PMDG and other third party devs need help with their texturing

[CalmEspresso]

Hello, I wanted to make this post to highlight an issue with blurry textures that I have seen with several payware planes.

I’ve noticed that even the best of the best payware planes suffer from FSX-like textures. Please see below a comparison between the A320 and the recently released PMDG DC-6. After all the praise that PMDG receives, I was shocked to see such abysmal texturing work on the $55 DC-6 payware add-on. This is simply unacceptable for MSFS.

Asobo, could you please help PMDG and other third party devs release planes with textures up to par with the default planes?

PMDG DC-6 ($55 payware):

A320:

[Bishop398]

There’s really nothing for Asobo to do here.

The texture resolution and mapping scheme is 100% a choice of the payware developers. There are no SDK issues preventing third parties from using the same resolution and fidelity provided by the first party planes. It’s just a matter of choice or ability.

Whether or not an individual developer has decided it is economically feasible to redo their surface work for the next generation is more of a personal decision for those developers. As well, every development house has a different level of art talent on board, and as art assets become higher fidelity reaching that requires a larger percentage of effort than in the past.

The workflow for creating modern high quality models generally involves both a very very high resolution model and a lower resolution model to bake details into the PBR surfaces. Previous generation models will likely not have been created with that workflow in mind and thus may be difficult to match in fidelity without totally new assets. Some developers may also not have experience with tools like Surface Painter.

I assume that as products move from being ports to being brand new you will see less of this friction as developers adopt newer modeling workflows.

I will also add that the Asobo art assets are extraordinarily well done overall, so despite being default, may represent a difficult bar for third parties to match without upgrading their skillsets.

-Matt | Working Title

[NeoKingRthur]

All you need is a higher resolution texture and that should solve the jagged issue. If you look at Livery mods on Flightsim.to. And especially when you look for the 8K, 10K, and 16K texture resolutions. They’re smooth and sharp.

So it applies the same way, it depends on how well the texture designer is willing to work with. Of course, the higher the resolution, the more VRAM you need. And it will come to a critical point, where the texture can go so high until your VRAM starts getting full and your FPS suffers. So livery designers needs to balance between the two.

[PathlessSpore60]

I have to admit I don’t really have the technical know-how to make a really meaningful contribution, but what the heck, here are my 50 cents. I have noticed that with certain devs the in-cockpit fps (I use VR exclusively, G2 with a 2080Ti) are generally better. Just Flight Arrow and Aerosoft CRJ are great in VR (fps-wise), whereas I always struggle with Carenado products and the FBW A320. I have always suspected that that comes down to texture resolution (Carenado products are super-pretty and shiny). So, I definitely want devs to keep the performance in mind, and not just up the resolution mindlessly for every screw and rivet on the plane…

[CalmEspresso]

Thank you for your perspective. As you stated in your last sentence Asobo has the talent to produce excellent art assets. Thus, I am suggesting that Asobo could help bring the third party developer’s skillsets up to Asobo’s level. In this case, the PMDG DC-6 is amazing in many ways with its weak point being the texturing. How great would it be if we could have the DC-6 with all it’s complexities AND the texturing on par with Asobo’s default planes?

[blueline308]

That is like Ford letting Goodyear use its manufacturing plant for free. It ain’t gonna happen.

[AthenaGrey1]

PMDG could have multitude reasons for their decision on textures. But assuming that PMDG, being among the topmost add-on developers, needs help is quite presumptuous. If anything is needed, they are already in a position to do so themselves without any solicitation on their behalf.

[CalmEspresso]

Some of the texturing on the DC-6 looks unprofessional (lines not straight when they should be - see pic #1). Just because they are great at building complex aircraft systems does not mean that they are great at artwork.

[MasterlySloth45]

I am guessing that the developers are having to do this to keep things frame rate friendly. Maybe Dx 12 will help out and Dx12 should have been with us from the start.

[MegaRiceBall734]

Aerosoft mentioned in their CRJ release that they leveraged this new “decal” technique offered by MSFS. It looks like PMDG didn’t go with that

[somethingbrite]

@CalmEspresso

Just because they are great at building complex aircraft systems

In which case it seems to me that PMDG have identified what their target market really wants quite well.
Presumably they are sitting in the cockpit focused on flying the plane and handling those systems rather than sitting just off the wing looking at the paint job.

[Hugothester]

I think both are important, the DC-6 is for me a 10/10 but yeah, textures could be better. Do current textures bother me though? Nah, not really, I rarely approach the camera close enough to see them in detail.

