With FS9 it seems to me aircraft have way too much contrast, particularly when the sun is hitting them. Of course you can cut down contrast on the whole sim, but then other areas get a bit washed out. Exterior views of aircraft looked much nicer to me with FS2004 with re to this contrast issue. Seems high quality is worse than medium. Noel

I agree, aircraft seem washed out more, as do chrome surfaces. Not sure if this can be fixed in repainting, or if its just part of the way textures are displayed

FS9 seems to treat the specular "dynamic shine" much stronger than FS2002. These values are set in the model for the texture mapping.Opacity/transparency of windows and glossiness were also affected. Glossiness is set in the texture alpha but window opacity is set in the model.All things we try to adjust to in the FS9 updates to get at realism.Milton

Milton,Is there an easy way to edit a model to change these variables for non-designers? I would like to change window reflectivity and such on a few FS2002 designs.Best,Joel

Depends how the reflectivity is applied. I think most are doing it through the texture and its alpha channel which can be found in the texture folders.Comments I've read are that the base color (everyone uses their own preference (black-gray-blue-green)depending on the aircraft) needs to be a bit darker (R,G,:( and the alpha needs to be a bit stronger (darker R,G,:(. The aircraft color around the windows change the apparent glossiness and reflectivity strength appearance. Furthermore, the glossiness and specular (applied strength in the model) need to be collaborative for best results.Seems the window opacity is less as well on 2002 converted models. I bumped mine up by 15-20 points (more opaque) to get less transparency. This helps on the glossiness as well.BTW, if you run into glowing chrome at night, try darkening the alpha.DXTbmp is one freeware tool that can help you through these changes modifying the base and alphas separately. Don't forget to turn off the Mipmaps.Milton

OMG are you talking about modifying all texture files in each aircraft?Noel

Negative, referring only to windows glossiness.However, if specular is too strong, all textures with that issue would have to be changed in the model source, one at a time.Window opacity and dynamic shine must be changed in the model; glossiness is usually controlled by the alpha in the texture but there are other considerations such as base color and opacity.For my aircraft, I simply adjusted the windows, not the textures. The specular values were a little strong but I let them ride. I made some adjustments to chrome parts.Milton

Have you checked out Tony Gould's replacement textures for the default aircraft in FS2004? He has cleaned up the texture blurriness not only for the aircraft textures but the virtual cockpits as well. They look much better than the default ones. The files are self-installing and I've had no issues with them or the ones for the virtual cockpits. Very nice work.