DCS building HD overhaul

[Morpheus]

Link does not work for me :cry:

[zaelu]

Sorry... I removed the spaces in the name and I forgot to update the link here :). It should work now. Try again.

[Morpheus]

Work fine now Thank You :thumbup:

[Art-J]

Just installed the mod and have been flying around, testing. I like it. The LoD textures for a long, four-story building might need some tuning though. Below are two screens, separated by one click of mouse roll zoom. The building on the chopper's first o'clock switches between a version with shops on the bottom floor, and version without :D. I'd rather see it making LoD switch much further.

[zaelu]

The problem is not so much of tuning as it is of staring for hours at the texture posted above a few times and identifying which small bit multiplied how many times in how many places goes there.

 

The small part at the ground floor is different part of the LOD texture and after a while I gave up identifying all the bits as it was simply dangerous for health :D .

 

When I will have the inner force to look again in that texture from hell... I will try again to see where that goes.

 

Example. There is a small building but made of many smaller blocks... it looks like a Polyclinic or maybe a scool... it has a H shape like. Its small far LOD texture is composed I think of more than 15 small parts exploded around that big texture.

 

I think that this texture was an old form of copy protection back then in Lomac days.

[Art-J]

I didn't realize texture mapping was so messed up on these things. I'll do my best ignoring this building for now :D.

[Plagi_Arism]

I didn't realize texture mapping was so messed up on these things. I'll do my best ignoring this building for now :D.

 

I was told by a DCS expert that ED f**ked up all the old building models on the terrain (for 5 years, since FC2, probably intentionally) that's why you have hard times (Dimitriov, CrazyEddie, Starway etc.) with those LODs and textures on the block_texture.dds and that's why we can't use Mustang's more detailed FC2 textures in DCSW for the (almost) same building models.

(If this failure happened accidentally that's a bigger shame IMHO)

 

If you check buildings in FC2 you will see there are more detailed models on the terrain, more trees in the cities and more forests on the hills/mountains.

There are huge problems, mistakes and mess in the current DCSW terrain files. ED stepped one backwards with DCS-Warthog, so now we are at Flanker2 or LOMAC level (10 years lag) with the terrain on the Black Sea map of DCSW.

ED sometimes spoil things to others instead of do fixes well, what need few minutes work only.

 

I hope we will get correct fixes and improvements with the 1.5 patch for the Black Sea map.

[zaelu]

It looks to me like an optimization and maybe a bit of old copy protection rather than "f* up".

 

Wags stated even in the last stream that some new effects on water were present in older versions and they were disabled because of performance hit. This could be the case for buildings too. They could have return to a previous older model because of performance.

 

Fact is. That huge texture for Far LOD can be managed. I had made one that is almost 75% complete (what is left are extremely small and village like buildings... mostly). can be downloaded and used from here:

 

http://ridethelightning.ro/lucruri/block_texture.bmp.psd

 

right click save as

[Chic]

Ok.

 

I made a remix mod (I usually have a bigger mod that is called "Mother of All Mods" and contains all the little things people had modified over the years and posted in separate mods, all in one single pack of original archives).

 

This partial mod contains only some of Dimitrov's textures and some of Crazy Eddie textures and also the "block_texture.bmp.dds" remade to contain both of them and also many roofs added by me from Crazy Eddie's files (resized and placed inside the file).

 

A note about the mix.

 

Some big... huge textures from Dimitrov were left behind. As I was saying on some pages ago... I made some tests (I explained them there) and on a usual 1920x1080 monitor I can see very very rare or at all the big resolution texture (4096)... that is the 2048 is mostly used when very close in rest the even lower ones. This makes useless to have (for now) such big resolution textures that slowly add to the FPS toll. Especially when you use a high visibility distance mod and some AA AF.

 

So

 

to download click here:

 

http://ridethelightning.ro/lucruri/Mod.Buildings.Textures__Extract.only.the.content.in._Mods.folder.zip

 

to install, as the archive name says... extract the containing folder in _Mods folder and install only with JSGME or manually if you know 100% what are you doing.

 

 

Here are two quick screens (I used only this mod for textures, the ground textures mods were disabled, also there is a mod for increase visibility)

 

 

 

Nice intergration of these mods. Looks great.

Might you update it based on Crazyeddie's recent modification of his mod?

http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/1452706/

 

Thanks for sharing your work.

[zaelu]

Yes I can.

 

Technically is CrazzyEddie and Dimitrov's work. I copypasted the files and textures inside the big Far LOD texture.

[crazyeddie]

If zaelu is prepared to do it I have no objections at all.

 

crazyeddie

[Chic]

Yes I can.

 

Technically is CrazzyEddie and Dimitrov's work. I copypasted the files and textures inside the big Far LOD texture.

 

I understand, but your efforts greatly facilitate access to DCS World for illiterates like myself.

Thanks again.

 

Thanks Crazy

Edited July 29, 2015 by Chic

[zaelu]

I took a look at the updated textures from CrazyEddie. Since my mix between his and Dimitrov's is bigger than both separately I could separate only 3 files that are in some measure different.

