[Need some advice] for my current visual enhancement

[wiekniera]

Hi folks,
i just back installing my CFS2 and i only have this thing left to enhance the looks my CFS2, im not really sure where i get this texture and all stuff
it's just on my another harddrive, so i need some advice to enhance my current CFS2 for better improvement and in this case for european theatre
what would you guys suggest for clouds, water, sun, horizon, map field texture and other effects maybe to improve my ETO CFS2 ?

Here's my current shots, is there any good addons to enhance this ( I just not feel satisfy yet) ?
Thanks in advance

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/34_zpszehu2z8c.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/34_zpszehu2z8c.jpg.html)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/6_zpsso8sgxiw.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/6_zpsso8sgxiw.jpg.html)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/38_zpsyfspzwdj.jpg
(http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/38_zpsyfspzwdj.jpg.html)http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/55_zpsuasym1xd.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/55_zpsuasym1xd.jpg.html)

[wiekniera]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/59_zpshoqmykjb.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/59_zpshoqmykjb.jpg.html)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/61_zpstxj9h864.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/61_zpstxj9h864.jpg.html)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/62_zpsglanoceh.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/62_zpsglanoceh.jpg.html)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/73_zps97t0bkwe.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/73_zps97t0bkwe.jpg.html)

[wiekniera]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/69_zpsj4yb4n6r.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/69_zpsj4yb4n6r.jpg.html)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/25_zpsj0rfyavm.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/25_zpsj0rfyavm.jpg.html)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/wiekniera/wiekniera030/26_zpsh04qeodm.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/wiekniera/media/wiekniera030/26_zpsh04qeodm.jpg.html)

[kdriver]

Hi Wiekniera,

The forest, fields and city look very good - which texture set is that? Is it Sander de Cocq's EurW set?

The roads appear far too prominent and they are dirt rather than paved.

Which cloud set are you using? I would like to know which is the most realistic set available, as long as they don't affect frame rates too much.

Kevin

[wiekniera]

Hi Kevin,
yes they looks better than stock but too bad there's not much variety field type in europe map that could put much ground texture type
and what i saw at first those europe ground looks too much like bricks and all looks the same

if i remember this stuff i got from a russian site and someone has convert this texture and all other things from fsx stuff
lucky for me that i've save them in another drive, if i must find this thing back one by one i believe i will never find it as i didn't remember where they all come from including those cloud im using and skies horizon as it was already together in my texture file but if you like i can send it to you

i've to agree with you with those roads looks not blend with ground tile and looks bit big too me and im still not satisfy with those ground tile? they're all looks so much green and still looking for a suitable european ground,river,sea which mine is too much like pacific

with this setting i didn't find bad framerate and everything run smooth

[ElsnerMarkus]

nice Ground textures and Clouds.

Can you upload this for the community?

[wiekniera]

thanks @elsner
well i could upload this but honestly there's too much filename in my texture folder which i don't know exactly what are file names that only needed for CFS2 texture, so the best way is to upload all inside my texture folder and it's around 600mb

[wiekniera]

anyway is there someone can send me flak mod? realflak? seems flak so light :(

[UncleTgt]

Wiekniera

Nice textures, good blend of colours & a reasonable 3D feel to the land.:encouragement:

Shessi did some european water textures that are less Pacific Blue, they're here in the Scenery mods section. IIRC he did a Summer set & a Winter set.

I think the flax fix is part of Blade's effects, also available here in the Effects section. Oldwheat did some better flak burst textures, they'll be here somewhere too.

The flak intensity is really down to the weapons & target layouts. There are lots of opinions on this, usually talking about ship flak. A quick fix for land-based flak is to just edit the mission to include more weapons. Other than that you're into dp file editing, tweaking rates of fire & tracking accuracy to get the effect that feels right for you.

Oh, & I'm partial to my own cloud pack:icon_redface:, mixed with some better cirrus etc. textures.

To get the disappearing horizon (avoiding the blue/green squares in the distance) reduce the max visibility & for the full effect use FSMETARS to make use of real METAR data (even works offline, just download the metars & save them to a folder).

[wiekniera]

wow thanks a lot uncletgt !! i think i miss that flak stuff ;)
btw do you know why everytime i use my own conversion 8bit ground texture always crash when loading mission? is that cfs2 ground texture must 256x256 8bit right? but i always failed and crash to desktop when starting mission :(


update : Just found it, i forgot to save it with mipmap ;)

[UncleTgt]

I always use Martin Wright's BMP2000 to make my ground textures (FS70). Pick a bitmap with a similar colour palette to the custom one you've made & merge. Create the image set (MIPS) & you're done. If you want to spend some more time you can set transparency settings for each colour on the palette. That's how I made my whitewater breaker textures largely transparent, so they would blend with whatever colour waterclass texture was underneath.

[wiekniera]

@uncletgt

Thanks uncletgt, btw do you know how to get moderate flak like this? maybe you have flak settings you could share?

