Mach3DS

Can I offer a suggestion to since you're now putting stock liveries into the game? Your grey colors for the standard line Vipers, both light and dark are too dark. Did you match these colors with the FS color counterparts? Either that or you're using reshade to take screenshots? If you're going to be making all the Viper liveries you should look up the gamma corrected color HEX values. Photos can be notoriously incorrect for color matching, since film has different exposures, tints and filters, and the film Processing can also have it's own color variations, same with the printed inks. Digital is even more notoriously bad since the inception of auto HDR (high dynamic range) which over and underexposes all the ranges of the image to make "hyper-details" pop. While a neat artistic expression, it's not accurate for true to life.

This is why I removed most of my works from User files. However that said, you're now part of the ED stock textures. So you're going to find that this happens more and more as people use your stock liveries for their own purposes. While I find this to be a "low brow" behavior, you're going to have to come to terms with it if you put your free,.un-licemsed offerings into the public domain. The only way to limit that is to not put them out there. Or provide them to specific groups only who you trust to keep your work.

I plan to release this Cockpit mod. It's a Dark Cockpit but with complete Roughmet overhaul, as best could be without completely redoing the textures. Unfortunately, the 86 doesn't use normals on the interior or the pilot. So some trickery had to be used to create some illusions as best as they could be.

If you try to change the specific Liveries to use "standard" Roughmets or other textures you will ruin the overall look of the aircraft. I can only speak for myself, but my liveries are custom made, with custom Roughmets, Normals and Diffuse. I made the VF-301 livery. If the Tail doesn't have MipMaps, that's just an error that I didn't catch, as my default export is to have MipMaps autogenerated. I think your premise is wrong. No offense intended. But many of the high quality liveries are because they DO NOT use standard cookie cutter textures. So custom textures which were added, may increase the size from default textures in order to introduce higher resolution imagery or new imagery )like normals that don't exist in the default for example), for increased detail over stock items. Not all liveries are like that. But some are. Generally the passion projects for the livery artists will have much more detail. If you were to replace all the RM from the liveries I made, for example, you would destroy the overall final finished look of the aircraft since mine were made with specific Roughmets that contains the additional details present in the normals and the albedo. Along with adjusted albedo colors to support the Roughmets that were created for them. For example, NONE of mine use generic CIC patterns or weathering patterns. All of them are unique and based on photos of the real aircraft with as similar weathering patterns as can be achieved from historic record.

Real Life got ultra busy....This was the final result. Custom weathering, and I added the options for All the AquilaEx Visor colors or Std USAF for Pilot or WSO. And option for Green or Tan flight bag.

WIP Combat weathering.

BRAVO!!!

WIP.

Thank you!

WIP. Adding Custom Weathering.

BEAUTIFUL!

Looks like that is a bug. It should have been disabled. I've updated my Livery description.lua to remove the BORT number entry. It shouldn't have been active to begin with. The User Files DL has been updated. Any new DL will get the fix. If you just want the file stand alone. It's attached here. It also fixes the Name Entry from Test Livery to the name of the File Folder. description.lua

It might be misaligned. I shouldn't have any BORTs enabled at all. Which means that NLG number was a miss on my part. I hate that. Didn't notice that at all. Yeah the Bort must be jacked up. It should not have any borts enabled.

That's wierd. Let me check on my end. I never noticed that previously. I'm at work. So I'll check when home.

That's really too bad, and pretty short sighted of the decision makers at ED, if I can respectfully say so. There's literally no point in me submitting mine. It would look like wierd glossy grey, wet paint. The current build is broken. Even by Specular standards. A real shame. Doesn't Nick Grey want to see real looking paint/metal B-17s in the sim? We've already provided the solution and offered to give it to ED for free. I'm actually not shocked that this was the response (I kind of expected it), but I had some hope that perhaps there was a chance this would yield the best outcome. Oh well. Thanks anyway for trying Nineline. I know you were hoping for an improvement as well.

Complete. Uploading.

I'm almost finished with this one. adjusted the Engine nozzle Roughmets, Exterior, and I've added Flight Suit Patches with Normals for Pilot and WSO. I've also added the option to fly without the WSO if for some reason you ever want to... Also, I've discovered that the exterior Paint is in fact NOT vinyl decals, but actually paint. So no normals for the exterior needed.

That's because you're supposed to edit the external materials using the texture. Not the Json. So delete the json, then edit the specs. This will give you full control. Yes, agreed. People can use whatever method they please. The point is that it's silly to keep using a system that is long obsolete, and the best solution is quite simple to implememt.

Just delete it. Set whatever you want using the textures.

AFAIK we don't want any work around required for Liveries. Including deleting the json file altogether. Which doesnt do.the same thing as replacing it with yours does. The reason being, is that when people update, the updater will overwrite that file with the default one. On every update. If it doesn't anymore, than that's news to me, because it's done that for the last several years. ED needs to move the B-17 to native RMs. That's the real solution.

I think I'm finished. If we get Native Roughmets, this will be my submission.

That's really interesting! Because IIRC in the past it never used to work to get the RM enabled via Saved games. So that's a neat revelation!