DCS building HD overhaul

[dimitriov]

Excellent work! Any chance something could be released before Christmas? :drunk:

 

Definitely no, there is too much work and I don't spend all my holidays on photoshop ;). Expect it for the 15-30 January.

 

I'll post comparatives screens later.

[flanker1]

Definitely no, there is too much work and I don't spend all my holidays on photoshop ;). Expect it for the 15-30 January.

 

I'll post comparatives screens later.

 

 

i am sure - it will be worth the waiting. . . thank you! :-)

[Chic]

Many thanks for the hours dedicated.

[rcjonessnp175]

Will look epic in Dcs 2.0 in January well that's my guess on open beta release

[T. Jacob]

With respect to Lod for distance, I thought the texture of the buildings also used mip maps, such as terrain textures. If you use two different textures maybe you can use the same but with mip maps, or may not be enough, but it's an idea.:)

 

Your work is excellent and I see wear much time on this, big time, will be another great mod to enjoy. Thanks for your effort.

 

:thumbup:

[crazyeddie]

Nice work, if you can solve the next problem I might crack on and add a few more buildings to my Structures Pack V1.

[dimitriov]

There isn't any problem, just some work ;)

 

The comparative screens :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lilkiki]

:thumbup:

[Morpheus]

Très joli :thumbup:

[dimitriov]

ouf, the last buildings are done :

 

 

 

 

Tell me bro, can I make a personnal addition? :megalol:

 

 

[dimitriov]

So actually, the mod features :

 

- 22 retextured buildings, from 1560 to 4048 resolution (nearly all the towns building except some little, rare, and not so ugly ones).

- Modification in the LOD apparition :

 

1. Low graphic setting: high res textures appear from 1 km far
   
2. medium graphic setting : high res textures appear from 3 km far
   
3. high graphic setting : high res textures appear from 5 km far
   

 

As I use the morevisibility mod, I'll too give the very-high, ultra-high, and extreme settings lua too, which will be the same as the high.

 

Anyway I don't suggest to use this mod if you don't have the computer to make DCS actually work in Medium/High, at least 4 Gb RAM is recommended.

 

 

Still to do :

 

- Creating a real good mipmaping to eliminate the clipping (actually quite much important on some buildings).

 

- Creating the distant LOD, which will be the longest part, between 50 and 100 hours of work because the distant textures need to be placed exactly in the same position than the near textures, or transition will be notable.

 

Release date : january-february 2015.

 

Nicolas

Edited December 23, 2014 by dimitriov

[shagrat]

Awesome! I agree, though, it is more important to do the LODs correct and have smooth transition (no flicker!) than quickly rushing this out. Looking stunning! Keep it coming...

[Bix]

excellent work!

[tonialkon]

sorry but the Buldingstextures from ED loocks better !!

I wait for EDGE .

[shagrat]

Get into a chopper

or a Tank drive through a town and maybe you notice a difference?

BTW - EDGE will not change the textures... the stock ones are pretty low res and this mod will give us hi res... just saying.

[dimitriov]

Erf, no problem, that's your opinion, and I will consider it. But Edge won't touch at anything for the building textures, and the actual ones date from Lock on more than 10 years ago...

 

The textures which I use have between 4 and 8 times the resolution of the stock ones... So sure the textures choice won't please to everybody (it's a risk when you retexture a whole city), but looking better... Even Super Mario on 3ds looks better than the stock textures ;)

 

Another différence will be that you'll can hover just in front of the building, and still see details on it, and not some kind of big pixels mixture ;)

 

Nicolas

Edited December 24, 2014 by dimitriov

[crazyeddie]

Nicholas

 

I am doing something similar to you and I agree with you 100%, the old textures really are rubbish. Something needed doing to them

 

A question: To do this for the town and city building textures are you just upgrading the two files

 

block_texture

town_1_block

 

Or are you doing this some other way.

 

I have done a few buildings in a more modern style to yours and it might not suit everyone, so keep doing what you are doing, some prefer the older style of buildings and you will never please everyone.

 

I might even have a go at converting some of them to WW2 style later on, if I can find time.

 

Good work mate.

[dimitriov]

hi crazy ;)

 

thats quite simple, no I don't use the town-1-block.

 

I use xnview to visualize all the dds without having to open them in photoshop one after one.

 

I modified all the dds for each building, for example, the home16twin.tga.dds, home51_st.tga.dds etc etc. I don't know if it does work the same with the town_1_Block, I didn't try. Another point is that resoultions are different between the buildings. For example, a big big building (the high residentials towers) are in 4k, and some other littles are in 2048...

 

If you have some screens, perhaps could we work together on some buildings (I think to the base ones which I will probably rework on another mod.)

 

I'd like too remake the stadium. Unfortunately, finding textures for such building is very hard.

 

Nicolas

Edited December 26, 2014 by dimitriov

[dimitriov]

Mkay so to give an update.

 

The mipmaping is successfully completed (I learnt someting new ^^). There is no more cliping issue, so that the textures look perfectly clean from any distance.

 

I now can focuse on the distant LOD, finally, we perhaps can expect it before sunday 4 January. It'll be a beta, because some correctives, about optimization for example, or even for some buildings which eventually wouldn't please to many people, will probably have to be made (I can't really test the perfs on many computers you see, but they look correct :p).

 

Nicolas

[Lizzard]

Great news..and thank you very very much for you hard work:thumbup: I guess this is one of the longest awaited to-be-done mods ever:)

[dimitriov]

pressuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure

[dimitriov]

I thought I would retexture it, it's done, the hotel looked really bad with my new textures, now it's done :

 

With the first retexture :

 

 

with the new one (ps, dont worry about the fps, when you make a screen, sometimes it lags), I still have to make some little adjustments to make disapear the old grey textures on the corners... :

 

[shagrat]

Really amazing! With the ground texture mods it will look like whole different game, even before EDGE eye candy improves it even more.

 

One of the best overhauls to the good old Caucasus map...

 

Respect!

[dimitriov]

Nice work from what I saw ingame ;)

 

Actually, I think I'm going to release first my mod alone, cause the buildings are pretty much finalized, and I don't want to go back to the first step of retexturing using some of yours ;)

 

I'll see after.

 

Tonight I'm going to release an "alpha" version of the mod, it doesn't include the distant LOD, and is just here to have a preview of the performances with the HD textures. Some buildings still have to be corrected/reworked, but I'd like to avoid any surprise of massive fps loss on others computers than the mine when the time will have come to release the final version ;)

 

I'll give the link when it's fully uploaded, and I'll too post a survey on the first post ;).

 

 

Nicolas

Edited December 26, 2014 by dimitriov

[shagrat]

Perfect, I'll have a look at it over the weekend in combination with the ground texture mod to check on overall fps, though I have a pretty good rig. I'll monitor video RAM usage and give feedback. Currently with Ranger79s mod objects and then villages and towns + ground textures mod, so at the moment it hits video RAM up to 2,5 GB +