Let's try a quantitative approach. Plexiglass (poly-methyl-metacrilate, pardon my chemical engineering studies :)) has a transparency of 92%, pretty much independent from thickness. It filters only 8% of light. A good optical glass is almost equivalent.

I took a screenshot with open canopy, and tried to measure the RGB in close areas of sky, 1 is free blue sky without canopy, #2 is behind the windshield. I don't know how much glass is in the armored windshield, but let's look at the figures:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ldspitfire.jpg

The perceived brightness through the windshield (formula HERE) is 82% of the clear undisturbed sky. A reduction of 18%, against 8% of pure Perspex is way too much.


I will do the same exercise for the lateral areas of the canopy.

Cheers,
Insuber

And now the lateral canopy. Again too dark, according to my measurements:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...pyspitfire.jpg

Remember that Perspex white light transmission is 92%. Here we have 78% ....

Luthier would you take a look at this please, after the major issues will be solved ?

Cheers,
Insuber

PS: I attribute to the different time of the day the fact that lateral shading is higher than the front shield shading in my two takes: by all evidence the game's shading is higher with darker sky. I can take measurements at dusk to prove this, but I assume that the main point is demonstrated.

I believe also that at dusk the shading is even stronger. Not very realistic IMHO.

But glass/perspex or whatever still catches shadow and light, all of the science talk is great but what you get in a lab is different to what you see in real life, the surface is covered in dust/scratches and other detritis, even if it is relatively new it picks up dirt pretty quick, this does make it seem fairly dark.

Yes but the ground crew were very careful at cleaning canopies, since the life of the pilot depended from it. And as the average life of a fighter was few weeks, anyway the wear was not an issue. So I believe that the 18-22% of light absorption in-game is way too much with respect to the 8% of chemistry data. Do we settle for 10%? ... :)

I couldn't quantify with a particular percentage, all I have is the experience of how sitting under perspex seems to me and even new/clean perspex casts a fair bit of shadow and in game it doesn't feel so wrong to me, but I will concede that 20% does sound too much.

Since the shading is quite disturbing, I fly always with open canopy, and noticed that several online players do the same. We didn't have this issue with Il2-1946.

Cheers,
Insuber

true but il2 1946 doesn't have the same shader materials and self shadowing effects.........semantics really I guess, one thing reading all the forum illustrates is there will 'never' be a one size fits all solution to any software.

Well, hope they will fix those fake tracers first...:rolleyes:

Then they could reduce transparency opacity from 20% to 10 %...;)

Salute !

Yeah, it is a low priority issue, but still it's very visible ... :) and IMO it's not as controversial as the tracers ... In this case measurements are much easier ...