I believe we will see an improvement in textures over time, they probably worked with 2k or 4k textures and they should be going for 8k or more, once they notice they will learn how to do it with their next plane.

[fascat71]

I also think that both are important. I do not have the DC-6 but looking at the screenshots above I can only agree with the poor quality there. Keeping in mind that the DC-6 was an aircraft from the 50s/60’s mostly built by hand, without the CAD and laser cutting tools of today, those textures are still looking below par.

Now, first of all, I have to say this. I do not spend a penny on commercial third-party aircraft. Never did for FS9, FSX and never will for MSFS. Why? Two reasons: One, when I look through the files and textures (as I do) it seems that I always find something even the modest me can do better. Two, because right now there is a big shortage of large airliner aircrafts in the sim and commercial devs are obviously trying to capitalize on that. I believe that with time, freeware third-party developer groups will form and these guys and gals will then push the boundaries of what is possible to create in the sim. This is what happened with FSX over the years with well known groups such as TDS, OpenSky, Project Airbus and so on. It is also important to point out that the MSFS SDK is still a WIP.

Now about the way to achieve good looking graphical results, I believe, depends on 2 things. One is a good 3D model and two is good quality textures. I have been making liveries for years in FSX (DX10) and I have learned a few things. For example, you cannot add specular (or bump) textures to an aircraft unless the model actually supports it in the first place. So the model is pivotal for a good result.

Then, like it has been said already above, the texture resolution also makes a difference, 8K, 4K, … bigger is better of course, but bigger will also affect your FPS, as bigger textures take longer to load. So here I think a compromise is needed, where excellent quality texturing should be achieved at the lowest resolution possible. That is what I usually go by in my projects.

Here is below a little screenshot of what I mean. I recently made an A330-900neo conversion from an FSX model. Now there are 2 important things here: One, the model has been modified to take advantage of the MSFS graphic engine. Two, the textures are 2048x2048px (HD/2K) only, with Alpha transparency, and saved as DXT5 using the FSX SDK! Now I hope you will agree on the quality of the final result.

[OSalvadorO]

Its a PMDG decision, remember that they have migrated this (and probably the future 737) from their FSX product. Carenado have done the same and its a matter of go to market times and putting the commercial machine to works. They really need to re-do the textures to a higher resolution, but its hard work (or time consuming that goes against my time to market point). The same happens with the cockpit, it still miss the realistic textures feeling and a bit gamey.

I must admit that MSFT/Asobo have put a lot of effort on the default aircrafts textures, probably the best default aircrafts of this flight sim generation. Just get into the TBM and looks stunning outside and also the cockpit, the swtiches, the sounds, the clicks… I remember the team spending a lot of time researching the planes, recording them, using 3D lasers to get the polygons… probably out of the 3rd parties budget.

Hopefully is a matter of time, the PMDG and the likes should update the textures in the future, when the FSX migrations finishes and the next gen planes arrive.

A matter of time I guess,.

[SPERABrentH]

That’s not really the issue here, though… the decals allow you to mirror the base paint scheme on both sides of the aircraft, then add “stickers” for text, logos or anything else that would be backwards on the other side of the plane. So, in theory, you get a smaller texture size overall without loss of quality, but add a bunch more small textures.

This just looks like they opted for a smaller overall textures for perf. After all, 8K is 4x larger memory footprint than 4k

[BostonJeremy77]

Just so you guys know, Aerosoft has gone back to 2K resolution, so… that one is just fine and sufficient. No need for 4K or 8K stuff to make it look good.

[gordongreig]

I have the dc-6, and I don’t think I could be less bothered about some textures I have to hunt around with the drone to find aren’t 100% sharp. Maybe just me. Calling that unprofessional is beyond being unfairly critical though. I also saw that someone asked for a refund cos they didn’t like textures, which feels a bit excessive too to me.

[CalmEspresso]

It’s not about “hunting” for it. For me, I like to set custom wing views to quickly swap to during my flights. I could not look past the blurry textures from the very first time I tried to look down the wing. There is no excuse since the default planes can do it no problem. It’s up to PMDG to put in the work rather than copy paste from FSX.

[gordongreig]

Well tbh, I expect this is a bit like chasing frame rates turn off the fps counter and don’t worry about it.

Not looked, not noticed and not bothered

[wcoesel]

some people are more interested in how it looks than how it operates and flies obviously.
i am pretty sure someone will come up with superduper hd tetxtures liveries sooner or later.