High Def Repaints Anyone?

[sanins192]

I stumbled across high definition repaints while reading the review for the PMDG MD-11 at Avsim. These repaints are made by a company called McPhat Studios:
Standard - http://www.avsim.com/pages/1208/PMDG/pic_07_10.jpg
HD - http://www.avsim.com/pages/1208/PMDG/pic_07_13.jpg

It strikes me that there is a major difference between standard textures and HD ones.

http://simflight.com/wp-content/uploads ... 80wa14.jpg
http://flightsimx.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-c ... 80wa15.jpg

The textures from McPhat Studios are payware (mostly for FSX), although I was wondering why freeware repaints aren't painted in high def. Maybe there are some HD repaints out there but I'm just not noticing them. Can anyone elaborate on why the HD vs standard textures is not as big a deal as it should be?

[caps1237]

Maybe because some guy named McPhat is making them?

Really though, they looks awesome. I agree, they should be a big deal.

[RatherBFlyin]

I am almost never close enough to the aircraft to notice the difference in detail between standard and HD textures. Yes, they look awesome, but I certainly can't see myself paying for them. Now, if there were freeware HD textures available, I might consider them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the HD textures are a higher resolution, right? So would there be a performance hit when using them?

[sanins192]

Technically, yes. However, I do not think the performance hit would be as big as you would expect it to be. Unlike HD cloud textures which cover the whole sky and are constantly changing and moving, the aircraft textures stay in the same position. The reviewer of the PMDG MD-11 said that he didn't notice a performance hit when using them, and he was using an average speed PC.

[Carlo]

While impressive, I've never really been a fan of the McPhat repaints. They always over-weather the aircraft.

Just take a look at their Emirates A380 paint. The thing had literally just been rolled out of the paintshop, yet theirs looked like it'd just been on a 6 month deployment to Bagram air base.

[FJ flyer]

HD Textures only really work in FSX because it allows you to increase the texture sizes up to 4096x4096 without changing the texture mapping. The only way for HD Textures in FS9 is if the person/people who developed the model map the textures so they are more detailed. POSKY did this on their latest 777 by increasing the "zoom" at which the aircraft is mapped. This increases the amount of bitmaps needed as opposed to cramming everything onto two or three bitmaps which may also give a performance hit.

I think the two reasons there aren't many freeware HD textures available is because you can't just take a paint-kit and increase the size, to get any extra detail you'll need to paint all the details yourself. Not many painters are capable of reworking a normal paint-kit, let alone an HD Paint-kit. The second reason is because of the size restrictions in FS9 and most of the great freeware texture artists still paint for and use FS9.

While impressive, I've never really been a fan of the McPhat repaints. They always over-weather the aircraft.

Just take a look at their Emirates A380 paint. The thing had literally just been rolled out of the paintshop, yet theirs looked like it'd just been on a 6 month deployment to Bagram air base.

I agree, they do go over the top with weathering.

[sanins192]

Thanks for clearing that up, Fraser. I think it's safe to say that we won't see a sudden upsurge of HD repaints being released for FS9, but the shots do look very good in FSX.