New Landclasses.xml

After much gnashing of teeth I had one of those rare moments of clarity.

This is a wip. I've learned that you must not fanny about with the .mos files but only their .dds textures. The way the mos files are set up with multiple layers and alpha images makes them too easy to break.

This has been done by modding the 031summer1 textures, which are: a_largecitytrees01, a_largecityroads01 & a_largecityfields01.

In the landclasses.xml file under large, medium and small city I removed all other .mos references except for this one.

The files are here if anyone would like to try. Stick all 3 in your ETO/Assets folder.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zp2qprzo38ub8h7/CFS3Citytest220622.zip?dl=0

ziEL74g.jpg
 
Will do, but while you're at it, it there any way for rivers and inland waters not to have the white 'surf' line, while keeping it for the sea?
 
Well you're way ahead of me Clive! I'm supposed to be looking at the a_034 set of city tiles. I like the idea of making the roads darker. Mine are a light grey, not clear enough.
 
Clive,

I like where you're going. When I tried your landclass file the building density immediately crashed my system if I tried to fly over a very large city like Paris or London. I have to use higher DIM values to get it to run. Even then I'm seeing some persistent stuttering if I'm at low altitude.

I tried reducing the tree texture file back to 2048x2048, and it helped some. (see attached)

View attachment a_largecitytrees01.zip
 
Getting back to this. having looked at recent close ups over towns or cities, how do the number of houses effect frame rates? Are the individual houses as simple as they can be without effecting the outside appearance? Given that most European cities and towns have close terrace rows of houses, what we see in CFS3 looks weird.
 
mongoose said:
Getting back to this. having looked at recent close ups over towns or cities, how do the number of houses effect frame rates? Are the individual houses as simple as they can be without effecting the outside appearance? Given that most European cities and towns have close terrace rows of houses, what we see in CFS3 looks weird.
Click to expand...
Hi James, I wonder if you experiment with the scenery density and LOD settings in the scenerybudgets file, this might have an appreciable effect? My 8 year old computer is rapidly brought to its knees with increases in scenery density.
 
Update on 034 scenery tiles. I had hoped that the _fields.dds texture would be amenable to editing, but the 034 prefixed tiles don't seem to have very much at all in the way of fields to improve. Possibly the only improvement available is to darken the roads, as Clive has done with the 031 prefixed tiles.
 
MajorMagee said:
Doesn't the alpha layer of Fields control where the houses are excluded for parks and such?
Click to expand...

Yes, but it seems to me that the 034 fields tile is densely populated with very few parks and open areas to sharpen up? I will take a closer look at the alpha layer. On a casual observation basis, the 031 Fields tile seems to have more green on it, so more amenable to sharpening up.
 
City Streets package by MAX_devil

Wowee. I've just had a rootle around in my backups, and found a package by MAX_devil, a City Streets package with the roads redrawn and tiles sharpened up. Dated 12 August 2004. The tiles are fairly modest in size, only increased to 683kb each.

I will install in my stock testbed install and see what's what. At first blush it looks like roads, fields and trees tiles are all sharpened up a bit.
 
Daiwilletti said:
Wowee. I've just had a rootle around in my backups, and found a package by MAX_devil, a City Streets package with the roads redrawn and tiles sharpened up. Dated 12 August 2004. The tiles are fairly modest in size, only increased to 683kb each.

I will install in my stock testbed install and see what's what. At first blush it looks like roads, fields and trees tiles are all sharpened up a bit.
Click to expand...

How did that go?
 
mongoose said:
How did that go?
Click to expand...

Hi James, I've been steadily trying different textures and combinations for the past few months. I'm pretty happy where I am at the moment, as far as making the best of existing texture options. I have been using a blended landclasses.xml, with grassland and fields using Johno_UK's V3 scenery, and all the urban and periurban textures and lsos and mos files being stock. You will find it when I release Modified Stock Upgrade V3. That's a bit iffy at the moment because of health issues.

What is needed is new base textures for urban area which follow the pattern of the existing lso files, but much sharper. I've played around with a couple of road textures but the results are poor - I get a grey smeary road pattern its hard to get it sharp and I've been working with a texture file of about 1Mb so you'd think it would be possible to get a sharp fine road pattern. It's harder than it looks!
 
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