Simple question. Most payware aircraft i have (esp all carenado planes) tints the VC windows the cockpit. Is there anyway to change it so that there is less or no tint?

Simple question. Most payware aircraft i have (esp all carenado planes) tints the VC windows the cockpit. Is there anyway to change it so that there is less or no tint?

I'm looking to do the same thing. I'm going to try to do it in PhotoShop but I haven't tried it as yet. The Caranado aircraft are exspecially bad. jerrycwo4

If it is like any other texture, then it would probably be simply a case of making a slightly darker grey on the alpha channel of the texture, to increase the transparency levelAl

If it is like any other texture, then it would probably be simply a case of making a slightly darker grey on the alpha channel of the texture, to increase the transparency levelAl

I've never done any texture editing in fs9 but do have slight experience in photoshop. I don't know much about alpha channels or the like. Would you be able to explain in a little detail about how this is done, and what file controls the window tint?

hi,Me too I found that the window tinting was too dark in the 206. So I changed it as on several aircraft because I like transparent window, even though it maybe less realistic.It is easy to do. First you have to install a freeware utility called dxTBmp, very handy an easy to use. Within this program select paint as the alpha editor. The file to modify is named plexi206 (save the original and add original to its name) in the texture folder. Open it with dxTBmp open the alpha editor , select the image and modify the color, the blacker, the more transparent. save it. That's it. Of course I could post my file but there may be legal issues.

how would i find what file I need to edit for other planes? Also, do reflections stay after the mod?

hi,there is no general rule to find the file to modify as each designer uses whatever name he wants. You have to guess which file located in the texture directory is used for window transparency. There are not so many possibilities so it is doable.Reflexions stay if you modify the alpa channel slightly. You have to test to find the proper balance.Hope that helps.It may seem daunting but it is easy...otherwise I would have never been able to do it. :(

Just so you can get your head around it, here's a bit of an expanded explanation:Most effects such as transparency, chrome, reflectivity and all that kind of thing are created by the software reading extra channels on an image in addition to the typical RGB (Red, Green and Blue) channels that make up the normal range of colours. All of those three colour channels have a gamut range of 256, i.e you can have 256 possible shades of red, 256 of green and 256 of blue, and when mixed together those three create all the colours of your texture. But you will see 0-255 on the ranges because zero counts as one of the 256 possibilities. In addition to those colour channels, some image file formats (such as the ones FS uses) can support extra channels (normally referred to as 'alpha channels'), and these also have a range of 256, but in the case of these additional channels, the range is from pure black to pure white, and typically, pure black on an alpha channel will be read by FS as completely transparent, and pure white will be read as completely opaque. So in addition to setting the transparency with the tone you pick, you could (if you fancied) paint a slightly darker pattern where the windscreen wipers go and create the appearance of a cleaner bit on your windows, or put a crack in the window or a bullet hole or whatever.The most recent versions of FS can also support a range of additional channels on textures for other properties, such as the 'shinyness' of a texture, specular highlight reflectivity, or a pseudo chrome effect etc, so you will occasionally come across textures with weird colours or patterns on their channels which serve those purposes.You can pull off some neat tricks with Alpha channels if you play around with them (always make back ups incidentally, in case you arse things up). Here's an example of one such trick...I wanted the recently released Catalina for FSX to look like an ex-military one that a cargo company had bought cheap and then not done a very good job of removing the national insignia, so what I did was paint out the insignia on the main colour channels, but leave the alpha channel for its shinyness untouched, which is a quick way to make it appear as though an insignia has been removed but left some evidence behind (also one to watch out for if you don't want to leave evidence behind when repainting). You can see that effect on the wings and in between the serial number on the fuselage, that is not on the texture, it is on the alpha channel:Hope that help a bit.Al

Thanks a lot for that explanation, def helps! So I should use that dxTBmp program to edit? Or should i use photoshop?

The real point of DXTBmp is that it can open all the FS texture file formats, whereas some paint programs cannot do that (Photoshop needs a plug in to open DDS files for example, Paint.net has native support for DDS files). Therefore, to get around that if you need to, you can open your texture in DXTBmp, convert it into a file format your paint program can open (by choosing 'save as' when you have it open in DXTBmp and picking some file format you know your paint program can handle), then open that one up in your paint program and do the tweak, save it, and then open that altered texture up in DXTBmp again and reconvert it back to the format FS uses (i.e. stick it back in the FS format after you've changed it)So if you like, you can think of DXTBmp as 'an interpreter'Al

Another tip for DXTbmp is to open an FS texture file such as DXT3, Export the Alpha Channel to a folder, edit the base Texture as described above, them Import the Alpha and save as DXTs again. :(

CAUTION: Do not use the "Send to Paint program" feature from DXTBMP.exe as it will cause pixel degradation!Instead, after loading the image in DXTBMP.exe, SaveAs to another format (Targa 32 is best), then load the .tga file into your paint program.After editing the .tga file, save it back to file and use DXTBMP.exe to load and convert it to your required Extended Bitmap format.Also, make certain that you have the very latested version of DXTBMP.exe directly from Martin's website, as earlier versions had a broken DDS exporter... :(

I still prefer imagetool myself though both work well. I open the bmp in Imagetool, save it as a TGA file. Open it in photoshop, edit the alpha channel, main texture, or whatever. Save the file with Alpha Channels (a little check box on the save window). Open it in Imagetool and save it as a bmp file. All done. No importing or exporting channels. It's easy as cake and I have been doing it for years and years. :)