[Remaster] [cockpit] 100%gloss materials used throuoght the cockpit

[Bucic]

Multiple cockpit components have 100% gloss material applied. This kind of material property has no place in a realistic cockpit, even on cockpit gauge glass, let alone on non-glass parts of the cockpit. Even Soviet oil paint doesn't give gloss anywhere near 100%.

Examples:

control stick

emergency cockpit glass hammer

cockpit indicator frames

probably even the radar control palm rest

adding additional items to the list:

generic metalic chromium air spherical nozzles

even the grey knobs have a metalic gloss to them

the right hand adjustable flash light with coiled cable

 

The use of such material properties additionally lead to graphical artifacts on object edges manifesting in white-ish lines that require heavy anti-aliasing. But the unrealistic look is a more serious issue here.

 

Independent of hardware configuration, or in-dcs settings.

 

EDIT 2025-02-20:

Multiple examples uploaded, added ugly metalic components to the list as I see no point in starting a separate thread.

https://1drv.ms/f/c/66cf2646234394fc/EtaGgsCLk8BNsDRTeFpxXlYBp4UqyIerOMj-QTnctB2Yfw?e=Luya4g
 

 

An additional remark:

To be confirmed (best at the radar controls and the control stick) - the affected surfaces reflect light without obeying occlusion as seen by unnatural pronounced gloss even in the shadows.

Edited February 20 by Bucic

[kl_koral]

Thanks for posting this. This property is reducing the quality of this very nice F5 cockpit.
Reducing this gloss/reflection would make the F5 soooo much nicer....

[Bucic]

I posted some 10 bug reports with the F-5 Remastered specifically and this is that last one on my bug to-do list.

This, together with the embossed cockpit panel labels and unreadable caution lights are my biggest gripes with the Remastered cockpit. Those 2 I reported earlier.

[Flappie]

Hi @Bucic

 

13 hours ago, Bucic said:

control stick

emergency cockpit glass hammer

cockpit indicator frames

probably even the radar control palm rest

Here are some comparison shots (source: https://www.mediathek.admin.ch/media/vr/611e02ed-3dfd-4d51-827f-38f6d31acf19).

I agree the hammer is way too shiny in DCS.

 

I find the radar control palm rest and control stick are spot on.

 

Can you please attach pictures of the over-shiny cockpit indicator frames? (along with a track, if possible)

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

13 hours ago, Bucic said:

This kind of material property has no place in a realistic cockpit

I completely agree, and I suspect this is due to the “remaster” we got, which are newer textures on top of the original cockpit - instead of a new cockpit AND new textures.

Obviously I’m not a texture artist nor 3D modeller so I don’t know how material properties are defined, but I do notice that other older modules such as the Mi-8 have the exact same exaggerated shiny-ness to it and I suspect this is due to incompatibility with deferred shading and PBR.

In fact, this is one of the major reasons why the release of this remaster was so controversial and got so many people angry at ED: we were told the new F-5 would be updated to the latest graphical standards, while it obviously isn’t.

[twistking]

16 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

[...] Obviously I’m not a texture artist nor 3D modeller so I don’t know how material properties are defined, but I do notice that other older modules such as the Mi-8 have the exact same exaggerated shiny-ness to it and I suspect this is due to incompatibility with deferred shading and PBR. [...]

This suspicion is probably incorrect. The the PBR rendering simply requires a different set of material maps. As we definitely got new textures (and also some new geometry), it is safe to say that those textures are set up for PBR (they would not look as convincing otherwise).

[Bucic]

@FlappieWell, maybe not the radar controller but many other components across the cockpit. Including the control stick which is constantly in view.

Unlike in other cases I think it's clear that this time you couldn't go wrong with a broad brush approach - no near 100% gloss should be present in F-5E ccockpit Especially knowing rendering caveats. High amount of gloss causes thick transparent laquer appearance.

Edited February 20 by Bucic

[kl_koral]

@Flappie:

please don't get me wrong. I find the cockpit very nice and close to reality. But in a lot of light conditions the borders of the dials seem to have maxed out reflection leading to white borders when you are in 1080p MSAA setting. Its kind of distracting, I'll try to upload a screenshot later.
Its only for the edges and borders especially at the engine gauges. General surfaces are looking good. Glass on dials really beautiful.

I think its a combination of too high reflection and aliasing at lower resolutions. Its not like this in other modules, or those have surfaces with less reflective setting.

[Flappie]

2 hours ago, kl_koral said:

I'll try to upload a screenshot later

Yes, please. It's a bug report about 3D rendering and I didn't see any screenshot yet, let alone tracks.

[kl_koral]

I find it hard to reproduce it in a screenshot. So I jumped into an F5 with external lights and moved around. You will see that all black edges start to reflect with extreme white reflection leading to shimmering. For me in the f5 this is much worse than in other modules.

I'm not a 3D expert and maybe its not that easy to fix. Reducing this shimmering would make it even better than it is.
 

very hard to see in screenshot. I posted a short video.

Edited February 20 by kl_koral

[kl_koral]

LastMissionTrack.trk

vor 9 Minuten schrieb Flappie:

Yes, please. It's a bug report about 3D rendering and I didn't see any screenshot yet, let alone tracks.

yes Sir

[Bucic]

I posted a set of multiple screenshots in the OP edit.

