Need a little help - have the same model rendered in P3Dv4 and FSX... The FSX image has proper shading - edge detection - and - specular shine - - - it looks good... The same model rendered in P3D - doesn’t shade the objects correctly - is dull and drab - even upon the closest of inspections of knobs and such - you can’t even detect the shape of the mesh - it just looks like a formless blob without definition - and there is no specular shine...
If you have VC shadows on, perhaps they are in shadow. Specular and diffuse light from the sun won't shade surfaces that are in shadow. With the new pbr material you would still pick up some environmental reflection. Try opening the time preview window and using the slider to adjust the time of day. That'll give you a better idea of how it looks in different lighting conditions.
First off - thanks for the very prompt response - honestly - I wasn’t expecting a direct response from LM - I’m pleasantly surprised... Much appreciated - as we’ve never had this kind of rapore with Microsoft...
OK - as you stated - that seems to be what is happening - I guess in order to see the 3D detail when in shade - you have to paint contrasting colors on various faces - in relation to an imagined light source - in the VC ? I’ve been working on the overhead panel textures and when the knobs are painted a uniform color - it’s impossible to discern their shape - and the overhead panel is probably always in shade... Seems like a huge amount of additional work is required by the modeler/texture guy...
It would be nice if somehow the lighting could do a bit of the work for us - but I don’t know the technical aspects of sim lighting... I haven’t messed with PBR lighting yet - so as you stated - that might be part of the solution...
You could either turn VC shadows off, or place a dim point light effect in your model. When objects are not directly lit, they get their lighting from ambient lighting. In our standard material, the ambient light color is based on the time of day. As you noted, objects in shadow still have some shading to them in the real world. This comes from ambient occlusion and from the fact that ambient light isn't uniform because its comes from light bouncing off of other things. Typical process for non-pbr materials (in any game or sim engine) is to bake occlusion into your diffuse texture by darkening areas like corners where less light bounces. For PBR, the occlusion is stored in a separate map or channel. This allows for more physically correct simulation of light. In both cases there is some artist work needed to author the textures. There are tools out there for simulating bounce lighting and using the results to "bake" occlusion data into a texture. This can save a lot of artist time.
