A question to Rudel about metal finish skins.

Dear Sir

Spending some time with your latest paintschemes adjusted for 2.5 (mostly in Polish "metal" ones for "patriotic" reasons ;)) I'd like to ask if you could reconsider tweaking brightness of metal ones a bit, plus toning down weathering on them.

About the brightness - they seem to be generally darker a tone or two compared to your first versions for 2.0.5-2.1 and to silver skins of Belsimtek's MiG-15 - the only other Russian plane in the sim featuring standard Eastern Block silver finish of '50s-'70s. Perhaps it's the result of gfx engine changes, I admit I fly with gamma set to 1.8, and maybe you use higher value, but it's irrelevant when comparing relative skin bigthness with other aircraft, as the difference is still there - the current -21 looks a bit like made of steel rather than aluminium.

The effect is exacerbated by excessive weathering, which, although impressive in details, is also way overdone in darkness department, especially on wings and rear part of the fuselage.

While we are at it there's one conceptual issue I've got with these skins anyway - different tones on sheets suggest you were going for alclad finish look, however, as you know, on "our" side of Iron Courtain, the planes sported actual NM finish only until their first overhaul, when they were always painted silver overall. Thus - such a heavy buildup of weathering on NM plane never happened in real life.

Well, I never saw anything similar on silver painted ones either, to be honest, unless we're talking about museum planes, standig in the open for years and rusting away :D (even they're not THAT dark, though). Not on operational ones, however.

A few comparison screens with the -15 below.

What do You think?

Cheers

very sexy, could you please do that for the soviet skin, too?

I have some issues with this effect too.

I painted some nice gray livery (with the right non-metal BG from the template) but the final result is WAAAY darker.

It's more evident as closer to Midday the sim time is.

With Deferred Shading off all seems quite more accurately rendered.

It leaves the Fishbed looking as if it's been left out in the rain at all times.