CFS3 City textures

Pat Pattle

Pat Pattle

SOH-CM-2025
Hi all,

I've never been happy with the CFS3 city textures. I've tried different ideas and there's one I think looks better than the others but it's hard to be objective. What do you chaps think of these? thoughts and comments welcome!

Google earth view over Croydon looking North at around 2500 ft.

GE_Croydon.jpg



The same view in stock cfs3 - bearing in mind that Croydon is in the wrong place in the stock sim.

CFS3stock.jpg



Same view but in the ETO install. The same applies to the location.

CFS3ETO.jpg



Same again but with the BoB install and the correct location.

CFS3BoB.jpg



Bob install but with textures borrowed from BoB2 for experimentation purposes.

CFS3BoBwithBoB2textures.jpg
 
That last one looks a bit green to me. When I look at the city textures, the biggest thing for me would be closely packed buildings and blocks lining well defined streets. Have you seen some of the OFF Phase 4 development shots with cities? Seems it can be done. Your textures in the BoB install were definitely a step in the right direction.
 
Tricky getting enough buildings and in right locations

For city textures, I like the photo-realistic ones. However, the autogen buildings always look odd to me whatever the version. I guess it comes down to a vast amount of work to define the location and type of autogen buildings for them to look realistic.

I almost wonder if its better to have a really nice set of photorealistic textures for built-up areas, and very few autogen buildings?

At higher altitudes I am sometimes struck by how good some installs make the cities look, but there are a combination of factors, including the budgets file settings.

Are your scenery density settings the same for the ETO install and the BoB install? It looks like ETO is running higher densities?
 
The last one , apart from the colour issue is a step in the right direction I think as it's better defined. However I'm not sure about the scale. I'll look into this further maybe using better photo textures.

Autogen is a pain. I've tried and tried to make my own sm models (with help from 2 folks that can do it!) but have failed to make anything yet. The stock ones are not suitable really.

All my installs are on sliders 5 but the ETO install files were tweaked by Johhno. I get a huge fps hit over the built up areas in that version of cfs3.

They all look like someones dropped the Monopoly game on th floor! :)

However this looks great, OFF P4 dev. shot. There are secrets to be revealed here methinks, or else they're just BIG facilities.

shot052511162556.jpg
 
But again the FPS hit is a crippler at low level. Long ago when planning some low level mossie missions I painstakingly put in facilities, but the FPS hit made it useless. I don't think we'll achieve much with actual models.

View attachment 66397
 
Well not a lot of interest, lol.

Anyhow I'll plug on regardless :icon_lol:.

I've thought about just having textures with no or few buildings to aid fps. Here's a couple of very wip shots of stuff I was working on a few years ago. This is Berlin.

This would look better with feathering of the edges and more contrast but it shows the idea.

BerlinHalifax.jpg


Berlinbombaimer.jpg
 
Clive, Like the improvements your chasing: don't which is best methodology. But agree with Middle: Those last two are super, so real!!!

See what you are trying with with the GPS input/comparison. Anything that makes it as good as above is worth having.
 
Looks great, serves most purposes, except for those of the Bomber Harris mentality who want to carpet bomb Berlin!

I think the tiles look great :applause:
 
Hi Clive,


That's really great. You are an expert! I am looking forward, you will be successful.
:applause:

Bests
airfighter55:salute:
 
Have been exploring other ideas for the cities, these shots are based on GE images at 5000' eye altitude.
I can't remember how to get rid of the fuzzy textures in the distance, anyone know?

Any thoughts/comments/ help appreciated!

Looking north towards Battersea from Croydon again at 2500'

CFS3_BoB_City_test2.jpg




Generel view from 15000'

CFS3_BoB_City_test.jpg
 
Clive, I would say you are really on to something here..
The last two do look very realistic..
And the placement of the buildings is beyond my ability to even grasp..
BRAVO!
Well done indeed..
And Many Thanks for this major effort.. :applause:
 
The realism is taking a leap forward; (even if not correct, a few bits of green make it look nice..but accuracy is of course..)
 
That's your best yet I'd say Clive! Nice work. The scale of the texture vs the buildings seems a bit large though, is there a way to make it maybe 50% (as a guess) smaller?
 
Yes your right Daniel, they're too big. Have settled at 75% of what they were which corresponds fairly well to GE images.

I'm fairly happy with this result, I don't know what to do about the ground objects. If I place a model on every building the pc would stop dead! I may just put trees in or perhaps not bother with the autogen at all?

CFS3_BoB_City_test3.jpg
 
Hey Clive in the Berlin picture you showed, there was a modern airstrip. Did you make that into a base with buildings or was it textures only? It would be nice to have a modern airstrip in CFS3 for the Lago Sims F-16 and the Panavision Tornado!
 
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