The Biff Diaries: Bristol Fighter FSX Update

Here are a few pics of the FSX version of the Bristol Fighter. The crew are complete. The external model and textures have been updated to FSX standard. I have some further work to do on the specular maps.

I have only used a little bit of bump mapping on this occasion. Actually I'm not exactly impressed with bump mapping as at stands at present in FSX. One has to export the bump map from photoshop using the Nvidia plugin and then further convert using the SDK Imagetool utility. Imagetool introduces pixel artifacts on fine parts of the maps thus it is not suitable for fine detail unless one uses large textures. Bump mapping is to be used sparingly for the time being. The results are somewhat course IMHO. Rivets and panel lines are still best acheived using conventional textures. This opinion may change given time and different methodologies.

I still have the VC to fix up and some xml animations to puzzle out and also tedious work in converting the lods over to FSX standard. Once this is released then on to the FS9 version which will also need lod work and the crew added. I'm still hoping pre Christmas for the X version and we'll have to see for the FS2004 version. The poor Snipe has had little work in the last 2 months save for being used to test the FSX SDK tools.

Anyway here are the pics.......