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F-20 development

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Re: F-20 development

Postby vanosten » Sat May 09, 2020 7:47 am

Could you also please check whether the liveries actually work over MP? Last time (some months ago) I checked it was not correct.
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Re: F-20 development

Postby Flying toaster » Sat May 09, 2020 11:53 am

vanosten wrote in Sat May 09, 2020 7:47 am:Could you also please check whether the liveries actually work over MP? Last time (some months ago) I checked it was not correct.

Will do sometime in the future. I will need people to test with me.

And to answer to the question about tying effects to liveries, it so happens that <effects> elements in the model files do work wtih XML conditions.
So if you can point to a work around ...
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Re: F-20 development

Postby D-ECHO » Sat May 09, 2020 12:13 pm

What exactly are the values of the effect that you need to change? If it is, for example, reflection-correct then you can tie it to a property (
Code: Select all
<reflection-correction type="float"><use>/the/property/path</use></reflection-correction>
) and set this property from the livery file.
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Re: F-20 development

Postby Flying toaster » Sat May 09, 2020 1:15 pm

D-ECHO wrote in Sat May 09, 2020 12:13 pm:What exactly are the values of the effect that you need to change? If it is, for example, reflection-correct then you can tie it to a property (
Code: Select all
<reflection-correction type="float"><use>/the/property/path</use></reflection-correction>
) and set this property from the livery file.

It would be the specularity/reflectivity maps. It would require the effect to reload the texture. Anybody experimented with that in the past ?
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Re: F-20 development

Postby Flying toaster » Sun May 10, 2020 1:55 pm

I think I may have a solution, but it is an unpleasant one.
My observation is that the <use> tag does not seem to work with the <image> parameters so I can't change the texture on the fly like that.
The alternative is to preload all reflection/specular maps at once for a variant, then use a couple of integer indices bound to the property, then let the shader program select which texture to lookup.
The disadvantage of that is that your video card would rather have a large memory to handle what can possibly be a dozen high resolution textures.
Of course the best solution would be to unload the unused texture, but I would bet it does not even happen with liveries (at least the code in simgear material animation does not hint an unloading)...
Any ideas ?
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Re: F-20 development

Postby Thorsten » Sun May 10, 2020 3:20 pm

The livery code isn't made to deal with that kind of thing, so there's no graceful solutions at runtime (that's being discussed about once a year). The alternatives are

* the hacky solution: Use the <predicate> tga in a custom-written effect to switch between different specular maps/ normal maps/... - that would work runtime, but is not how the <predicate> is intended to be used

* the brute force solution: Create different xml-files wrapping the surfaces in question referring to a different effect each, use a <select> animation to determine which one is shown in-sim

* the variant solution: What you have now, doesn't work runtime
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Re: F-20 development

Postby Flying toaster » Wed May 13, 2020 2:19 pm

My dirty hack worked.
Now we are down to three variants (prototypes and fictionnal A and C).
Every aircraft can be configured with individual gloss and metallic paint effect (limited to six paint jobs per variant). Needs some tuning on the metallic effect though.
Image
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Re: F-20 development

Postby SP-NTX » Wed May 13, 2020 2:31 pm

How to download this plane
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Re: F-20 development

Postby Flying toaster » Wed May 13, 2020 2:49 pm

PL-NEXT wrote in Wed May 13, 2020 2:31 pm:How to download this plane

I may release a new update in the next couple of weeks. There is a lot of improvement going on right now !
My TODO list has about 25 items :?
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Re: F-20 development

Postby SP-NTX » Wed May 13, 2020 3:03 pm

Flying toaster wrote in Wed May 13, 2020 2:49 pm:
PL-NEXT wrote in Wed May 13, 2020 2:31 pm:How to download this plane

I may release a new update in the next couple of weeks. There is a lot of improvement going on right now !
My TODO list has about 25 items :?

Add to list bombable and air refuel
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Re: F-20 development

Postby SP-NTX » Wed May 13, 2020 3:04 pm

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Re: F-20 development

Postby Flying toaster » Wed May 13, 2020 5:03 pm

PL-NEXT wrote in Wed May 13, 2020 3:03 pm:Add to list bombable and air refuel

I will let the bombable thing to other people once I release in GPL ;)
As for air to air refuel, the F-20 was going to have a fixed probe a-la F-5C or some versions of the F-5E. That is the price to pay for such a tiny airframe.
And then fixed probes are soooo ugly. Yuck ! OK you could imagine a flying boom receptacle, but this was never installed on the F-5, it would theoretically encroach on your fuel capacity and you would have a serious issue with the dorsal antenna. Lots of reasons why I will leave that to more motivated people than me.
But you should get a decent range from 3 external tanks and a mach of .85 at altitude. Maybe not enough to cross the pond, but that should be fun doing island hopping (and there is an IRS to help).
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Re: F-20 development

Postby wkitty42 » Wed May 13, 2020 6:08 pm

i don't use either bombable or the OPRF stuff but i would consider the OPRF stuff first... it requires the least intrusion into the installation than bombable...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: F-20 development

Postby J Maverick 16 » Thu May 14, 2020 6:41 pm

wkitty42 wrote in Wed May 13, 2020 6:08 pm:i don't use either bombable or the OPRF stuff but i would consider the OPRF stuff first... it requires the least intrusion into the installation than bombable...

And it's specifically tuned for MP usage. Very customizable as well. Without counting the huge usage the plane could get if ported to the OPRF fleet considering it's already appreciated there ;) .
Regards, Mav
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Re: F-20 development

Postby Flying toaster » Thu Jul 16, 2020 3:01 pm

Hello

I have paused development for some time now but the version I have sitting on the hard drive is still a major improvement so I uploaded it for test or simple enjoyment.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AtSGTHrs9O19xycQ8oxxkohVhZLXDqvf/view?usp=sharing
Feel free to provide feedback

Note : Still not adapted to compositor, but flight controls should work much better in the transonic region.

Cheers
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