 

One of them was already modded by Crazy Eddie last time and one is from another archive (landtextures.zip) and is very small and I don't know if it has too much impact. I need to check first so it will not change minimum then pop up from distance. Or maybe is viceversa and it is a fix in itself.

 

These are the 3 different files.

 

This is the one that might be a fix. it is a bascketball terrain texture but maybe it is used also as something else and creates pop up?

 

 

This is a side building... might be also a fix, I need to check

 

 

This is a remodded texture that looks nicer on white but I need to check also its correspondent on Far LOD texture so it will not create pop ups when transiting.

 

 

As I said... many of the rest of the files (there are 85 in total with some of them duplicated with a error in naming) are already modified by CrazyEddie or Dimitrov and I preferred either the older version or Dimitrov's higher resolution.

Edited July 30, 2015 by zaelu

[crazyeddie]

I turned the baseball pitch into a car park for my own mission editor, the side building is used on several different buildings and what works on one will not work for another, it forms the bottom two floor of a railway building and all three floors of the large TV mast, and I tried several different textures for some buildings.

 

I included everything in the pack, you can pick whatever ones you want. Perhaps I should have removed the ones I did for my own use, too late now.

 

The 'a' letter at the start of some names was used to identify duplications of the same building, otherwise one would be deleted.

 

The main focus of my update was the block_textures file which now contains most (not all, not the car park for instance or the white side building) of my buildings, that also includes some changes to buildings that I had not done a large texture file for, the restaurant, the cinema and a few others, and that runs fine on my medium rated rig with the right settings.

 

Anything under two floors in height is not worth doing, they are so small and the texture element of the file is tiny, and some are impossible to identify easily beings so small.

 

Hope that helps.

[Chic]

Zaelu, if the update has only modest impact please don't put yourself out as a result of my request. Greatly appreciate the time you already committed.

 

Thank you both.

[Ninja1959]

Great Work :thumbup:

[zaelu]

Anything under two floors in height is not worth doing, they are so small and the texture element of the file is tiny, and some are impossible to identify easily beings so small.

 

Hope that helps.

 

I agree. Especially with that dreaded far LOD texture.

 

Thanks for explanations.

Edited July 30, 2015 by zaelu

[Friedric]

can i instal this manualy ? my JSGME , iks not working for some reason

[zaelu]

yes you can. Is best to use folders with archive names especially with beta version so you know what can be remove safelly.

 

also JSMGE works with beta but you need to create a copy of the program folder and create and configure a new shortcut fo it just like with the first one. First time you start it it will ask again for the mods folder and it's recommended to say _MODS (instead of MODS that is used by DCS). Then build a snapshot file and you are good to go.

[Cibit]

Anyone tried this in 1.5 yet? If so can we see screens please:)

[Blooze]

I love this mod with 1.5 combined with my CITY LIGHTS MOD

[zaelu]

Anyone tried this in 1.5 yet? If so can we see screens please:)

 

it works

[dimitriov]

Ok so I'm just back to give you some explanations about the 1.5 compatibility.

 

Currently the textures work with 1.5, but the LOD transition distance is back to 500 meters.

 

I'll upload to you the various .Lua which correct this for all the configurations (Low, medium, High and the new ultra config). They should be available on this post and on the first page below the mention FOR DCS 1.5 AND FUTURE 2.0. I'll add them today.

 

By the way, to provide you more explanations about why I didn't continue this mod :

 

- Wasn't sure about the compatibility on DCS Edge engine. Seems okay.

- With the feedbacks I went to realize that some few buildings (mainly, for me, the 16 stairs grey double tower) aren't really in the Caucasus spirit. If someone can provide me a nice full HD (or 4k) texture for this tower, which may look like this , I'd correct this one.

- I've got studies so don't have time to spend on it anymore for continuing it ;)

- I saw that you made yourselves another version with crazyeddie files ;) Personally I think there should be two different packages for each texture set, as long as the textures type aren't the same at all (Mine are photographies, Crazyeddie ones look more like artistic draws). This to allow people to choose two different textures pack, and to have a complete alternative for the future DCS 2.0 release . . .

 

Nicolas

 

Edit : here it is : you just have to replace the current .lua in your mod directory Config/terrain/... by those ones https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Wfkj5nEKIGLVZvS0hFQlI2MTQ/view?usp=sharing

Edited October 18, 2015 by dimitriov

[FireFox500]

I have changed the recommended LUA lines required for the mod to be used in unison with other mods (in my case ground textures 4.0 and 5.0), there is still a very obvious transition that I cannot be rid of, any help? I edited the farFullRenderDistance and nearFullRenderDistance and set them to 5000 and 3000 like the lua patch would have done and still nothing, I cannot for the life of me figure out what I am doing wrong, any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

FireFox500

Edited April 1, 2016 by FireFox500

[kobac]

Does anyone have the initial version of the airport train station building in Tbilisi (airbase_airport_tbilisi_01.bmp.dds), with blue-green windows? Not this one with the ugly yellow.

I know that she looks golden yellow, but it depends on the angle of incidence of light. However I liked more the primordial with blue glass.

Edited April 19, 2016 by kobac