Improved Towns & Villages Mod

[Highwayman-Ed]

All files, links and screenshots updated, all taken with Diveplane's Shadows, Mustang's Clouds, PeterP's HDR and SweetFX 1.4 with PeterP's settings in Spring.

 

Recommended for Helicopter Pilots;

My original version with blended textures from Toby23's Low'n'Slow and Enhanced Terrain Mod & Rocky's Trees here (321MB) in JSGME format;

 

or

 

Toby23's Low'n'Slow & Rocky's DTAC Trees with this version here (392MB)

 

 

Recommended for Fighter Jocks;

 

Rocky's DTAC Terrain & Trees with this version here (842MB)

 

or

 

Toby23's Enhanced Terrain & Rocky's Trees with this version here (341MB)

 

or

 

Foxbeard's Terrain & Rocky's DTAC Trees with this version - Removed due to claims of Plagiarism (T@ker -> Foxbeard)

 

All versions are JSGME and 1.2.7 compatible

 

Hey guys, I've been playing around with ideas for years on how to improve the towns and villages in DCS ever since I really started flying very low with DCS Black Shark as whilst the town textures look great flying an F-15 at 20,000ft, they're not so great in a helicopter at 50ft. All of my initial work hinged on aligning the 3D objects in game (houses, warehouses, etc) with the textures of the towns and adding additional 3D objects where needed to bring them to life, as it turns out I've been looking at it the wrong way!

 

Inspired to start work on this idea again by Rocky and Toby23's excellent terrain mods, I started playing around with the textures themselves and have created a mod compatible with both of these as well as the standard DCS terrain.

 

I have a lot of ideas on how to further improve these textures and add a lot more details, but for now I plan to release the current version and get some flying hours in again as I've been so focused on building these textures for the past month I've hardly logged any time on stick at all!

 

Below are some of the images of the new Towns and Villages that are in the final stages of testing with the boys and girls at the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion before I release them, shown with Stock, Rocky's DTAC and Toby23's Low & Slow Mod. I hope to have them available by the weekend.

First, here is the stock DCS without any Terrain mods:

 

 

 

 

 

Here is what the mod looks like with my version:

 

 

 

 

 

Here is what the mod looks like with Toby23's Low'n'Slow:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here with Rocky's DTAC Terrain & Trees:

 

 

 

 

 

Here it is with Toby23's Enhanced Terrain

 

 

 

 

 

Here it is with Foxbeard's Terrain Mod

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 1, 2014 by Highwayman-Ed

[flanker1]

amazing work. a really nice and fantastic add on. waiting for that for years now. . . thanks in advance!

[GregP]

Yes, that looks incredible! Can't wait to try it out.

[PeroperoDokkiri]

Just what I was thinking it'd be cool to have! Great mod!

[aaron886]

Looks great! Thanks!!

[zaelu]

I see you removed the 2D pictures of villages... those with flattened hoses. Is that correct? How is seen from distance when 10-20 such small villages should appear?

[Highwayman-Ed]

I see you removed the 2D pictures of villages... those with flattened hoses. Is that correct? How is seen from distance when 10-20 such small villages should appear?

 

Effectively, yes I removed the existing textures containing the 2D village textures and replaced them with new ones with tree bases, dirt roads and some other small details which align with the structures.

 

As for how it looks when 10-20 should appear from a distance, the second and third images of each version show approximately 30 of these village tiles together.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Highwayman-Ed

[chromium]

Great Idea, highly appreciated :)

[zaelu]

Looks interesting. Looking forwards to try it when is ready.

[Lizzard]

finally some improvement on the Villages:thumbup: The WIP Shots look great so far..but I wonder If it would be possible to add some parking places, forecourts or stuff like that...so you don`t have just Buildings on the green Fields:)

 

Anyway great Job, and I am looking forward to this!

[Aginor]

I think I like it, because the villages blend in better.

There is one thing I don't like, though. I miss the parking lots and stuff (basically the grey stuff on the ground textures). I often orient on them, since they are easy to spot and often have rather unique shapes.

Since your mod seems to remove those it is harder to distinguish between industrial areas and housing areas.

 

But it certainly looks like a great start otherwise. :)

[Boberro]

Looks nice :) Add to this great Mustang's house textures and choppers have better life :)

[flanker1]

i confirm, i like it, but i miss the concrete and tarmac and "environment" too. maybe this is the solution: only add your fine little dirt roads and little streets to the stock textures of the towns and villages - just simply "overlay" it with your roads and streets. possible???

 

in my opinion that will be the perfect deal.

Edited October 9, 2013 by flanker1

[Aginor]

Looks nice :) Add to this great Mustang's house textures and choppers have better life :)

 

Wait what? What new house textures? I think I missed that mod. Do you have a link?

