Better Trees for Caucasus V6

[Taz1004]

Light / Darker:

 

Installed finally (with JSGME), I didnt notice issue with Starway textures (and with his textures this mod works very ok). Personally I prefer "light" version. It works nic in VR also, maybe placebo ;> but it looks like they have better performace (motionreprojection on) than default trees. Good job!

 

Thanks for the shots. It's interesting to see different gamma setting everyone's using.

[YoYo]

Mine is 1.9.

[docWilly]

Best combo ever...... Mustang´s latest Caucasus texture release and the "Darth Vader" Version of Taz....wow.

 

 

 

To both of you a big THANK YOU!!

[Taz1004]

Best combo ever...... Mustang´s latest Caucasus texture release and the "Darth Vader" Version of Taz....wow.

 

 

 

To both of you a big THANK YOU!!

 

Thanks. And welcome to the dark side.

[javelina1]

Best combo ever...... Mustang´s latest Caucasus texture release and the "Darth Vader" Version of Taz....wow.

 

To both of you a big THANK YOU!!

Indeed, the same combo I'm running. Looks great! thank you!

[Taz1004]

I'm using Mustang's too as it seems to fit my trees best.

 

LucShep's pack looks great but the fall is too green and doesn't seem to go well with my trees. Default fall may be too yellow but I have to work with that as I have to assume that's what most people will be using.

I love Barthek's for variety in the fields but only has Summer and still working on other seasons I think.

Starway, I haven't tried yet. I'm downloading now.

[Taz1004]

I tried Starway and I see why some people wanted lighter trees. Ground is very bright and saturated. Dark trees don't blend at all. I'm currently working on reducing saturation of trees but now I'm thinking I should leave it for Skywalker version.

 

I see its appeal for fast movers at higher altitude tho.

 

 

Obviously, it's all personal preference. I posted these just to show how my trees work with these excellent scenery mods.

Edited August 5, 2020 by Taz1004

[Quekel]

I use CGTC - Caucasus Ground Textures Compilation for DCS 2.5 There the dark trees look amazing, i prefer it a little darker, guess iam more used of flying gliders in the netherlands and its a bit darker then in DCS.

 

 

I fly in VR and looks amazing, to hard to make screenshots

[Taz1004]

I added CGTC and Barthek in the Summer comparison too.

 

I like CGTC too but I thought it was too green in the fall but now it doesn't look that green. Looks pretty good. Maybe it depends on the area.

 

[Krasniye]

I'm sure it's been asked but does this pass IC?

[Taz1004]

I'm sure it's been asked but does this pass IC?

 

I believe any type of scenery mod never passes IC. I think people use Mod managers to toggle mods before entering MP.

[M0ltar]

I believe any type of scenery mod never passes IC. I think people use Mod managers to toggle mods before entering MP.

 

 

 

Terrain mods pass IC as long as the server turns off pure textures in server options. Terrain mods work on Blue Flag, 104th, and Growling Sidewinder.

[Taz1004]

Terrain mods pass IC as long as the server turns off pure textures in server options. Terrain mods work on Blue Flag, 104th, and Growling Sidewinder.

 

Good to know. Thanks!

[YSIAD_RIP]

Fantastic TREES! - ED Are you looking at this?

 

The Default Trees is Caucasus were killing me!

Thank you x100 Taz1004 for the upgrades.

I went with the Dark Trees to match up the CGTC v1.01 Ground Textures Compilation Mod.

Gama 1.7

 

------| DEFAULT |---------------| LIGHT |-----------------| DARK |

[YSIAD_RIP]

YoYo, you should try a lower gamma between 1.6 and 1.8 just to see if it brings out even better contrast/details.

I can understand using high gamma, especially in brightly lit rooms. (My Office faces East with lots of morning sun - thankfully I usually fly DCS in the evening.

 

Cheers.

[YoYo]

YoYo, you should try a lower gamma between 1.6 and 1.8 just to see if it brings out even better contrast/details.

I can understand using high gamma, especially in brightly lit rooms. (My Office faces East with lots of morning sun - thankfully I usually fly DCS in the evening.

 

Cheers.

 

I fly VR only so 1.9 is ok for me. Picture in gogles looks a little different than on the screen. :)

[YoYo]

Autumn with Starway 2.5.8 ground texturres + Light trees (best fit).

 

 

[LucShep]

You know when you think there's something wrong with a picture but can't really point out what it is? I think I found it.

