Well, I still say it's mostly the result of the time of day when you took the screenshot
. The darkness and lightness of the various blades corresponds to their angle relative to the sun, with the blades with the most sun exposure being the brightest and those in their own shawdow being the darkest.
Seems to me the light in the film viewer isn't as intense as the sun in AH. The glare doesn't seem as bad nor the shadows so dark as they are in the game. I've also noticed that in-game sun effects are worse at both ends when you're dealing with a bare-metal plane. For them, the glare is worse and the shadows blacker than for a painted plane. And of course, the specularity stuff in the materials.txt file affects the whole plane, so painted parts get the ultra-shiny/ultra-black treatment along with the bare metal parts. I don't know how the film viewer deals with the materials.txt file, or if it even looks at it, but regardless, the film viewer seems more natural than the all-or-nothing sunshine in-game.
Try this: Go to a medium field and use the east-facing runway, or taxi at any field until you're facing east. Then set the time for like 0645 so the sun shines on all blades almost equally. I bet that solves the apparent problem. Then try it at a field with a mountain close in to east or west, face that way, and try again. Although the mountain doesn't cast a shadow, it cuts the direct glare effect considerably, so if the 1st time you had glared-out blades, now I bet they look as they should. Remember what field you used here and use it from now on when looking at skins in the game.
