City Textures rework

[rince33]

I'm looking for ways to improve/change the city textures and came across this interesting thread yesterday.
https://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforu...ht=landclasses

I did a rough texture rework of Pat's largecitytrees01 texture and decided to do some work on the 031summer3 textures. I traced what I could of the roads mask texture which was not much and poor quality. I created a texture to be viewed in-game and took screenies. The house positions assisted in placing quite a few extra roads where I thought they might work. The result is a bit unrefined but a good start I think.

A rough wip texture rework of the largecities texture.



Adding roads to the 031summer3 roads traced texture with the help of a screenshot. This is obviously a wip.



The result, a bit rough and low res but I will refine it later and add more detail to the roads and blocks.



031summer3 roads and largecity textures at Dover

[rince33]

Everything looks better in the morning.

[rince33]

034b2su1 roads tracing and rough rework just finished, the quality of the old road mask texture was pretty good. It gets to look much better the more road textures that are reworked.

[Pat Pattle]

Thanks for digging this one up Glen! Poignantly, this was Daiwilleti's last work, he passed a year ago this week so rather befitting that it's carried on with.

What trees are you using? There seem to be more of them and of better quality.

I think that the green background works well too. Looking forward to seeing more!

ps. I notice in picture #4 that the Dover railway station is in a hole! The altitude is set wrong in the GSL, I can fix that, unless you'd like to have a go?

[rince33]

Hi Clive

I've been away from the site for a while until checking in recently. The last time I was here I was exchanging private messages with Daiwilleti and helping to test his Bob campaign spawns, so on returning to the site I was deeply saddened to read of his passing, and I'm sure everybody here misses his extensive knowledge of this sim. It was great to see photographs of him in one of the threads.

What trees are you using? There seem to be more of them and of better quality.

I edited the scenerysheet tree textures to give the trees highlights because ankor's lighting effects don't work on the 2d tree models and they tend to look flat.
I did these quite a while back and it was part of a Summer texture mod that I uploaded in a previous post.

My scenery budget is pretty high which would explain the abundance of trees, I was trying for more buildings. I would like to lessen the trees but keep the buildings but I suppose that isn't possible.

I think that the green background works well too. Looking forward to seeing more!

The texture is from a WOFF seasonal terrain mod, though I will edit it and the roads to make them look more interesting.

ps. I notice in picture #4 that the Dover railway station is in a hole! The altitude is set wrong in the GSL, I can fix that, unless you'd like to have a go?

Please, by all means shift the station.

Where can I edit the position of various regions, if for example I want to experiment with swapping the largecity region with the a_034b2su1 region at Dover? Is it done by editing the global layer? I'm sort of learning as I go here.

[rince33]

Where can I edit the position of various regions, if for example I want to experiment with swapping the largecity region with the a_034b2su1 region at Dover? Is it done by editing the global layer? I'm sort of learning as I go here.

Ok, with a bit of searching I found the answer to my question.

Landclass (LCF) files are required for theatres to tell CFS3 what type of terrain texture to use at a particular location.

Landclass files are created using the TIFF2LCF tool. The Tiff image used is an image of the theatre with each pixel representing a certain area and the colour of that pixel is used to define the landclass to use at that location in the Theatre.

LCF View by Martin Wright looks interesting

Use the program to view existing landclass lcf files and export them as .bmp files. It also has an import feature to alter lcf files, but I'm not sure it works correctly. Only stock landclasses are supported.

[Pat Pattle]

My scenery budget is pretty high which would explain the abundance of trees, I was trying for more buildings. I would like to lessen the trees but keep the buildings but I suppose that isn't possible.

Have a look at the scenerysheet01.xml & .dds filse plus the Sceneryobjects.xml. I can't remember exactly how I did it but it is possible to swap the trees and buildings around.

I've attached Odins LCF tutorial, I've not used it myself yet.

[gecko]

Looks like a great project! To my eye it still looks a bit sterile, but the clearly defined roads are a definite improvement.

[rince33]

Thanks for the tut Clive, it's much appreciated.

Looks like a great project! To my eye it still looks a bit sterile, but the clearly defined roads are a definite improvement.

I agree gecko, it is a bit sterile. Looking at WOFF and WOTR online screenshots I have some ideas on how to make things more interesting.


My current compositescenerybudget is something that I implemented a few years ago after reading a few threads on the subject. I can only conclude that at the time I used high tree densities to hide the ugly city textures.

This morning I reduced the '5' setting scenery densities and it had a significant affect on tree density but not on building density. I'm assuming that the building and some tree densities are probably controlled by the fill maps.





Here I'm just mucking about with the lcf viewer, experimenting with reducing the Dover city size which seems rather large when compared to even 1974 google images. The Dover city area on the lcf viewer bump map is about 3 to 4 pixels in width which doesn't really allow for accurate detailed resizing. I will spend a bit more time on this to get it as close as I can.