[EagleEye]

I like! Let`s get rid of off these oddments from the satelite images.

[Skulleader]

WOW,

 

I really love this future Mod, it's very awesome !!!

 

Congratulation, it's very amazing. Skull

[Highwayman-Ed]

but I wonder If it would be possible to add some parking places, forecourts or stuff like that...so you don`t have just Buildings on the green Fields:)

 

There is one thing I don't like, though. I miss the parking lots and stuff (basically the grey stuff on the ground textures). I often orient on them, since they are easy to spot and often have rather unique shapes.

 

but i miss the concrete and tarmac and "environment" too

 

Yep, it's on the plan to add these type of details around some of the larger buildings, but it's not possible to add proper linked roads, parks, pavements, parking areas, etc to create a fully built tile due to the way that the tiles fit together. It's fine when the tiles align nicely, but occasionally around the map you'll find some that overlap each other quite a lot at odd angles, but I am working on ways to minimize the impact when it occurs and this is primarily why you only see short windy dirt roads and not straight tarmac ones.

 

The towns and larger industrial areas still have some of those features as is at the moment though that I kept from the original textures, here are a couple of examples:

 

 

 

I'm currently working on a couple of fixes that we've spotted on the 229th testing, specifically with how the lighting works at night which I expect to take a couple of days to fix for all of the seasons (28 tiles per season!). I'm also re-touching some of the dirt roads that I'm not happy with as well, but I'm hoping to still submit this first version to ED by the weekend.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Highwayman-Ed

[GregP]

Wait what? What new house textures? I think I missed that mod. Do you have a link?

 

This one? Says it's for LOFC2, though.

[zaelu]

That mod doesn't work on DCS. The buildings textures are very oddly made in LOMAC :D

[toby23]

Sorry Highwayman but I can't see any new textures.

The roads are vector, the trees and houses are 3d models.

You've erased the textures of the towns and villages and the underlying ground texture is what you can see but where's the custom texture work?

Can you show us some up close 50ft above ground shots?

Don't mean to sound rude but I can't see any custom texture work in those shots...

I've been working on these textures too but they're a PITA as they render completely differently to the ground terrain...

Good luck.

[Highwayman-Ed]

Don't mean to sound rude but I can't see any custom texture work in those shots...

 

That's almost the point, you're not supposed to see much and they blend with the underlying terrain more rather than sticking out.

 

I've been working on these textures too but they're a PITA as they render completely differently to the ground terrain...

 

You're dead right that they're a pain to work with as they don't always appear the same way when they're placed depending on the terrain features. The textures are under the trees, the dirt roads and under the light poles, the rest is alpha that lets the underlying noise file bleed through. Phase II is to add parking areas, hard standings and the like in localised areas around the larger individual buildings where it makes sense, but this is the hardest part due to how they are aligned.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Highwayman-Ed

[Highwayman-Ed]

Please find the download link to the release version in the first post

 

I highly recommend using this with Rocky's trees and DTAC Terrain or Toby23's Low & Slow mods.

 

Installation;

My mod is in JSGME format for easy installation, so just unpack it into your JSGME _Mods folder, add the files from the scenery mods above if you wish to the relevant seasons 'LandTexturesSeasonOther zip file overwriting the files inside and then enable it.

 

Release Notes;

1. I have only modified the villages in this release, the town textures used for the cities is very difficult to work with due to the way that the DCS engine places the texture files and overlaps them in game, and given the recent announcements that Wags has made about the EDGE engine, any further work I do may become irrelevant in the not too distant future.

 

2. Lighting at night emphasises the dirt roads a little more than I'd like, but does not reflect upon the underlying textures that I've allowed to bleed through in the villages. I've worked around this to some extent, but it's still a small compromise.

 

3. The download is 540MB and does contain parts that aren't strictly necessary in order to make it simple to install with JSGME, but I'm also pretty new to creating large scale mods like this, so I'm sure that there maybe more efficient ways of doing this.

 

4. I haven't done any hard standings or car parks in this version, pending item #5

 

5. There will be no further development until more information is forthcoming about the release of EDGE and what impact it may have on the terrain.

 

Winter at noon

 

Spring at 5am

 

Summer at 1am

Edited November 4, 2013 by Highwayman-Ed

[Milli]

Thanks Highwayman.

 

Regards,

Milli

[aaron886]

Excellent work, thank you!

[Mustang]

Hey Highwayman-Ed i've just downloaded and taken a look at the mod, it's freaking huge!

 

You should consider just uploading the textures you've edited so we can insert them ourselves into the zips the same way toby23 did with this work, this would save a ton of bandwidth.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Mustang