 

When the Sun is low, I was wondering why the shadowing on the distant billboard trees are reversed. I reverted to default tree and it does same thing. I tried reversing the normal map and voila. Not only that, incorrect normal map was masking the details from the billboard image texture.

 

Now I gotta fix all the normal maps.

 

 

 

Bit of preview on fall tree progress.

 

Hey, that is an absurdly good find. :thumbup:

I've been noticing this annoying bug ever since 2.5 was out (as so many others, I guess) and it always left me scratching my head.

 

I like your trees mod a lot(!), and they seem a good way to go. :) Thank you.

But I feel that they only seem to work as intented with original "stock" 2.5 terrain textures, as well as with terrain texture mods that are close to the default color tones (which is the majority, so it's totally understandable).

 

I'm currently around next version of CGTC (still W.I.P.), which is a lot different, has darker and much less colorfull tones (no more "Disney"!) and this doesn't seem all that good there.

It seems that customizing each tree texture (as I've been doing for stock ones) is the only real solution for that, and may be so also for any other terrain mods that distance from stock 2.5 terrain color tones.

But then this is too specific (and laborous) to nitpick with anyway.

 

Do you think it's feasable for you to collaborate with modders for other Caucasus map terrain mods, by also providing uncompressed textures (.TGA, .PNG) for the trees diffuse and (now corrected) bump textures?

[Minsky]

I'm currently around next version of CGTC (still W.I.P.), which is a lot different, has darker and much less colorfull tones (no more "Disney"!)...

 

Lol I thought your current version is already darker and less disney than all other Caucasus mods

What are you cooking there? Mordor? :D

[LucShep]

:P LOL @Minsky

[Razorback]

Waouwww Great job !

Thx to you for the excellent job...A more immersive terrain. Definitely a must to have !

[Taz1004]

Do you think it's feasable for you to collaborate with modders for other Caucasus map terrain mods, by also providing uncompressed textures (.TGA, .PNG) for the trees diffuse and (now corrected) bump textures?

 

Hey, thanks Luc. I'm willing to help in any way I can if it's making DCS better for everyone.

But I doubt uncompressed texture format will be any use since the original texture file source are compressed jpeg's. Saving them again as uncompressed format would still keep jpeg compression artifacts in the image. And something like trees are so small and far away, compressed vs uncompressed doesn't make big difference in my opinion. But if you're requiring uncompressed version for your process for some reason, I'm willing to cooperate. :smilewink:

 

You are welcome to take my texture, edit them, and include with your mod. Small mention in the fine prints is suffice.

 

 

 

Also, one thing I did to the billboards I didn't explain because I thought it was too technical. But if anyone's planning to edit my textures, I think I should explain.

 

Default billboard tree has 8 side views and 1 top down view. Side views are profile images of the 3D version of the speed tree at every 45'. And as you rotate around these trees the image content will switch based on the relative angle. To give you the illusion of 3D tree. This is how SpeedTree sprite works.

 

Problem is that this switching of sprite is not a blend but a pop. And for this to be effective, you have to be far away (to activate low LOD trees) where this 3D effect really isn't noticeable. So in the end, all this does is cause flickering in the distance.

 

So what I did is make all 8 sprites same image. So even when the image switches, it switches to same image so there'd be less flickering. I haven't made this fix for the normal maps yet so there's still slight flicker but I don't think it's noticeable. And I haven't made this fix to shrubs yet either so I still see those flickering.

 

Default Sprite

 

Better Trees Sprite

 

By the way, looking forward to your next version!

Edited August 6, 2020 by Taz1004

[Taz1004]

The Default Trees is Caucasus were killing me!

Thank you x100 Taz1004 for the upgrades.

I went with the Dark Trees to match up the CGTC v1.01 Ground Textures Compilation Mod.

Gama 1.7

 

------| DEFAULT |---------------| LIGHT |-----------------| DARK |

 

Thanks for the shots. I just clicked on the first image without reading the text above and I thought it was my trees. And immediately thought "Damn, that looks horrible, I gotta do better job" :lol:

[Taz1004]

Preview of Spring for V3. After some research, I realized that spring is not just brighter version of summer but mixture of dark and light which together creates brighter color from a distance. Like a Monet. Unfortunately, there's only 3 types of trees to work with in the forest.

 

V3 Spring Progress

 

Default

[rrohde]

:thumbup: