Yes, this is well known. But I don't think V was going for that look on his skin - as most pony skins in game did not either. He could easily replicate the silver lacquer that was used if he dulled the shine on those parts of the wing and "filled" the panel lines where needed.
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Yeah, the problem is that if I dull down the shine then it doesn't reflect enough light at all anywhere and winds up looking like a gray blob.
Now, while Mustang wings came from the factory filled, puttied, sanded, and painted, some also had that stuff stripped off in the field. You can find plenty of pics with rivets showing, etc. etc. It's a super tough call. Everyone tells me my skins are too plain and undetailed when I duplicate the smooth upper wing, so I tried to split the middle on this one.
The wings SHOULD be less shiny than the fuselage. However, the image of this Mustang does show some reflection on the bare metal areas like the upper fuselage and the flaps. In the end I decided that it had to have SOME reflection or else it would just look like a gray-painted airplane.
The other issue is that getting it to look right inside the cockpit throws off the outside, and vice versa. I don't think there is a happy landing place.
SOME OF THIS is driven by the graphics engine. It has some bugs in it. Black things show up as gray in shadow... The environment map reflection modeling is a bit whacky... Normal mapping is still a challenge to master...
It's my best effort so far in NMF... I'll just keep working at it. Maybe I'll figure it out.
