One could tweak the alpha layer to infinity, but this might be as good as it gets as far as I'm concerned:
The arrow shows the 2 texture maps...with my old alpha on the Mid texture map, and the new on the Nose map.  You can also see I switched the rivets from black to off-white...looks MUCH better and a ton more realistic.

Here are the window frames...my 1st pass at them (metallic) are all the windows except the one under the arrow...that will be tweaked and become the final for this AA paint (after getting really good photos of them from a fellow simmer). 

You simply can't appreciate in a still pic how awesome the shine is when you walk around the aircraft and the sunlight gleams off the shiny surface...I love were the nose curves down just above air sensor..that reflection is so cool.

I'll be doing a LOT of work around the L1 door, weathering it to reflect (pun intended) how it looks on the real girl!

This may become my most detailed paint ever, and if you've followed my work over the years...you understand the significance of that statement. 

Now that's what I call attention to detail!

2 hours ago, sascha said:

Now that's what I call attention to detail!

Thanks Sascha!

Getting the shine and reflectivity correct is one of my major goals...its by far the hardest part of painting!  There so much trial and error, you have to load her up in the sim after every adjustment (the 3d model viewer we use to quickly preview our paints won't cut it as it does not replicate the lighting engine in P3d), putting the sim in Slew mode, rotating the plane around at every conceivable angle to check the reflections, using the Time Preview function in P3d to adjust the time to see how she's looking as the sun is coming up in early morning, late evening and various parts of the day.

Folks not familiar with the complexities of painting have no idea how much work goes into paints in general and many times the basic painting effort when its a metal plane. I've already spent so many hours staring at this paint that I've gotten eye strain and subsequent headaches where I've had to put the brush down for a while an step away from the screen completely and re-focus my eyes on distant objects for a while.

We you guys get to load the plane up in the sim yourself, you'll see just how much a well-designed, exhaustively-tested alpha layer and metal base paint will make the gleaming metal surface come alive as she makes a turn into a beautiful sunrise.

I Love Rivets