Cockpit Glass shading

[Insuber]

Let's try a quantitative approach. Plexiglass (poly-methyl-metacrilate, pardon my chemical engineering studies ) has a transparency of 92%, pretty much independent from thickness. It filters only 8% of light. A good optical glass is almost equivalent.

I took a screenshot with open canopy, and tried to measure the RGB in close areas of sky, 1 is free blue sky without canopy, #2 is behind the windshield. I don't know how much glass is in the armored windshield, but let's look at the figures:



The perceived brightness through the windshield (formula HERE) is 82% of the clear undisturbed sky. A reduction of 18%, against 8% of pure Perspex is way too much.


I will do the same exercise for the lateral areas of the canopy.

Cheers,
Insuber

[Insuber]

And now the lateral canopy. Again too dark, according to my measurements:



Remember that Perspex white light transmission is 92%. Here we have 78% ....

Luthier would you take a look at this please, after the major issues will be solved ?

Cheers,
Insuber

PS: I attribute to the different time of the day the fact that lateral shading is higher than the front shield shading in my two takes: by all evidence the game's shading is higher with darker sky. I can take measurements at dusk to prove this, but I assume that the main point is demonstrated.

[Insuber]

I believe also that at dusk the shading is even stronger. Not very realistic IMHO.

[bongodriver]

But glass/perspex or whatever still catches shadow and light, all of the science talk is great but what you get in a lab is different to what you see in real life, the surface is covered in dust/scratches and other detritis, even if it is relatively new it picks up dirt pretty quick, this does make it seem fairly dark.

[Insuber]

Yes but the ground crew were very careful at cleaning canopies, since the life of the pilot depended from it. And as the average life of a fighter was few weeks, anyway the wear was not an issue. So I believe that the 18-22% of light absorption in-game is way too much with respect to the 8% of chemistry data. Do we settle for 10%? ...

[bongodriver]

I couldn't quantify with a particular percentage, all I have is the experience of how sitting under perspex seems to me and even new/clean perspex casts a fair bit of shadow and in game it doesn't feel so wrong to me, but I will concede that 20% does sound too much.

[Insuber]

Since the shading is quite disturbing, I fly always with open canopy, and noticed that several online players do the same. We didn't have this issue with Il2-1946.

Cheers,
Insuber

[bongodriver]

Originally Posted by Insuber

Since the shading is quite disturbing, I fly always with open canopy, and noticed that several online players do the same. We didn't have this issue with Il2-1946.

Cheers,
Insuber

true but il2 1946 doesn't have the same shader materials and self shadowing effects.........semantics really I guess, one thing reading all the forum illustrates is there will 'never' be a one size fits all solution to any software.

Well, hope they will fix those fake tracers first...

Then they could reduce transparency opacity from 20% to 10 %...

Salute !

[Insuber]

Yeah, it is a low priority issue, but still it's very visible ... and IMO it's not as controversial as the tracers ... In this case measurements are much easier ...