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/attachment.php?attachmentid=25830&stc=1

well like you said before so we still have to edit those mission? or is there flak config we could edit to make them more dangerous and intentional?
i've problem when flying battle of europe campaign which those flak just far below and only effective around 10K feet or less
so when our bomber group pass over the target or near vital target about 15K or 20K feet there's no flak burst around us and i feel like so easy to pass german territory without significant threat :( and the mission feels like an cold ice

[Blood_Hawk23]

The easiest way would be to edit the DP file for the AAA guns. Open the mission file in notepad and see which FLAK gun is in use. Look for something like this near the bottom. Here is an example.

[unit_type.24]
type_id=4588
unit_family=4
name=Ge-88mm-Flak

Now look for the DP file for the Ge-88mm-Flak in the objects_DP folder. There are a few things you can do here. You can add more gun barrels like so...

[guns.0]
gun.0=10000,-0.5,5.6,0,0,0,0,1
gun.1=10000,-1,5,0,0,0,0,1
gun.2=10000,0.5,5.6,0,0,0,0,1
gun.3=10000,1,5,0,0,0,0,1

or this...

[GUNSTATIONS]
; Gun
gunstation.0=4,-1,1,10,1127,60,0.08,12802,6,100,1d1*100,0,0,0,45,0 ,0,-180,180,90,10,9
; Gun
gunstation.1=4,-1,1,10,1127,60,0.08,12802,6,100,1d1*100,0,0,0,45,0 ,0,-180,180,90,10,9

[guns.0]
gun.0=10000,-0.5,5.6,0,0,0,0,1
gun.1=10000,-1,5,0,0,0,0,1

[guns.1]
gun.0=10000,0.5,5.6,0,0,0,0,1
gun.1=10000,1,5,0,0,0,0,1

The first will add three more barrels to the main gun. This may not add more FLAK clouds but you will feel the effects of the extra barrels.

The second will add another gun with two barrels. This might not be historically accurate but it will get the job done. You may see more FLAK coulds with this. Each Gunstation will fire seperate from the other.

You could also give it extra gunstations with one gun barrel each. like so...

[GUNSTATIONS]
; Gun
gunstation.0=4,-1,1,10,1127,60,0.08,12802,6,100,1d1*100,0,0,0,45,0 ,0,-180,180,90,10,9
; Gun
gunstation.1=4,-1,1,10,1127,60,0.08,12802,6,100,1d1*100,0,0,0,45,0 ,0,-180,180,90,10,9
; Gun
gunstation.2=4,-1,1,10,1127,60,0.08,12802,6,100,1d1*100,0,0,0,45,0 ,0,-180,180,90,10,9
; Gun
gunstation.3=4,-1,1,10,1127,60,0.08,12802,6,100,1d1*100,0,0,0,45,0 ,0,-180,180,90,10,9

[guns.0]
gun.0=10000,-0.5,5.6,0,0,0,0,1

[guns.1]
gun.0=10000,1,5,0,0,0,0,1

[guns.2]
gun.0=10000,-1,5,0,0,0,0,1

[guns.3]
gun.0=10000,-0.5,5.6,0,0,0,0,1

Now you will have four guns shooting from the same stations. All of them independent of the other. Just remember that this could drop your frame rate. Plus every mission would have this extra effect.

You could also add more guns to the mission. Although if the mission was hand edited you could ruin it.

Those are some ideas.

[wiekniera]

@bloodhawk Thanks for the help ! will try it ;)

@uncletgt
asking about this fsmetar, do you think fsuipc version does significant effect to fsmetar?
here's my fsmetar look, is this correct ? im using fsmetar 1.5.5 and fsuipc fs2004 3.9

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/attachment.php?attachmentid=25845&stc=1

[UncleTgt]

wiekniera

FSMetar - initially loads with the message, & you get this as it changes from one reporting station to the next, but it soon disappears. I use with a much older version of FSUIPC. Hopefully you see the extra weather complexity displayed already?

Cool to use the extra time compression options possible with CFO Weather & fly a long range flight without warp, & watch the weather change as you progress.


88mm Flak; I agree with you, I tried a test mission & experienced the same lacklustre performance from 11 x 88s defending Wake airbase from a squadron box of stock B-24s at 23000ft. Most of the time the bursts never get close.

I believe Blue Devil had it right when he was reworking ship flak. The CFS 2 AI uses MG/cannon fire control for everything, & each bullet round is tracked for only 2 seconds (maybe 3 or 4?). HAA is a barrage weapon, & CFS 2 cannot change the way in aims & fires. So we have to fudge the weapon parameters to get it to behave more like real life.

Using this info, I modified the GE_88mm dp file to something more dangerous. Try it & let me know if I'm on the right track. The zipfile has a text file explaining the changes I made & some of the reasoning. When I re-ran the mission the barrage hit the formation lead & it flew off trailing smoke :triumphant:

[wiekniera]

Cool uncletgt !! that's what im looking for! now it's working good at 15-25K feet !!
i combine yours with bloodhawk and it's looks much much better !! so far all running smooth without bad framerate !
thanks a lot guys! :applause::encouragement:

[ElsnerMarkus]

@ wiekniera can you send me your texture files?