[Pat Pattle]

Here I'm just mucking about with the lcf viewer, experimenting with reducing the Dover city size which seems rather large when compared to even 1974 google images. The Dover city area on the lcf viewer bump map is about 3 to 4 pixels in width which doesn't really allow for accurate detailed resizing. I will spend a bit more time on this to get it as close as I can.

So it does work! You have succeeded where others have failed!

Check your pm.

[gecko]

If you are getting into landclasses, this resource might be useful in determining the location and general shape of towns in 1940s: https://www.oldmapsonline.org/

I can't find it now, but there was also someone a couple years agao who figured out how to make a higher resolution landclass map, which would definitely improve things.

[MajorMagee]

Interesting dialog in this thread. https://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforu...ight=landclass

I checked the limits for the map files, and they can be made quite large (I tried up to 7504 x 7376) to provide better feature resolution (285 m/pixel). They do need to be saved as 16 bit or index color bitmaps or you get a color shift.

Also here https://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforu...ight=landclass

TIFF2LCF tool can handle 9,472 pixel x 9,472 pixel, 350MB Tiff file without problems.

And in this old gem. https://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforu...ight=landclass

I did some research into the classification of real world object densities. It turns out that we measure trees in a similar way to buildings.

Trees, Buildings, Scenery Density, Objects/hectare, Objects/sq mile, Spacing in ft
Prairie, Rural, <0.00005, 0 - 0.5, <129.5, >464
Savanna, Residential, up to 0.00050, 0.5 - 5, 129.5 - 1295, 147 - 464
Woodland, Mixed Residential, up to 0.001, 5 - 10, 1295 - 2590, 104 - 147
Forest, Urban, >0.001, >10, >2590, <104

The implication is that our scenery budgets should ideally be tailored to each particular landclass area rather than universally as they are now.

After some gpu setting changes I was able to increase my scenery density to 0.0004 or 4 objects per hectare (Savanna / Residential) while maintaining 60 fps.

[rince33]

Thanks for the site link gecko, the detailed historical maps will come in handy, and thanks for the links to these threads MajorMagee.

[sixstrings5859]

Wonderful work ! Keep on keeping on. Thank you for keeping things alive ! Regards ,Scott

[rince33]

Wonderful work ! Keep on keeping on. Thank you for keeping things alive ! Regards ,Scott

Thanks for the encouragement Scott. Terrain modding is loads of fun so I will definitely "keep on keeping on".

[rince33]

This is the final Dover size rework after a lot of experimenting. Luckily, the sim loading at startup is pretty quick. On the lcf bump map Dover city textures are a pixel in width in places so there's not much room for finer detail.

[gecko]

Did you try with a higher resolution tiff? Pixel width in game would be reduced a lot, allowing for better detail.

[rince33]

On the lcf bump map Dover city textures are a pixel in width in places so there's not much room for finer detail.

Sorry, in my previous post it should have read "On the lcfviewer exported bmp file, Dover city textures are a pixel in width in places so there's not much room for finer detail".

Did you try with a higher resolution tiff? Pixel width in game would be reduced a lot, allowing for better detail.

I tried to double the resolution of the 1536x1536 bmp file but the viewer wouldnt process it. I then tried 2048x2048 and it processed the file but corrupted the landclass locations in game.

I replaced the largecity with the mediumcity landclass to remove that bit of texture directly above the harbour which rendered a lot of trees but few buildings.

If I look at the size of Dover and Ramsgate it appears as if 2002 satellite images were probably used as a reference to create the 1940's cities. Anyway, my priority at the moment is to improve the stock city textures, but I will get to resizing the rest of the cities.

[Shessi]

Great work there R, looks so much better.

And a big yes to the texs, those terracotta roof tiles are not UK at all! lol

Cheers

Shessi

[rince33]

Thanks Shessi



I made a start on pasting googlearth textures where city buildings exist, a time consuming but relaxing process. I am also diverting roads where buildings encroach on them where possible. The newly pasted textures are on a seperate layer to the road texture in my work gimp file, so that when I am done copying and pasting I can darken that layer so that it matches the underlying road and grass texture.

[Pat Pattle]

Fantastic work mate! I'm loving all of this stuff. To me, groundtextures and airfields etc. are as important as the aircraft themselves if we want true immersion in this sim. Keep it up! 🍻

[rince33]

To me, groundtextures and airfields etc. are as important as the aircraft themselves if we want true immersion in this sim.

I couldn't agree more Clive.

[rince33]

Quite a bit was done today and I think its starting to look like something now. This is Ramsgate, most of the background buildings will be removed when I resize it.

[Flamingskull5000]

Big improvement! quite a task also......

[Pat Pattle]

Wowser! They look blooming marvellous! Love the detail of the gardens etc. They're the best city textures we've had IMO. Looking forward to flying over them soon.