Maybe we can have tga skins with alpha channel to "handle" the reflections like some other games.
Example: Black alpha matte, white alpha chrome and in the middle all the greys so you can make a fake hole in the side and make it non reftectable.
What do you think?

Two words, file size.

Another two words: more possibilities.

DXT3 DDS files work fine for that

TGA's aren't so useful these days now with the DDS format being pretty popular with advantages but then it'd also require the car materials / shaders to be changed / recoded too.. but would be nice as atm, the cars are way too reflective and have no specular effect.

Not sure what possible sensible reason you'd want for "adding a fake hole", however.



Regards,

Ian

i say the cars get "normal maps"... so we can get more detail in cars such as the GTRs (for the interior) and some rivets for the LXs

also... DDS has alpha layering

but you're talking about skins, i dont think they will ever be replaced by anything, jpeg will always come out winning because of its compression and wide uses

Surely DDS has better compression than JPG? Maybe not for physical filesize (a 1024x1024 DXT3 file for example will be 1.33Mb) but it has advantages of mipmaps, making it actually more resource-friendly I would have thought.

Not sure the cars really need normal maps (for skins anyway, interior, yes). What would you use them for in a skin? the car already has what you'd add to a normal map, modelled in 3D so think it'd be pretty pointless.



Regards,

Ian

nono not for a skin, interior would be nice yes, exterior, on some cars i think it could have its place on some cars.. especially on the lights

Personally, I don't see a reason for the lights either.. most of the lights ingame are either modelled or are flat by design (only place I can think of a use in lights would be on the FZ to create a slight recess around the reversing lights maybe, to split them subtly from the rear / brake lights).

Just my opinion anyway



Regards,

Ian