Idea for Areodynamics

[BenHR]

I don't know precisely how it's handled already, so I don't know how much of an improvement his would be. I may add diagrams later.

Ever see those flat views, in 3D modelling software, where depth is not there? Just, everything is flat. I was thinking that could be used to render smoothness maps. What it would do is each time you save, or maybe make it a sort of 'prep for launch' thing so it doesn't have to happen all the time, the game would render six of these pictures. One each for top, bottom, and four sides. However, the pictures would be grayscale, the brightness determined by how extreme of an angle the polygon within the pixel is relative to the angle of view. Like what anisotropic filtering has to do. The flatter it is, the darker (more resistant), and the extremer, the lighter. Of course, special care would need to be taken for concave surfaces, like the insides of rocket nozzles. While it's at it, it could also make one picture like that in real colour, for the view of the side that faces you at take-off, to use as a preview in the saved rockets list. Then, with those angle maps, it would calculate an average brightness, and save it as a percent. Then, in flight, it would figure out which three sides most face the direction of travel, and at what percent reletive to one another. Those percents determine how much the areo-smoothness percents are weighed in to - how much the craft is affected by atmosphere.

Sounds complicated, and maybe it is. I guess if someone's compy can't handle this, it could fall back to the current system. So I ask, is this a good idea? And would it work any better than the current one?