Barthek's CAUCASUS REDONE 2022

[REDEYE_CVW-66]

Dude; this does not look 'good'.

 

This is beyond superb.

 

I have tried every single texture mod since I got involved with DCS many, many years ago. Many have been good, some alright (I have to say I did not love your last version- but oddly I really liked you beta for it), and some have been bad.

This is by far the best retexture of the Caucasus and in my humble opinion marks the apex of what can be done given the base material.

 

Why?

 

The choice of colours, the sharpness, the blending- and in particular; your use of brown, warmer tones to shade and break up the landscape. Contrary to what some texture artist believe- summer does not mean flat and even greentones. This looks, 'earthy' for a lack of a better word.

 

Your choice of noise texture (which is very important for Caucasus, since it covers so large parts of the map with a single texture) has an excellent pattern, making it not easily seen repeated. This blends expertly into the towns and forests.

Some texture mods have good looking towns, but when you get to altitude, the blending makes them stand out likes blocks or boxing- making a very 'cut and pasted' feel of the texture. Here; everything seems natural.

 

I know one could nitpick some minor items; Georgia has a very particual type of agricultural fields (While others can be seen in Russia etc)- but given the limited amount of base material to work with- this is simply outstanding. 

That being said; might I offer a humble advise for the other seasons:

 

Some people have an opnion burned into their heads that autumn; = orange and brown. That is very, very rarely the case. Most types of grass remain green through a large extent of the year. Only a very short period of autumn is dominated by crisp oranges and yellows, and then only for some trees. I would recommend a toned down, earthier look- with more green and more muted browns for the trees.

 

For the winter; a completely personal wish (fully understand if you don't), I would much prefer a partly/scattered snow map, which we have not seen in a long time. Plenty of other texture mods do the white carpet just fine- but I suspect that we will very rarely see this in Georgia (I might be wrong ofc). This would allow your excellent ground textures to shine through as well.

Other than that- thanks so much for sharing this with the community. It is very much appreciated.

 

Looking forward to see the rest.

 

Edit; this has been said a lot but ED should beg you to integrate this into the base-game.

 

WAGS, NINELINE and everyone else ED; jump in and take a look.

Edited May 3, 2021 by REDEYE_CVW-66

[swartbyron]

Fantastic Job on the blending! 

Mountains look fantastic and the whole terrain has a nice natural feel to it.

 

Thank you Barthek 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by swartbyron

[Barthek]

REDEYE_CVW-66, wow, I was not expecting such thorough review so quickly. Thank you for that! Same with you, Swartbyron. Thanks for posting some screenshots. There are still more things I would like to improve, e.g. villages, cities and airbases. As for other seasons, they will be more or less in the same style. We'll see what I can do.  Stay tuned for more updates! 

 

Best,

Barthek

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by Barthek

[EL_LEJI]

3 hours ago, REDEYE_CVW-66 said:

For the winter; a completely personal wish (fully understand if you don't), I would much prefer a partly/scattered snow map, which we have not seen in a long time

 

 

+1

I would like to see this too

[flanker1]

wow, i always dreamed of that what i can see now. . . keep up this amazing work, a big THANK YOU - and please try your best (as always :-)) to improve the airbases, cities, villages too. together with the new cloud it is such an amazing result and a absolutely new experience of my beloved caucasus. . . yes, i am a cold war kid and need some eastern european area - i am not getting warm with ww2 era maps and psg and syria and marihuanas - or what ever this far away holiday and some ww2 history (yes all you lovers, guam was soooooooo strategic also in cold war. . .) related island is called. . . 

 

i want to thank you again barthek, can´t wait to see more!!

Edited May 4, 2021 by flanker1

[Quekel]

I couldn't agree more then what @REDEYE_CVW-66 said.

Also his suggestions are spot on.

 

Keep up the good work! 

[YSIAD_RIP]

@Barthek,  I just installed Caucasus Redone Summer 2021 with no other Terrain or Tree mods:

• It looks like you took lessons learned from the excellent Normandy map that you fixed and applied some of it to the new Caucasus.
• I can say that you did not waste any of your time doing this update, it is another beautiful effort.  Thanks.
• The trees look really good and I know I removed all other mods.. Colors and detail in the summer look less saturated now. 
• I have been using Mustangs shader mods for so long I had to install his latest 2.7 Shaderedits v0.7 after initial testing just to see. - Yes! I like the new Caucasus even more.

If you could figure out a way to get some red roofs on some of the homes/building it it would make ED literally blush!  LoL..

 

I hope ED is monitoring these threads and will do the "right thing" in a future update. 

