City Textures rework

[rince33]

I removed some of the buildings between Ramsgate and Margate. I'll make a start on the next city landclass texture tomorrow.

 

[Shessi]

Totally agree with M.

And I think you've put it into perspective R with that superb overhead long distance shot of Ramsgate, that it looks so much better, more accurate and immersive with what you're done so far, what sort of level do we really need from 2000ft plus?!

Cheers

Shessi

 

[NachtPiloten]

Thoughts - Nightime

Your work is amazing and thanks for the effort. Would like to know, given that the Ruhr was the industrial center in the Reich, and usually covered in smoke from the factories, do we have a way to replicate this?

 

[Pat Pattle]

Your work is amazing and thanks for the effort. Would like to know, given that the Ruhr was the industrial center in the Reich, and usually covered in smoke from the factories, do we have a way to replicate this?

Hey Ted, Gecko and I made a "towering smoke column" for Dunkirk which turned out pretty cool. But rather than lots of FPS sapping effects, I wonder if it may be easier to portray burning cities with a 'weather' file? I.e. low level black clouds.

 

[mongoose]

Hey Ted, Gecko and I made a "towering smoke column" for Dunkirk which turned out pretty cool. But rather than lots of FPS sapping effects, I wonder if it may be easier to portray burning cities with a 'weather' file? I.e. low level black clouds.

Not to totally take over this thread, I use Pat's smoke and fire columns as facilities in missions, however I have wanted to have industrial smog or haze as weather files, but so far my attempts have been pretty bad. I think Andy M might be better at this, or some of the old ETO guys. We definitely need weather files for local weather effects, both in Germany, but also for England. As I'm on the topic of weather files, some upper level jet stream weather would be nice, as BC missions were often driven off course by those winds. Again my attempts have not been great to say the least. Maybe any more on this can be on a new thread. Maybe any more on this can be on a new thread. see http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforu...l-smog-haze-etc-weather?p=1324510#post1324510

 

[rince33]

I messed around with the landclassess.xml file, removing some city mos files that didn't work, too many trees, and decided to read up on the landclass dimensions in the projected knowledge base. I decreased the size of some of the lanclasses to 4096 and I was really impressed with the result, smaller textures and more dense cities. Buildings at Dover were a bit sparse but now it looks exactly the way I want, very excited I must say. The Dover harbour texture needs to be darkened a bit.

 

[gecko]

Impressive work! A comment on the trees - I think much of the reason for flat looking trees is inadequately tuned shaders and sun effect. Trees tend to be noticeably darker than the surrounding land, but what you're seeing that's missing is how the sun can light them up. I've spent some time working on my own and in conjunction with Ankor to fine tune the shaders implementation to make the most of its capabilities. It isn't done yet, but when it is, I think the highlights will look out of place because they are static and always present, while everything is being lit dynamically.

 

[rince33]

Hi gecko. When you have completed the work on your shaders it will take no time to restore the trees to their original flatness. I can provide an unaltered tree scenery sheet in preparation for your shaders.

 

[rince33]

Darkened the trees a bit and removed some saturation.

 

[MajorMagee]

Looking great!

 

[Pat Pattle]

Good grief there's some progress being made here! Wonderful what a fresh pair of eyes can do! This ought to be made a "sticky" before it's lost in the mire.

 

[sixstrings5859]

Simply awesome ! Thanks so much ! Regards, Scott

 

[rince33]

I'm experimenting with trees to achieve a more solid grouping rather than the blotches of trees that we currently have. Tree density can be adjusted in the landclasses file for older pc's.

I will edit trees in the lcfview to try and place trees where they should be more or less.
Placing of excess trees could also serve the purpose of preventing repetitive tiling. I will have t take this into account as I go.

This and tree terrain textures are currently a wip.

 

[mongoose]

A good idea. Random trees in fields is a pain!

 

[Shessi]

Great work there R, like the idea of reducing the look of repetitive tiling with the trees.

Second WIP pic is excellent.

Cheers

Shessi

 

[rince33]

Random trees in fields is a pain

You'll probably still get some stray trees where the landclassess and different iso's in the same landclass intersect. It causes a bit of a mess where different city textures/iso's join as well. That is just the way the sim engine works unfortunately. I'm sure WOFF and WOTR have the same problem as well unless they have found a solution to prevent this.

 

[rince33]

Great work there R, like the idea of reducing the look of repetitive tiling with the trees.

I would like to remove trees if they are not meant to be in a certain position, but if their role is to prevent repetitive tiling then I will leave them where they are. Repetitive tiling is a real immersion killer.

 

[Pat Pattle]

That's a huge improvement! May I ask that you can list what you've been doing at some point please, for posterity. Paint progs and the processes etc.

This is all superb stuff, you have succeeded where many others, myself include, have failed. I raise my glass to you sir!

 

[gecko]

Impressive work once again!

 

[sdsbolt]

looks good