1. Is there a way to make transparent or glass in FSDS2 have a reflective coating to make it look like real glass?2. Can a fuel selector be animated in a VC to select tank, Left, Right, Centre and off?thanks

I imagine the best way with the glass is to use alpha shine. As for the panel, I imagine its possible no tsure gow tough.Hope that helps.James

Well, I tried this myself after getting a tip or two from Deane over at Freeflightdesign. I finally came up with a Material like so:Diffuse Color 52, 104, 61, 120Ambient Color 0, 64, 0 , 255Specular Color 255,255,255,255Emissive Color 0, 0, 0, 255Specular Power 190Check the "Use Transparent Textures" box. I applied an 8bit texture made transparent in FSDS2 with a medium gray alpha (not fully transparent).Darned if it didn't work! Seems very convincing to me. It was Brian Gladdens' C140 that motivated me to try. His looks great.You probably could animate a fuel selector lever, but it may not have any affect in the sim, it would just look cool. That may change with FS9 (maybe).Good Lucktelephile

Thanks, ill try the glass.

Everything went great except one little snag. The front window is perfect. Its reflects and you can see through it. The side windows reflect, but for some reason, everthing behind them dissapears. The seats and interior are gone??? Why is this?

Make sure the windows are the last thing in the build list. Do this by selecting all the windows, hitting ctrl x and then ctrl v. Also when you compile the model make sure the little box at the bottom for Autosort parts is UN checked.Brian

Tried it and it did not work. I cut all teh glass out and CTRL V d it at the end . Made sure AUOT SORT was UNchecked. I can only see the other side of my plane through the front window? I am lost here. The side windows are identical to the front and they are all the last items made? I am ready to give up. Thanks for the help!

I ahve tried everything. The only thing that brings the inside of the plane back is removing the texture. I stiil don't understand how the front windshield using the same texture remains intact?

I have noticed that problem with side windows myself. I think it might have something to do with how Flat the polys are for the window. where a windshield is curved but a side window (depending on the plane) is pretty flat. I noticed this problem on a few of my planes. Right now I'm just sticking to specular color/dynamic shine on my windows.Brian

Damn, that is a shame because the front window looks like it is from a photograph. Now, abouyt spec/dynamic, is there a way to simulate or make it look closer to the real thing?Thanks

I am still a beginner, but one thing I found the other day with side windows is that I had to copy my fuse into a new model, then flip the polys. That allowed me to see the inside of my aircraft through the side windows... If I copied the fuse into the same model and flipped the polys, I could not view the inside of the plane through the window.... I hope this helps...-John

Interesting observation.You're not talking about doing the VC model, but rather a second model (such as one would do for an LOD model) containing, probably, a duplicate of the VC parts?

"You're not talking about doing the VC model, but rather a second model (such as one would do for an LOD model) containing, probably, a duplicate of the VC parts?"Exactly, although not all the V/C parts would have to be duplicated if one wanted to save fps. From a poly count standpoint, there should be no penalty for dedicating "exterior" interior view shots to their own model, vs. including them in the same model where the exterior visuals are built. I haven't had much time to play with this, however..

GOT IT!!!!!!Brian, your post was the key to solving the side window problem. It is the flat surface. The way I got around it was to cut out my original windows, make a tube with the same number of points and only 1 section (2 rows of dots). After carefully placing 1 row in place so that it fit the window cutout, I snapped them in tight. I then moved the 2nd row very close but enough that there was a bit of a bump and shrank that ring so that it was 1/2 the size of the original. Once you polysmooth it and applied texure, VIOLA.Short version, make a slight bump that is not noticable in your flat windows.Cheers

Ok, so it is no tthe bumps. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I have however narrowed it down. Any part that is NOT animated works fine. As soon as I animate a part, it fails. Must be an FSDS problem because I see Gmax planes with animated parts that work fine.