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Blackbird Sims Mitsubishi A6M5 Released

I have to say, the CFS2 stock Zero holds up pretty well for being out in the wild for 25 years. Especially with B24Guy’s changes.

The BlackBird Zero looks amazing. I will pick it up when MSFS24 goes on sale. I’d ask for a MSFS version of Blackbird’s zero to join their Corsair, but I know that is not an easy ask.
 
John, thank you for the reply and the explanation about the normal map and I think it's the green channel? I didn't realize the amount of work involved to modify that effect. I know this effect is built into the developers paintkit released with the model. I am looking forward to seeing more of your work here on SOH.

This is an interesting video.

 
When there is discussion about green and blue channels, that typically always has to do with the creation of complete map (comp) textures - the green channel controlling roughness and the blue channel controlling metalness. It is a lot of work, if you manually create all of the green and blue channels for the complete maps, as I do. I'm no stranger to creating complete map textures, as you'll find in all of my MSFS and MSFS 2024 repaints (including those that I made for my Zero repaint). I also have no problem creating KTX2 files for MSFS 2024, as all of my 2024 repaints feature. I have no problem converting most KTX2 files to BMPs or PNGs as well (which also requires a very specific adjustment to the levels, afterward), as I also did with some of the Blackbird Zero product textures in order to add a number of elements from those textures that are missing in the paintkit files. However, when it comes to the normal maps that have been saved in MSFS 2024 KTX2 format, converting them to BMPs or PNGs, in order to edit them, is where the issues lay - they just don't seem to hold up well. There is nothing in the paintkit for the normal maps, just for the albedo and complete map textures.
 
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