Quoted from KevinCPR:Guys,
I haven't been logged into Pinside since well before our vacation weeks which started March 14. But since our internal talks last night going over this backglass, I'm going to pop by for a minute and provide some more info:
While we do use NOS glasses often, and Mike alluded that he believed this Meteor one was as well ... IT WAS NOT. We started with a donor's production glass that came out of a working production game. It wasn't even a 'perfect' glass (as you'll see below). But it was very passable and workable to get what we needed.
So the green mystery... "where did the green go on CPR's glass". I'm here to show you. It was never there.
Just to show we're not making this up, or fumbling around 'seeing colors wrong' or any of the other theories... Stu went back on the server and dug up the original, raw Cruze scan that was done at the graphics studio in Arizona that we always use. These guys are meticulous archival scanner techs, and considering it's a $500,000 fine art scanner - they have to be.
Since the actual scan is a gigantic uncompressed TIF, I've done a simple resizing to a 1000px JPG image, posted below.
- the first post is the raw scan as it comes off the Cruze. Many would say "ewww its so dark"... but there are ranges of color information in there beyond what your eye can see. A Cruze scanner doesn't need to overexpose or overlight. It's CCD sensor sensitivity is beyond even the best DSLR cameras. Look at the color bars they lay on the table. Everything is photo lab balanced and calibrated. Looking 'dark' means nothing in technical terms, all the color data is there.
- the second post is the same image, but I've pulled up the gamma and midrange levels a bit, so you can see the "colors to the eye" of what it would look like in a normally lit situation (outside the scanner, shot with a camera).
No, this glass did not have CREDIT in the window. No, this glass does not have a white blob on the planet beneath the credit window. No, this glass does not have green capsules on the rockets, they are navy blue. The bodies of the rockets are based on blues, not greens. There are no greens in the giant meteor either. They are the deep royal blues.
So that is the origin story of this glass. While it's obviously the most common to have these green-based ones, as reported here in retrospect, this too was a Meteor glass put into a production game. Not NOS. Not a cast-aside oddball/error glass from the parts room. Since the artwork master for the press is 95% the master TIFF image from the Cruze (except for some redraws of score windows, etc), this is not as simple as grabbing spots and turning them green. We'd need a whole new Cruze scan of another Meteor glass of the other color variety. Starting from scratch. That is why after a few dozen sold and shipped, and it quieting down to basically everyone who wanted one, got one... we're on the fence of taking a complete overhaul on these at this late stage.
IMHO the green is BUTT UGLY. I know, only my opinion. But when I came in here to see the pictures, my first reaction was "ewwww, yuck, seriously?" Looked like green LEDs were being used behind the glass, as some kind of amateur mod attempt. Meteor has that classic blue/purple/black Stern color scheme (like Flight 2000). There is no green in the Meteor pallate anywhere. Makes no sense to me. I think the version we got is WAYYY better of a matching look to the game. But hey, that's just me. I know it may seem biased, but I'm dead serious. Blue all the way. If it were my game, darn tootin'
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