Alternative textures for FA18 HUD and Mirrors

[Voodoo]

Hi all,
I just thought I'd share a couple of little enhancements I made to the HUD Glass texture and the Cockpit Mirrors in the F18. I hope nobody minds but I always had a bit of an issue with the original textures. These new ones may not be to everyone's taste but they are small and easy to change if you don't like them. Instructions are included in the ZIP file if you want to try them, but it is simply a case of putting the files into the F18's main Texture directory and that's it.

1) The new HUD glass is specifically for those of you who prefer to be able to see what's ahead of you through the HUD. I created this because the original HUD, whilst I am sure is more realistic, was very dark and difficult to see through. I don't claim that this new HUD glass is realistic, and it is down to your own personal taste whether you wish to use it.


2) The problem with the Cockpit Mirrors is that they are not a reflection of the outside environment, they are a view of the inside of a cloud-painted textured cube, with your aircraft in the imaginary centre of the cube. The original does not have matched cloud textures at the edges of the cube faces and so it looks a bit naff IMHO. This new cube does not allow the clouds to touch the edges and therefore has no edge-matching problems. Even though the cube effect is not perfect, I think this is a fair improvement. (Not that I spend a lot of time gazing in the mirrors, you understand)



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[SUBS17]

Nice that looks quite good.

[crim3]

The new HUD glass is specifically for those of you who prefer to be able to see what's ahead of you through the HUD

hey, I thought the same and did the same I'll try your texture. I didn't put too much dedication and only changed the mipmap level 1.

[Voodoo]

How did your one turn out when you changed the mipmap, Crim3? Was that a setting you made on your video card, or did you edit something?

[crim3]

I opened the HUD glass texture with photoshop and when it asked to select a mipmap level to edit, I selected the mipmap level 1 (I didn't know I could do it with photoshop, I just tried it and worked. I never edited a .dds before). Then I changed brightness and contrast values to make it clearer. Once in the sim the effect is not very good (looks like some kind of fog) but the visibility through it is a lot better. And about the others mipmap levels, I only see a lower one in the cockpit view when there is too much traffic and autogen scenery, my video card only has 128 MB of memory.