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Thankyou for the discussion! No wonder you can't get a builder round here, they are all mixing cement for Boeings apparently!Gloss paint loses it glossy-ness when blasted by air, even happens on your window frames eventually. I would re-iterate that this is not really adressed to PMDG, as all developers use shiny textures, but I only use PMDG aircraft now. I would stand by the fact that reflective textures don't match with the rest of the scenery and that detail is lost if using them. On reflection (you see what I did there?) we are probably talking about the type of reflectiveness, rather than if they reflect. An example would be- a compeletly white, matt painted object would reflect sunlight to the point of blinding you. It doesn't mean it is glossy. In that way I quite agree with you when you say they are not shiny enough. Graphics through a computer screen can never produce that effect and you wouldn't want them to.I can't agree aircraft are like glass. Glass is glass, paint is paint and they don't reflect the same way. On reflection (see I did it again, in case you missed it the first time) the problem only seems to be with dark aircraft. I've just looked at the Copa livery, it looks amazing and I have to say it probably looks better with the reflective texture.The Sun Country (not county!) aircraft looks totally unrealistic to me with that kind of reflection- which is a shame because it's a beautiful livery- beautifully painted for us. So I stand by what I said- but stand corrected also! How liberal can you get?I do also need to go to specsavers. Let me throw in another spanner, relating to another aspect of reapaints. There is a difference to the way things look in the 'wild' and the way they look 'on paper'. I was flying out of Luton a few weeks ago and I was looking at a line of Easyjets and Wizz-airs. Let me say you are unlikely to use those colours as decoration in your homes. (unless you are young and going through an experimental period). If you used a sample of the colours from a tin (in other words and exact match) to produce an aircraft repaint- I would assert the results may NOT always be correct. As I looked at the aircraft my overriding reaction was they looked really dull and boring liveries. I also just flew 5 sectors on KLM. Should be colourful, but suprising not so in real life.Why would that be? Firstly I flew out of Edinburgh, then Amsterdam then Lima and Panama. Given that it was dark in Panama and the other cities all suffer from horribly dull weather- that is a major reason. Aircraft look totally different in different conditions, so it is unlikely they can ever look right in every scanario in FSX.Then- there is atmospheric perspective. This means any distance between the viewer and the object, reduces contrast, greys (desaturates) colours and makes the object lighter or darker, depending on the conditions (usually lighter). I would say this should be noticeable even between two aircraft on adjacent stands- but by the end of a row there would be a substantially difference in colour. FSX does perspective to some degree by mip-maps, but it doesn't desaturate the colours. People who fly out of sunny places will think the colours are right, if you fly in Northern Europe as I do, you will think the colours too saturated.In summary you will never get it for everybody, but FSX does a pretty good job in trying. One thing is for sure, I'm very greatful for all those repainters that bring so much to our hobby. Some of these liveries are incredable, I don't know how you do it. If you have read all this you really must be bored and should go out more. Happy flying Keith

I would like to challange the conventional widom of all developers- that external aircraft models are rendered by reflective textures. I will offer three reasons for this. The NGX has been modelled in startling detail. It is supported by some amazing repaints, which are in sumptuous resolutions. Detail is then lost with a reflective texture blending the surface into a shine. For me the aircraft also loses some of its feeling of solidity and heavyness when polished up like this. Then there is the context. I enjoy the great detail and so by design it will not match with the ai aircraft- but for me the shiny textures just make the aircraft look out of context with all the rest of the airport scene. Not such a problem in the air though. By far the most important reason- aircraft just aren't that shiny in real life. (I may be influenced by the fact I live in Scotland and nothing shines in our weather!) Aircraft being largely painted, are quickly dulled in the blasting air. I notice my AI aircraft still have a bit of a sheen with normal textures. To me it looks much like I would expect to see in real life. I think you may be suprised how much better most liveries would look with normal textures. Especially the dark ones like Sun County. I suppose utopia would be normal textures with a few reflective wing bits for effect. Everything about this product tells me that realism was your biggest concern. For me a very shiny painted fuselage is far from reality. Discuss! By the way- congratulations on your amazing achievement with this product. Keith Harvey

Thanks for the reply. I couldn't remember if I had modified the wavs on the jetstream or not. It certainly is currently working as it should.I Should have known you were on top of this. I can't think of another aircraft or sound package I've had from any other developer that has got the wavs in the correct format. Mind you I don't think I will be buying anybody else's aircraft once the NGX is out!On the matter of prop sounds, the jetstream sound package is great and I understand why the sounds works the way they do on throttle-up. However, when you fly on such aircraft, you go from a tolerable noise level to going deaf on take-off. On future prop aircraft it would be nice to get some sense of that heavy vibration through the sound package. Not that I want to go deaf when flying it!Thanks again for the replyKeith Harvey

Hi,One of the many great advantages with FSX is surround sound. That's engines sounding behind you and wind noises infront etc. It adds massively to the realism. I have been puzzled why any new aircraft I have bought (I think that includes the Jetsream and the major players in the soundpack business) has had stereo Wav files which are not in the correct format for surround sound to work. It seems you need mono files and then FSX decides which channels to play it- by information in the config?.I can't think of an exception, so I guess there must be a reason- but when I convert the wav files for engines and wind to mono, surround sound subsequently works normally.Maybe mono wavs don't work correctly for two speakers? If that was a reason I would have thought it would have been worth an installer option for both configurations. As I say I'm puzzled!Have you come accross this issue in connection with NGX?Keith Harvey