 

[markturner1960]

Just doubling down on what Redeye said, amazing work...thank you! Would you recommend using Taz'z trees mod with this, or is it not really needed with your mod? Thanks! 

[Kaplan]

15 минут назад, markturner1960 сказал:

Would you recommend using Taz'z trees mod with this, or is it not really needed with your mod? Thanks! 

Its up to you, both mods are great.

1st pic is Taz's trees mod.

 

[markturner1960]

Thanks, I asked as I was under the impression Taz's mod gives much better tree models close up and was not sure if Bartheks mods were more high level than that and that using Taz's mod also gave you good close up trees. If Bartheks mods improves the basic tree models as well, then it seems sensible to only use one...? 

[Taz1004]

13 hours ago, markturner1960 said:

Thanks, I asked as I was under the impression Taz's mod gives much better tree models close up and was not sure if Bartheks mods were more high level than that and that using Taz's mod also gave you good close up trees. If Bartheks mods improves the basic tree models as well, then it seems sensible to only use one...? 

 

Barthek did an excellent job adjusting the color of the tree textures.  But the flaw of the default Speedtree still remains in his trees.

 

First one is Barthek's trees and watch in fullscreen.  Trees in lower part of the screen will flicker.  The flicker is actually smoothed out by YouTube compression but is much more visible in game.  Especially if you lower Forest Detail Factor which by the way is pretty good fps boost.

 

 

In Better Trees, textures are fixed so there's very little flicker of billboard trees.  This is with Forest Detail Factor set to lowest.

 

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by Taz1004

[swartbyron]

Hi Barhek

 

I have a huge request for you? 

 

A lot of terrain mods kill off the grass making it look ugly and like 90's sim.

Your Summer 2021 Beta unfortunately dose the same. 

 

I think the grass is controlled by the transparency of the alpha channel but I could be wrong?

Could you please see if you could fix this? 

 

Thank you sir!

 

Comparison with default terrain below:

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by swartbyron

[Barthek]

1 hour ago, swartbyron said:

Hi Barhek

 

I have a huge request for you? 

 

A lot of terrain mods kill off the grass making it look ugly and like 90's sim.

Your Summer 2021 Beta unfortunately dose the same. 

 

I think the grass is controlled by the transparency of the alpha channel but I could be wrong?

Could you please see if you could fix this? 

 

Thank you sir!

 

 

 

 

 

Hello there!

Yes, I am aware of that issue. Will do my best to fix it with the next release.

 

EDIT:

 

Aaaand, done!

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by Barthek

[swartbyron]

Well done, that was fast.

Thank you  

[zildac]

1 hour ago, Barthek said:

 

Hello there!

Yes, I am aware of that issue. Will do my best to fix it with the next release.

 

EDIT:

 

Aaaand, done!

 

 

Excellent. Will you be sharing this version ahead of release too?

[Barthek]

21 minutes ago, zildac said:

Excellent. Will you be sharing this version ahead of release too?

 

Yeah, sure. Once I have more new features ready for this compilation, I'll gladly share it with you all.

[zildac]

 

2 hours ago, Barthek said:

 

Yeah, sure. Once I have more new features ready for this compilation, I'll gladly share it with you all.

 Great, thanks @Barthek !!!

[Cepacol]

Barthek! Awesome job!!!

 

 

[bandit648]

Hi @Barthek

 

I've been using your 2020 texture mod since release. I'm really impressed with the 2021 preview and look forward to seeing the other seasons. I'm running it with @Taz1004 Tree's and runway textures and @Mustang Shader Mod. It looks stunning! I keep coming back to Caucuses map even though I have all of the other maps. 

 

One thing I'd like to see with the winter season is snow in the mountains but dry farmlands in the lower elevations. I think this would look much more realistic since I don't think the Caucuses region typically looks like the Arctic in real life.

 

Thanks for all your hard work in making this mod. I'd really like to see ED collaborate with you guys in updating the Caucuses map.

[Semor76]

2 hours ago, bandit648 said:

 

One thing I'd like to see with the winter season is snow in the mountains but dry farmlands in the lower elevations. I think this would look much more realistic since I don't think the Caucuses region typically looks like the Arctic in real life.

 

 

+1

[Valium]

Is the latest version released?

[Quekel]

Few posts back there is a summer only preview

[Barthek]

The spring has sprung. The trees need some more watering, tho.

 

 

 

 

 

[REDEYE_CVW-66]

How much can stock textures really be improved by modders?

 

 

Barthek: Yes.

[Taz1004]

Looks great... but I think it's a bit too desaturated.