The search for different, and hopefully better looking textures for maps is not yet over. Here are a few screenshots showing some results with new textures.
Skins are not meant to be the subject here.
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Sweet textures! Those are going to be awesome, can't wait....will you be making them available at some point, agracier? 8) :lol:
There's always another texture to pull down from somewhere and there's always another combination to use on a particular map. Which means to say it is so hard to choose what looks best.
I'm trying to find textures that look good throughout the day, both at dawn and dusk (oh so colorful at time to fly!) but also at midday.
And when a good set is put together for one map, they look awful on another. So it's back to recombining the textures all over again. So I was thinking it best to group them by map, but then again i don't wish to tread on anyone's toes by using their maps.
These shots are on the It-new_italy_DF map.
An odd thing I noticed though (by being too lazy to resize textures) - previously all texture tga's appear to be all the same standard size - 512x512 / 1024x1024. But apparently textures of any and all sizes (not even necessarily squares) can be combined together and still give good results.
And so the quest for realism goes on, these look fantastic keep up the good work you've got a new fan!
Here are a few more screenshots of the same textures, but from a cockpit view and taken during daylight. Again on the It_new_italy map ...
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Those are quite nice and certainly an improvement on the stock textures.
Have you tried varying the brightness, saturation and blue/yellow balance. I have found that this can work wonders in making textures compatible with one another.
Here are a few shots done on the Sinai and Libya maps, using darker and redder colored textures. This may be veering away from reality when it comes to desert coloring in general, but the idea is to create an atmosphere.
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And a few more shots done on the East Africa map.
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That's where I got the red sand textures - from close-ups of Australia in Google earth ... lower right hand quadrant of the country ...
I think my motto would be, if it's good enough for an Aussie desert, then it's good enough for other deserts too ... ha ha
But seriously - there's no reason why the red color shouldn't feel right and look nice in other deserts as well. And under the right climatological circumstances I guess many a desert terrain could look that way, in North Africa, the Red Sea coast, Sinai ...
From what I remember, we have a ton of iron and red clays in our soil but not much else, which is why the sand out there (and much of the normal soil more than a few miles inland) is a reddish colour. Apparently the Egyptian deserts are more of a golden brown but honestly the colour you have there is close enough to be either so it shouldn't matter too much.
Looks good all the same, certainly beats the default stuff.
Great screenshots! Love them all!
Thanks for posting!
Cheers
MAX
I think I've fished out most of the bugs that were in the retextured maps. They can now be played in perfect landscape mode and can be flown anytime of day and not look too garish at high noon.
They were mainly intended to create somewhat more arid or brownish-colored looking landscapes, say the late summer of Spain or other Mediterranean countries, or the parched plains of the Bessarabia/Ukraine in drought. I don't really think there are many maps in Sturmovik so far that feature such brownish coloring, most are predominantly green. The vegetation, the woods, in the maps have also been altered into a more sparse spacing and into a more brownish coloring.
There are also 2 maps for a desert landscape, just to have something a bit out of the ordinary with a deeper colored sand landscape for atmosphere.
The retextured maps look best for low altitude missions, up to 2000/2500m. For high altitude missions above 6000m or more they are not really worth installing, since in my opinion at least, almost any map becomes irrelevant if you stay that high.
I put together a package of 11 retextured maps for 5 different maps:
Cal_Zimbotho
It_italy_new_DF
Bessarabia_Beta
Vol_Sardegna
JV69_Lybia_N-E
Nothing on the maps themselves has been changed.
But before posting I wonder if anyone would care to look and test, to make sure the package is complete and contains all necessary files. I looked over everything a few times of course, but with textures for 11 maps, you never know what might be overlooked anyway. And perhaps they are not quite up to par anyway. It never hurts to get other opinions.
PM if you wish to try them out.
You will need to have the maps installed already, since no install files for these maps are included. Only new textures, load.ini files and the entries for your all.ini file.
