Uploaded: Missing Effects Textures

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Daiwilletti

Charter Member
Just uploaded under CFS3 Other - Effects.

In my Ubisoft CFS3 DVD version (I don't know about the other earlier versions), the effects.xml file calls for a number of .tga textures. These should reside in the Effects/FXTextures folder. They don't.

Hence the uploaded textures. There may be some debate as to whether this is necessary as there are .dds textures of the same name IIRC. However to my fevered imagination when I added the .tga textures, stock CFS3 effects looked better - eg. the flash in the water as shells from invasion defenses hit the water. Darker smoke. Better stock wake effects.

This upload is one of a series required to fix things that are a bit wonky in stock CFS3. I've uploaded my take on some stock vehicles, for example. But when I get around to it some stock ships have errors too - the German cruiser needs a few slight mods to the xdp file for example.

A big improvement to stock is to make the non-functioning ground spawns work. Several of the ground spawn facilities (including AA and infantry) do not work so fixing the errors means that you get random flak installations (a nasty surprise) and other facilities intended for the original CFS3, but which do not populate the ground spawns because of some simple typos.

The big question is how much these stock errors have propagated into the massive and fabulous addons like ETO, MAW, PTO and RS. I've quickly checked the effects.xml for ETO and it has carried over the stock references to .tga files. So presumably the other theatre addons also may benefit from the .tga textures - there is no harm in bunging them in anyway.

Happy tweaking :running:
 
Thanks for these I was wondering about there value in the game.
Looking at the effects.xml files and the following .tga are missing from your list: "default.tga" and "Debris_big4a.tga".Do you have them also?
 
gosd said:
Thanks for these I was wondering about there value in the game.
Looking at the effects.xml files and the following .tga are missing from your list: "default.tga" and "Debris_big4a.tga".Do you have them also?
Click to expand...

Hi GOSD - I still wonder about their value in the game. I like to think they help. However with new computers, video cards, scenery and fancy drivers like D3D8.dll, CFS3 looks so much better than when it first arrived. So it's hard to be objective about effects from the original effects.xml. However I would say that stock effects like flak have some pleasing things to them like the way the black smoke from the flak hangs in the air - just like some of the old b&w film footage. don't know if that is because of the .tga textures or not. However there are a number of effects I do not recall seeing before. For example, a damaged Heinkel emitted what I took to be "oil smoke" and it had a reddish hue to it - first time I've seen that! And a sinking German destroyer had numerous oily looking fires on the water rather than just one or two.

I will look for the two .tga textures - I seem to recall looking for a "default.dds" to convert to .tga
 
Effects Textures Updated 15-5-14

gosd said:
the following .tga are missing from your list: "default.tga" and "Debris_big4a.tga".Do you have them also?
Click to expand...

The zip file has now been updated to include the additional textures that Gosd noted. Thanks Gosd for knocking them together.

Anyone notice anything different when using them? To me, for example, the flak smoke seems to hang longer in the air (Stock effect), and some large ship fires have a flickering effect on the smoke, as if the fire is reflected on the smoke.
 
Many thanks for this, will give it a try :).

The tga file type is called up in various places within the stock cfs3, the SDK models for instance reference some. Yet dds seems to be the main type used everywhere within the sim.

From what I've read tga is an old fashioned low quality image whereas dds is still a standard for gaming. Even better results could be obtained by replacing the tga images with re-worked dds and changing the references within the effects.xml. A lot of work though!
 
Pat Pattle said:
Many thanks for this, will give it a try :).

The tga file type is called up in various places within the stock cfs3, the SDK models for instance reference some. Yet dds seems to be the main type used everywhere within the sim.

From what I've read tga is an old fashioned low quality image whereas dds is still a standard for gaming. Even better results could be obtained by replacing the tga images with re-worked dds and changing the references within the effects.xml. A lot of work though!
Click to expand...

Hi Pat,

The other course of action, which I have applied in the past, is to do a "Find and Replace" in the effects.xml file. I changed all the .tga references to .dds. in some installs. It is actually not a lot of work at all. All the requisite .dds files are easily available, its just that they are not called for in the original effects.xml. It may be that the cfs3 engine makes .dds and .tga textures interchangeable, but as I said at the start of this thread I seemed to observe an improvement (over the stock situation) by using the original effects.xml and providing the .tga files called for.

However, I am finding that the .tga textures I've made seem to work fine. I wish there was an easy way to objectively test the differences between the .tga textured effects and .dds textured effects.

However, the main thing is that by addressing the missing textures called for in the effects.xml, there seems to be a distinct improvement over the default position, of doing nothing.

** One trick is to ensure the number of particles specified in the configoverrides file is over 5000. That improves the quality of effects, if I understand it correctly. (See the Section "SFX Detail" in the stock cfsconfigdatabase.txt file).
 
I ran this with and without the TGA textures a number of times and can't say that I see any functional difference. It's as if the effects.xml is using the DDS version even when a TGA is specifically called out as long as the file name is the same. Perhaps I'm just not observing the proper effect sequences where it matters.
 
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MajorMagee said:
I ran this with and without the TGA textures a number of times and can't say that I see any functional difference. It's as if the effects.xml is using the DDS version even when a TGA is specifically called out as long as the file name is the same. Perhaps I'm just not observing the proper effect sequences where it matters.
Click to expand...

Hi Majormagee,

I agree its very difficult to objectively assess/measure what is going on. I thought however it can't hurt to have the textures. And now I'm paying more attention to the effects (and I increased the maxparticles parameter in the configoverrides) maybe I'm just noticing the effects more?

I watched my 500lb bombs fall next to a damaged German destroyer yesterday. That F9 button is great. Anyway, a terrific mushroom cloud of orange flame gouted upward. The effect seemed pretty good for stock old CFS3, without all the great effects Master Fox provided for ETO.

However any number of factors could have influenced it, eg. the change to the maxparticles, and just paying more attention with much better gear than I had when I first bought the game almost 10 years ago. Better CPU, better graphics card, better LED monitor, etc etc. visiting stock CFS3 is like a blast from the past, but everything the game's architects envisioned are actually brought to reality with modern gear. Even the stock planes/skins look so much better now.
 
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