As I haven't shown any pics in a while here's a WIP 3DS Max quick rendering of the LOD 100 external model.
The textures are currently WIP. The dirt, rib, shading and squadron markings remain to be created. The ribs in the LOD100 model, shown here, are polygons. However one cannot use polys for detail on other LOD models, thus ribs have to be created using textures. One has to be careful with the LOD90 and LOD70 models in CFS3, as users with with aircraft configuration settings of 2 will see the LOD90 model in external view. Those with aircraft settings on 1 will see the LOD70 model in external view. Thus they have to look almost as good as the LOD100 but with a fraction of the triangle count. Very few people will run with such low aircraft configuration settings on current computers, but one has to cater for the possibility.
In creating ribs with textures they have to be precisely aligned with the polygon ribs and reasonably subtle so as to compliment the polygons yet at the same time work effectively on the LOD models. I'll probably post more on LOD's in the future.
I did experiment using textures created using hi-res versions of the wings. These are shown in a SimHQ forum thread. I did not like the artificial rendered hilight and can achieve satisfactory more subtle effects in Photoshop. I look forward to Flight Simulator X which looks as if it will feature normal mapping.