[twistking]

I don't want to invalidate this bug report, but want to add a few things for context.

1. The shimmering is not a problem with the F-5e. It's just something that the renderer does and which is maybe more visible with the F-5's materials. It can be alleviated with running higher resolutions or different upscaling/AA techniques.
2. This may come across as pedantic, but i think it's worth pointing out to help communications on the topic: PBR materials don't have glossiness properties, but roughness and metallic. So i think technically the OP is criticizing low roughness. On the emergency hammer, it's perhaps also the case of metallic being too high.

Personally i don't think that roughness is generally too low for the plastic materials (radar palm rest, flight stick), but i will take a closer look next time i'm playing.

 

Edited February 20 by twistking

[Bucic]

8 minutes ago, twistking said:

I don't want to invalidate this bug report, but want to add a few things for context.

1. The shimmering is not a problem with the F-5e. It's just something that the renderer does and which is maybe more visible with the F-5's materials. It can be alleviated with running higher resolutions or different upscaling/AA techniques.
2. This may come across as pedantic, but i think it's worth pointing out to help communications on the topic: PBR materials don't have glossiness properties, but roughness and metallic. So i think technically the OP is criticizing low roughness. On the emergency hammer, it's perhaps also the case of metallic being too high.

Personally i don't think that roughness is generally too low for the plastic materials (radar palm rest, flight stick), but i will take a closer look next time i'm playing.

 

I don't claim to be an expert on texturing, just a keen-eyed bastard  

ad 1. I know. It's a separate issue pretty much unsolvable right now. Simply inherent to how DCS renderer works.

ad 2. Thanks for pointing this out. I wouldn't like to get burried in semantics here. I only go by "out of this world" vs "realistic". The Remastered cockpit is so fine! It just needs some touchups here and there.

[twistking]

I now looked at @Bucic's pictures.

1. I agree that the air nozzles look off. They are way too pristine and have an unnatural shine to them.
2. The flashlight also looks a little bit off. Unsure what material this is supposed to be though...
3. I also agree that some of the knobs are a bit too "glossy"
4. I still think that the black plastics look good. On one of the image there is indeed a very strong specular reflection (palm rest) that is not physically motivated, but this is not a material issue directly. I don't know what technique DCS uses to inform specular reflections. So this could be an engine limitation or a badly placed light probe or whatever. In any case, this is a separate issue. The material reacts correctly to light that should not be there: Not a material issue!

Edited February 20 by twistking

[kl_koral]

it could be a DCS limitation, but I must say, that especially the cockpit of the f5 is like this, because the reflections from the black borders are white (maxed out) and this is creating a strong contrast and together with aliasing to that shimmering.
It is much better with TAA, but with TAA in the dogfights the oponent is invisible and with headtracking everything is blury (nature of TAA, no blame here)... so no way of using it.

 

If its not solvable by a simple setting I will live with it and will still enjoy the module.. It was not as bad in the old cockpit thogh and I have set a little hope that it would get better ;-). The remaster was an instant buy because I somehow love the F5.

 

Thank you guys for having a look at it

[Bucic]

4 hours ago, kl_koral said:

it could be a DCS limitation, but I must say, that especially the cockpit of the f5 is like this, because the reflections from the black borders are white (maxed out) and this is creating a strong contrast and together with aliasing to that shimmering.
It is much better with TAA, but with TAA in the dogfights the oponent is invisible and with headtracking everything is blury (nature of TAA, no blame here)... so no way of using it.

 

If its not solvable by a simple setting I will live with it and will still enjoy the module.. It was not as bad in the old cockpit thogh and I have set a little hope that it would get better ;-). The remaster was an instant buy because I somehow love the F5.

 

Thank you guys for having a look at it

I assure you the white borders are caused by the near 100% gloss materials applied. The limitation goes like this and it isn't specific to DCS. There was an epidemic of that effect around 2010's across different games. I think Unity games were notorious for this. And it goes like this. The gloss somehow gives an appearance of a lacquer coating with a thickness. Once you look at a curved surface arc tangentially that thickness no longer has the object behind it, is in full view and becomes what constitutes the object's contour. That contour then switches to a very high contrast color (white-ish, blue-ish, whatever) significantly detached from environment conditions.

Edited February 21 by Bucic

[Bucic]

4 hours ago, kl_koral said:

it could be a DCS limitation, but I must say, that especially the cockpit of the f5 is like this, because the reflections from the black borders are white (maxed out) and this is creating a strong contrast and together with aliasing to that shimmering.
It is much better with TAA, but with TAA in the dogfights the oponent is invisible and with headtracking everything is blury (nature of TAA, no blame here)... so no way of using it.

 

Do whatever you can to configure your DCS to run DLAA slowly increase and test the sharpening value.

[kl_koral]

AMD user here, so no DLAA... TAA is very bad in dogfights. The bandit is fading away so no point in using this. And I won't buy a nvidia card just to get rid of some glossy borders in a module. Other modules dont have this as much...

Edited February 21 by kl_koral

[Bucic]

@kl_koral didn' t post it as a solution, merely as something to try out in the meantime.