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[WxTech]

After installing BAT Red Core, the few changes to the A6M's cockpit (new 3D parts such as the direction finder coil, antenna mast, headrest support and canopy lock) have inspired me to do a bit of a facelift, making it my new standard.

In the pic below you see my somewhat improved gun sight. The main improvements are to the reflector plate and sun shade. Also added is a dynamic reflection of the collimator. And I've put in a simple space filler for the former gap between upper and lower sight body sections. Gone is the appearance of 'facets' on the face of the collimating lens.

The interior of the canopy framing and fuselage decking has been darkened.

I'll be improving the gauge bezels.

I plan to put a darkening texture behind the seat so as to darken the empennage interior.

I want to add frame edging to the rear canopy--the look of paper-thin frame bars looks too horrible.

And we'll see what else I might throw in. I don't want to go overboard, at least initially, preferring to get something out there in good time.

For starters, this will be limited to the cockpit folder [A6M2], which in my install serves all early Zeros up to the A6M3. (Not including the floatplane version)

[Peter Lynn]

Yes please WXTech! Your contributions to IL-2 always add so much.

[WxTech]

Making good progress over the past couple days. Put in probably 20 hours so far.

I'm using a mix of textures from another repaint and my own tweaking of stock textures.

D8d some gauge tweaking on the magnetic compass and the artificial horizon. Better positioning, and they look like the moving parts reside inside dark boxes.

There are a good dozen or more annoying, bad surface normals to straighten out. Grrr.

Much of the glass, at least on the stationary forward and the sliding canopy, has gaps along many frame edges. I absolutely have to fix those! Such sloppiness by other modelers does vex  me so.

I will add frame edging on the rear canopy, to give thickness to those currently paper-thin bars.

And I'll add a dark, graduated, transparent texture behind the seat so as to simulate shadowing in the cave-like empennage.

[sixstrings]

Awesome news ! Thanks so much ! You do such excellent work ! Regards,Scott

[WxTech]

About another 8 hours in since my last update.

I've fixed the more prominent of the bad surface normals. At the tops of the two forwardmost canopy frame posts, (straddling the central windscreen panel), and both the forward and rear decking, toward the outer edges. This involves converting the mesh to plain ASCII, pasting the mesh contents into a spreadsheet (my 'Poor Man's 3-D Package'    ), creating one or two views of the vertices in chart form, identifying the vertices to fix, then putting the better values of the normals in the mesh. A slow slog!

There are well more than a dozen other bad surface normals, but not so awful, and my enthusiasm for dealing with the buggers is about at an end.

The last main tasks:
- Fix the gaps in the perspex.
- Add the shadow texture for the rear fuselage 'cave.'
- Add frame edging to the aft canopy.

And I should make a set of damaged gauge textures consistent with the undamaged ones. Currently there's a bit of a mish-mash.

[WxTech]

Mostly done! Some shots of the current state, highlighting the more obvious changes...


The gun sight, with dynamic collimator reflection (2 reflections, one from each glass surface), that changes intensity with the illumination angle. The glass texture is not 'milky' like the stock one, and the extra square texture on the face has been eliminated.





The sight's sun shade. Also not 'milky', but properly, cleanly transparent.





The instrument panel. The artificial horizon has been tidied up. The magnetic compass now looks like a recessed ball in shadow. Both of these gauges now show no bright background stuff through small gaps. All gauges have been given more appropriate bezels (the raised rings surrounding the faces), of a simple form.





The rear canopy. The framing has been made *slightly* rounder. Frame bar edges have been added, to give thickness. Glass now covers the rear canopy, where the stock plane had none.





The after cabin. I've added a shadow texture at the opening, to simulate the general darkness inside. The seat has had cutouts added for the holes.





There are many more, often subtler changes. A bit more tidying up to do, then I'll release it.

[Peter Lynn]

That looks excellent....looking forward to flying in it! Thank you for yet another great improvement WX...

[SAS~Poltava]

Looking REALLY good!  Thanks for doing this!

[WxTech]

I've seen over the years numerous cockpit mods having instrument glass faces that exhibit one or both of:

- Prominent reflections suggestive of canopy framing.
- Notable brightness gradients that presumably represent reflection of sky light from the upper parts.

These approaches are most often wrong. In the typical cockpit, the pilot is surrounded on all sides to about armpit height in his 'pit. The instrument gauges are no higher than this, and are mounted on essentially a vertical--or nearly enough to vertical--panel. Combined with the pilot's viewpoint being higher than these gauges, any reflections seen from the gauge faces so mounted and positioned will be of objects at about waist height and lower. No direct reflections of canopy framing, or sky.

For those gauge faces having prominent smooth gradients (instead of canopy framing-like lines), the impression one gathers is of a glass cover that's not flat, instead having a pronounced convexity reminiscent of numerous molded plastic watch 'crystals', or some dial thermometers to mount outside a window. virtually all aero instrument cover glass or perspex is/was flat.

Unless trying to more realistically suggest reflections of lower cockpit objects (as I did in my P-39 'pit mod), best to leave gauge faces with a more  uniform flatness of tone.

[WxTech]

One discovery I made a long time ago is this... If a texture has an alpha channel, the Sun will shine through it.

This cockpit I extracted from BAT and am building upon had added transparency cutouts in the texture for decking closely straddling, and just ahead of, the gun sight. These gaps are handholds for the pilot to more easily hoist himself up from the seat. Looks Good. EXCEPT! This texture (left.tga) includes the cockpit side walls (and the after cabin decking). With this alpha channel present so as to effects the handhold cutouts, it now permits the Sun to shine through the sides of the cockpit, except where blocked by the wings.

I've elected to forego the cut-outs in order to not have 'partially transparent' cockpit sides. Besides, the drawing of the handholds is not so awful by itself.

Other cockpits we've all come across over the years and which have the Sun strangely shining through where we'd expect it not to is usually the result of the modeler failing to plan out things such that any texture supposed to be opaque to the Sun must not have an alpha channel. Not so bad for such skinny things as canopy framing, but brutally awful for large areas such as the firewall, 'pit sides, rear bulkhead/headrest, and such.

[WxTech]

Interim release of the mod, with most of the important work done. Available in this thread:

https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,66546.0.html