?

All instruments and radios are backlit EXCEPT both the KLN90B and the WXR270. So no way of using them in the VC (I know I could use the pop-up 2D panel, but I'd like to understand and fix the issue for the sake of my simming education).

47690777542_48a583e842_z.jpg



How is the model designed material- and texture-wise?

The VC mdl is inspected with MCX to understand which materials and textures are used to create the night glow on the radios and the lach thereof on the WXR270.

Radios :

Material : $b200_vc_radio

46826867215_182f0fc0a0_z.jpg



WXR270 :

Material : $b200_vc_radio, so the same one as the radios

40776979683_f83e1bb960_z.jpg



Textures for $b200_vx_radio material

No emissive bmp! Just the diffuse on is defined!

47690773992_4fa7da42ef_z.jpg



Material check on WRX270 poly

Just to check if the $b200_vc_radio material is truely the one set on the WXR270 poly, I modified the Vcockpit entry in the panel.cfg as follows

Code:
[Vcockpit02]
file=B200_VC_Orange.bmp //256bit, all orange bmp with white alpha
Background_color=0,0,0
size_mm=512,512
visible=0
pixel_size=512,512
texture=$B200_VC_Radio

//gauge00=awb2005!awb200_comm1vc, 3,3,130,140,vc
//gauge01=awb2005!awb200_comm2vc, 3,146,130,140,vc
//gauge02=awb2005!awb200_nav1vc, 136,3,130,140,vc
//gauge03=awb2005!awb200_nav2vc, 136,146,130,140,vc
//gauge04=awb2005!awb200_xpdrvc, 269,3,130,140,vc
//gauge05=awb2005!awb200_adfvc, 269,146,130,140,vc
//gauge06=awb200_reg!regnum, 405,3,101,38,vc
//gauge07=awb2001!awb200_ap_vc_toggle, 459,460,52,52,vc
//gauge08=fs9gps!gps_500, 3,292,334,215,vc
//gauge08=awb2009!wxr270dummy, 3,292,334,215,vc
//gauge09=awx.b20!nd, -21,291,343,209,vc
The result is :

47690775362_a29772c306_z.jpg



So the right material is affected to the right polys.

And yet...

If I modify the existing512x512 DXT3 b200_vc_radio_l.bmp file to a all white bmp with pure black alpha, what I get is this :

47690776682_d5c1ec03e5_z.jpg



How on Earth is it possible that the night texture does not illuminate all the polys to which the $b200_vc_radio material is affected?

What am I missing here?

Any help will be much appreciated!

Best regards!

Kekelekou
 
Hi,

There is a material called sb200_vc_kln90b. Perhaps that material is controlling that area?
 
Hi,

Thanks for helping Tom.
So I have just done the same « orange bmp » thing with the $b200_vc_kln90b material. The whole kln90b face is the only poly that turns orange. And no night lighting with an all white b200_vc_kln90b_l.bmp!
I really can’t grasp how this night lighting works...

By the way, just to ensure that the WxR270 poly is correctly unwrapped, I also changed the all orange bmp dor a picture. The picture shows up as expected on the poly.
 
Hello Kekelekou

As Tom said, try to see if actually the polygon(s) area(s) in b200_vc_kln90b_L.bmp are covered by some light color. Perhaps you don't remember this, but any bit map used in this way need to be rotated 180° and flipped horizontally in your favorite image editor before to be used in the simulator. To see if really b200_vc_kln90b_L.bmp has the gauge covered by light, you need to find the texture in day time (perhaps, named b200_vc_kln90b_T.bmp) and
compared both.

To see what I mean, see an example of a day light texture named in my case 407_VC_01_T.bmp (notice that ends with a suffix T). It is in normal position (not rotated 180° or flipped horizontally):
407_VC_01_T.jpg


The emissive texture associated with this texture is named P1_L.bmp.
P1_L.jpg


Now, I will overlap both images. If you see them carefully, they don't match with each other:
407_VC_01_LT.jpg


See? The texture named P1_L.bmp has been rotated 180° and flipped horizontally. To revert this, you need to do the opposite and finally, verify if the area in question is highlighted!!! I will show you the reversed result (also, overlapping both textures):
407_VC_01_LT2.jpg


Now, they are perfectly aligned. Try do do the same with your aircraft textures and carefully reverse the process when you've finished.
Sergio.
 
antaris said:
Hello Kekelekou
As Tom said, try to see if actually the polygon(s) area(s) in b200_vc_kln90b_L.bmp are covered by some light color. Perhaps you don't remember this, but any bit map used in this way need to be rotated 180° and flipped horizontally in your favorite image editor before to be used in the simulator. To see if really b200_vc_kln90b_L.bmp has the gauge covered by light, you need to find the texture in day time (perhaps, named b200_vc_kln90b_T.bmp) and
compared both.
...
Sergio.
Click to expand...

Hello Sergio,

Thanks for hopping in and for your much detailed explanation.
I am waaaaay less subtle than you when it comes to teste the backlit polygon area : I just use an all white texture :laughing:. So anything covered will glow out (just like one of the pictures in my first post).
And the point is that neither the KLN90B nor WXR270 polys glow out.
Fun fact : there are no b200_vc_kln90b.bmp nor b200_vc_radio.bmp texture files in the texture folders! Only their xxx_L.bmp counterparts. I can't figure out how this can work to begin with!

By the way, does it make a difference if the texture name is b200_vc_kln90b_L.bmp (capital L) or b200_vc_kln90b_l.bmp (not capital L)?
 
Thx Tom.
No corresponding plain or _T daytime textures in the panel folder neither!
So I guess that the diffuse $b200_vc_xxx texture names read in MCX are just placeholders which allow FS9 to understand that the nighttime textures are b200_vc_xxx_L.bmp.
But that does not give the slightest explanation about why the WXR270 poly is correctly covered by the orange texture assigned to the $b200_vc_radio material, yet not by the night time texture...
 
One can set up different Materials that use different daytime vs nighttime textures, if they did that?
 
Hi Tom,

I checked again yesterday with MCX : the WXR270 poly is assigned only one material : the $b200_vc_radio one.
I went through all the materials with the « highlight selected » kicked.
 
There may be more than one polygon there with visibility code that swaps them in and out?
 
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