I think the problem is not caused by caching, but rather by 3rd party liveries. Take that one for example:
It builds on the old textures and unless the creator redoes their work for the new texture set, any user will be stuck with the double rivets. Or, alternatively, they’d have to remove those from Fuselage_Decals.
Don’t get me wrong - I welcome the change. However, I still think the panel lines, screw heads, and rivets are overly represented. You barely see them even when you’re close to the aircraft, let alone when the plane moves.:
So I’ll still put some work into editing these parts of the texture.
By the way, the crosses on the German liveries - I don’t know whether they have been raised to your attention - are the wrong ones. Bundeswehr doesn’t use a complete outline but only the v-shaped bits in the corners:
The slight line comes from it being a sticker.
In my case I wanted a Eurofighter without any special paint, just a standard air force squadron skin. For this reason I used a third party skin. The reason for the double visible rows of rivets is due to these textures, that was already clear. But the visibility of these lines still seems too strong to me. I think it’s great that a creator pays attention to the comments about his work here in the forum. This is rare, but I think it has advantages and can improve some things as a result.
After the latest update I’m again no longer able to move heading. The marked heading is just wobbling an inch from left to right when I want to select any direction. (Xbox)
This is due to the fact that the new textures lie on top like a second layer. It looks like there are also several files that represent these structures on the fuselage and the wings. So changing the panel line file would only fix the visualisation of the lines at the fuselage. Fuselage_Decals.png.dds are the squares with the rivets but I haven’t really looked at it in detail.
The picture is over 15 years old and as you can see very clearly when you compare it with the picture that FloSchulz90 posted above, the thickness of the white outline has changed over time.
Regarding panel lines - yes, that’s just a square of gray.
In general, I think this variant with decals (as propagated by Asobo in the SDK) makes repaints easier (and gives the user the opportunity to tone those structures down a bit). Changing after initial release is just a bit more work for 3rd party painters since they have to redo their work.
