Gibbage

Last I checked I could not find the sale page. Im still waiting for a reply on if they plan to still support it. Its been over a year since the last update (2.3).

Doing a work flow tutorial is on my list of things I want to do, but right now Quixel Suites (my main tool) may no longer be supported anymore. The sales page is gone and the support group is no longer responding to questions if they plan on supporting it in the future! So I cant justify doing a workflow tutorial on a product that is no longer supported or sold. I will be learning Substance soon and will convert over if Quixel is no longer supporting Suite/DDO/NDO. Its a word not allowed shame since its such a nice tool set.

I did a quick rundown of what PBR is and how to use it in PBR. I also show off a little of the Zenith 701 at the end 😉 YouTube! PBR Primer If you guys like this, I will try and do more. Let me know what you think and if you have any questions.

In 3D Studio's its as simple as just selecting the PBR shader and filling in the texture slots. The hard part is generating those texture slots.

Another quick update. Looks like Quixel materials work well. It seems like the PBR implantation is a bit basic, and I would LOVE more control over a few more things in the shader (like normal map power), but its "serviceable". Flight Sim World's PBR shader was much better overall, but this is still leaps and bounds above what FSX had. Some samples of base materials from Quixel like Chrome, aluminum, rubber, leather, and a few others. The red material is a great example of why I love Quixel. Its a custom material that gets dirty were it had AO shadows. So basically, its instant procedural dirt! I also developed a material in Quixel that puts bug splats on the leading edge of my aircraft 😃 Im going to spend some time converting my Zenith 701 back into PBR. It was PBR when I was working on it for Flight Sim World, but I started converting it into Spec for P3D. Now I can go back into PBR. Just a reminder of what it looked like in PBR in FSW. That screenshot is from FSW, but I think I can get close to that in P3D. This also shows off the bug splats on the leading edges. Remember, I didnt paint those. Quixel did based on information I gave it. Love that tool 😉 Makes me look good! I will work on a tutorial for converting Spec into PBR (manually) and a Quixel workflow for P3D.

I have not tried 3DCoat yet. It looks interesting.

Well just finished the next test. This was done to mainly show you the key feature of the Metalness in PBR (for those who dont know). Its one of the marquee features in PBR that sim artist's should take advantage of, and thats the Metalness channel. While playing around with this feature, I found something interesting out. The Prepar3DPBR shader in Max actually gives you a decent preview of PBR in Max! This is really HUGE as much of our time is burned loading up P3D to check out the changes. With this, we can get a general idea of what it looks like in Max before loading the Sim engine! This is massive! THANK YOU LM!! On the left, a materials test in-sim. On the right, the same test in Max. To the naked eye, they look VASTLY different, but they key change is the reflection. The old "specular" shader ALWAYS had a crisp/sharp reflection. You could change the level of reflection, but not how soft/sharp it was, making metals that are not chrome almost impossible. Many of us would bake in reflections to get around this limitation. Now in PBR, we can control the reflections a lot better. For example, the middle sphere in the lowest row looks like an anodized aluminum. This effect was IMPOSSIBLE in the past. I will do a video later with a better explanation using the above model and break down the various components of the new metalness channel and how to properly use it. I hope this information is useful!

Max. Yes. You need to move the channels around on the normal map. I dont know WHY they do this and I wish I found the guy who did it when I worked at ACES and choked him a little. Quixel is cheap, relitivly simple, and can get good results fast. Substance is more expensive, MUCH more complex, and can get better results in a longer time. Also Substance has more industry support. If you have the time to learn Substance, you can get better results, but it will take longer.

Success! It may not look like much, but its a huge first step. This is just a test model and texture that I was able to import into P3D to test out PBR textures. Now that I have a complete understanding of the base implantation of PBR in P3D I can go a lot further. Sorry its tilted. I put it on a tail dragger 😉 Lol.

Sadly, PBR does not do self-reflections. That technique is called reflection probe and is rather advanced. I also know War Thunder uses it, but only in some places. From what I know, its not in P3D yet. I use a tool called Quixel, and its very fast and rather simple to learn. Its also cheap right now! https://quixel.se/suite2/ I have Substance but I have yet to learn it. As for just doing them in Photoshop, I think you can get the basics done to convert things in Photoshop once you understand the principals behind PBR shaders. I may put out a basic tutorial on converting Spec based textures into PBR, but it wont look nearly as good without using a tool like Quixel Suite or Substance. Sure. I will try to make a video of my basic workflow using Quixel suite I linked above. You can use the same general workflow in Substance.

Im going to be doing a bunch of testing in 4.4 with PBR this weekend and I will post results/eye candy here. Is there anything anyone wants to know from a dev or consumer standpoint about PBR? Like how to make textures or how its applied? I have been working in PBR in many game engines and I really think its the biggest visual step forward for flight sims since normal mapping. Please let me know what your curious about!

Yes its very much a commercial add-on. Im also a commercial member and have been posting for a VERY long time 😃

Interesting. Its part way there, but not fully. The "reflection" map looks like its part PBR. The key difference between PBR and Specular is the reflections. In Spec, you have a specular map with the RGB handling the spec power and color, and the Alpha handling the bloom or how wide the spec is. Reflections are handled in the Albedo/Diffuse alpha. In PBR, you have whats called a "combined" map. Each channel of the RGB handles an aspect of the reflection. R would be the Gloss channel (how shart or how dull the reflection is) and the G would handle the metalness (how much power the reflection has). The B would handle the AO map. In the Desert Hawk 3.1 reflection.dds file, the R channel clearly has the spec channel in it, but the G and B dont. That could be the gloss channel, and the G looks like a metalness map. The white peaces being metal, the black being non-metal parts. I can tell that this asset was also created by Substance, and it handle PBR texture creation. My biggest concern is the lack of anything in the blue channel, or the AO channel. AO really helps out a lot and is a vital component of proper PBR shaders. It could be removed since it does not support PBR yet. It should be a shame of P3D/LM didnt do AO on PBR. My other guess is that this texture was created in Substance, and since it does not work in Spec engines, this was a way for them to hack it into P3D. Thats also possible. I have not worked with Substance much, but I know its a powerful texture tool.

I have not seen anything to suggest that it already supports PBR. I see no mention of it in the shaders or in the SDK. Im guessing that Speedtree assets just come that way by default and they just slot the glossyness channel for the spec as a simple conversion.

Hay guys! Its been a long time posting since I was working on other projects, but im getting close to releasing the Zenith 701 for P3D! This has been a great little project with direct cooperation with Zenith Aircraft! Originally created for the canceled Flight Sim World, im converting it for P3D/FSX. The Zenith is a great little home built bush aircraft that has great visibility, low stall speed, and great rate of climb using the Rotax 912 engine. During the research process, I even got to fly a real Zenith 701 myself! I love research 😉 This model has been built to the millimeter using CAD/SolidWorks data provided by Zenith Aircraft. I doubt you will find a more accurately modeled aircraft in flight sims! On top of that, the textures have been created using next gen PBR tools for some of the most realistic textures available. Not only will she look accurate, but it will be real world pilot tested for accuracy to make sure she FLY's accurate to the real thing. Well enough marketing talk. Here is the eye candy to back it up! Please note that this is early screenshots. I only got her flying last night in P3D and I have a few bugs on the gauges to work out and lots of tweaking, but it gives you an idea for the level of detail that is planned for the product. If you wish to follow the development closer, follow me on Facebook! Facebook Kevin "Gibbage" Miller

Interesting! This hits close to home. Im a developer who has been working with PBR for some time and im really excited for the possibility that PBR may be added into P3D. What does it mean for the developers? Not much. Just a new way of using the spec channel and some education for the basics. In the long run, most new texturing tools like Quixel and Substance output PBR. I have been using Quixel to texture cockpits for years, and the results are quite stunning. What does it mean for customers? More realistic metals and better textures overall. Its better to give examples. PBR Zenith 701 in the now canceled Flight Sim World. The same model converted into "Specular" for P3D without PBR The metals just dont look right in specular. Im still tweaking things a bit, but for me the visual quality is night and day. Plus with tools like Quixel, development is really easy in PBR. PBR is the future. Current development tools work with them and are able to improve the visual effects. Yes, dev's will need to learn a little, but the results can be astonishing. Just check out the surface detail. You can even see the bug splats on the leading edges!

Just to clarify something. FSX and ESP are two different programs from the same base code. A fork if you will. FSX was for the commercial/consumer market while ESP was for private/professional. ESP was designed to be an everything sim. Near the end we had clients wanting to train workers on how to drive mining equipment with it. ESP went on to become P3D under Lockheed Martin. MS's contract does not allow them to market the engine or sell it to consumers. LM does not seem all that eager to change that, or advance the engine past what the military/corporate clients want. FSX code was forked into MS Flight. MS Flight was a stripped down FSX with a bunch of new features added and a highly optimized engine. The SDK tools where the real treasure in Flight. As someone that worked on the Flight team, let me tell you, it was super easy to work within. Sadly those SDK tools never made it into the hands of the community. FSW is also a fork of FSX. It too was stripped down and optimized, but coded for 64 bit. All components would need to be re-coded like jet engine modules and such for the 64 bit code. They put a lot of effort into the visuals, for things like PBR, to get it competitive with current game engines and compatible with modern development tools. Sadly the SDK was not advanced very far. Again, I dont see LM pushing very hard to make improvements on ESP due to the limitations of not being a commercial product. I truly think our last hope for the FSX code is that someone is able to save FSW and open it up to the community. We will see what happens.

I will be looking for real world pilots to help test it out. Your name is on my list now! Kevin

Some new eye candy of the Zenith. Getting closer!

Games as a service is the new norm.

Winner! Not that you won anything other than my admiration! =) I have flown out of KPAE many times in real life and love to fly out to Jeffco for some pie. The Zenith 701 I flew for "testing" was out of Arlington. I love flying around the PNW!

Video of the first flight. Anyone guess the airport? Kevin Miller

The Zenith is like a Cub on crack. Better performance, trike landing gear, lower stall speed, full gauge suite and a wide seating configuration. I filmed a vr video with a pilot when I was doing research. This will tell you all you need. Kevin Miller

Its been a long time since I have been able to update the progress of my little pet project. First, thank you all for your patience in waiting for this aircraft! Soon, I will have lots to announce with this fun little peace of kit! For now, some eye candy. Please note that the textures are NOT final and many things are left to do on it (like animate the gauges), but this WILL give you an idea of the detail to expect, and what PBR shaders can bring to flight simming. More to come, including a video of the FIRST FLIGHT!

Thanks. Its been a long love affair. I started the 701 last November as a quick and easy project to test the FSW SDK with Dovetail. Its turned into soo much more. I got help from not only a local builder/pilot, but the CEO of Zenith! They sent me over the actual CAD data for the 701! I even got to meet him at Oshkosh this year! Typically aircraft are built using 2D line drawings from unknown sources and photographs. Its not often we get a chance to use the manufacturers own resources! The FSW 701 will be visually accurate to the MM and I dont know of many flight sim aircraft that can claim that.