Stary

as a side note true but I would love other titles to have even 50% of Thirdwire's dynamic campaign's system implemented. And roger, forgot how YAP puts the briefings into external pdfs

you can do it as set of missions you play in order, like it's done by infamous* YAP products other than that, I have no idea *personal opinion

no! no and wrong Wrench Heightmapscale= is essential to make the radar imagery terrain render properly! You always paint those black or remove them which is not the smartest thing to do IMO. And without those the say rivers in radar render ass all black or dull squares instead of more proper shapes. This is simply wrong tree texture referenced for TOD object in some tile's entry in data.ini

TU-16 Badger I keep in hiatus for over two years

Get well man!

flying over Archipelago 250 and 125 meters test versions (without any shores adjustments yet etc) and yeah the tileset is one of those test versions I keep unreleased for ages

File Name: Kamchatka 250m version with adjusted tileset etc File Submitter: Stary File Submitted: 25 July 2016 File Category: Full Terrains Kamchatka Peninsula 250m heightmesh update with corresponding tweaks and rejuvenated/extended tileset and layout for Strike Fighters 2, best fully-merged installation v1.0 by Stary July 2016 ^^^^----------------------------------------------^^^^ This is test rebuild of Baltika's and Wrench's Kamchatka terrain, based on Kamchatka v2.0 which is major update to original Baltika's terrain by Wrench. This is semi-experimental update aimed at demonstrating and testing in wider userbase usage of denser resolution heightmesh. I can >>not<< guarantee the stability of this terrain due to engine limitations and what I observed and what seems to be slight memory handling issues of the SF2 engine Credits: Baltika and Wrench for their work on Kamchatka map. Gerwin for TFD tool and BMP2TFD Combatace and Thirdwire All the nice people around here Extended information, please read carefully! The height mesh: The stock Thirdwire .hfd terrain format uses publictly available DEM (digital elevation model) databases to produce 500 meters vertex spaced terrain meshes with 2000 meters tiles covering them. This is proven, easy to use system but 500 meters is awfully 1999 technology for 2016 systems. Thus given my efforts into NA LOD-based terrains creation stalled due to lack of knowledge and tools I decided to reproduce one of more interesting yet obscure maps available, the Kamchatka Peninsula. The mesh in this download currently uses 250 meters resolution which is twice the density and detail* compared to original terrain. Please note that due to being based on low resolution hfd file output the actual height representation is somewhat off compared to real terrain! Not much and not that it really matters much. "If it looks good it is good" New heightmap was created in several steps which I now describe to help other more advanced terrain modders possibly use this method: First steps -Gerwin's TFDTool and Photoshop: -I used Gerwin's TDF tool to output the heightmap via F9 key -Also created the textures bitmap as a helper file via F7 key -The created file in grayscale is 3000x3000, which corresponds to 500m resolution on 1500000m map (3000/2=1500! Magic!) -Thus I rescaled the file to 6000x6000 pixels, the same with the texture bitmap which I copied to greyscale file for reference -The 6000x6000 or twice the original is the 250m per pixed heightfield file -I filled the blue water areas TFDTool creates with pure black 0,0,0 -Then I spent some time in Photoshop working on several layers and using several brushes and tools to slightly tweak the grayscale height image, mostly to brighten the higher areas and adjust some more interesting places. Mostly blur, stroke tools and some slight wave-y filers to add some detail to now ARTIFICIALLY pumped up resolution (further on this below) -Pro tip: to get rid of any water/shore artifacts is easy way, the so called tsunami waves or coast areas on slopes I selected the texture map layer, selected all water areas (select by pixel color) and created another pure black layer on top of the main height layer, that drops slight shadows around it (2 to 4 pixels black shadow) -this way the heightmap gets toned down for few pixels (two is good value) when near the water areas; think smart not hard as The Ancient One says :P when the heightmap was considered ready I flattened it and converted to 8bit palleted file using the stock Thirdwire terrain editor palette (you can do this palette by exporting any heightmap as bitmap from within the TE and saving it's palette to file, most programs allow palette saving) Second step -Thirdwire Terrain Editor, the 042106 version: so now I had the TE-format palleted 8bit heightmap but to import it without further data loss I needed to adjust the TerrainEditor.ini settings via notepad: -the line that specifies the min-max scale of height present in the file is this line: [bitmapImport] HeightScale=15 <---- this line, by default uses value of 10 MinLandHeight=0 <---- by default 1 experimenting with this value gives you the similar results as using PGUP/PGDN keys when using Gerwin's bmp2tfd tool, basically sets the global vertical scaling of min-max values in file To create new 250m resolution the values at creating new map are as follows: Terrain Map Size: 1500 (km, like original Kamchatka terrain) Texture Tile Resolution: 2000 (meters, like all common SF2 maps and tilesets) Height Field Resolution: 250 (meters, compared to defaul 500 meters) Then if you do have the texturelist loaded yo ushould get new flat terrain with textures filling the areas, just impor t he heightmap from the created 6000x6000 paletted bitmap and save. This is basic procedure, same can be used to create 125 meters resolution terrains (I did so for Korea3 terrain so far) BUT those are unstable and I am still trying to get perfect values in BOTH flightengine.ini and given terrain's _data.ini *now the heihgt information/detail gets lost every time we index the heightmap so one must then increase the HeightScale= value to get more or less proper -OR GOOD LOOKING height values. Also be warned that Gerwin's TFDTool doesn't properly translate non-standard maps (1000 kilometers ones go ok though) that is why the TE hassle That said -the height scale is a bit OFF in this map so if you are a purist complain all you want, I wanted better looking mesh more than geographical accuracy. To have the latter we need to come up with otehr height data sources for denser terrains. I have yet to look into the tools and programs I own what could be of use. Installation: Before installing this mod BACKUP your Kamchatka terrain!!! There is possibility you won't get this terrain working at all so I warned you! To install this exctract the zip and move the content of the included folder to your Kamchatka terrain, overwrite when asked. This way now you have new terrain tfd and hfd files, new inis, TODs and new reworked tileset in both summer nad winter flavours in their respective folders. The mod has all the nedded tweaks into kamchatka.ini and kamchatka_data.ini already present, HOWEVER to use this terrain in efficient way (ie, not to experience CTDs when loading the map every signle time) please do adjust few things in your installation: The essential is making small adjustments to your flightengine.ini file [backgroundSceneClip] FarClipDistance=70000 by default uses value of 80000, and while I now use the original value to prevent possible memory crashes use the 70000 value which lowers the loaded terrain "bubble" around the camera. Also if you do use very extended trees/objects drawing distances (with or without additions of Mue's extra distance fading shaders) I recommend lowering the DetailMeshSize= values, start with something like 8 or 10 and try if the map loads for you, can then increase this further, it might be very VERY system-dependent Known Bugs: YES this is test and YES you might get constant CTDs when loading missions; might be very computer or installation dependent. I have medium-high system and work ok with the values I use in inis. Also can't guarantee if some crazy large scale missions wouldn't prevernt the terrain OR textures to load, as I have hit some engine limitations during more brutal force tests. That is why the tileset, albeit I have it in 1024px resolution too, is 512 version. Also you should have much less of issues when using ObjectsFade=TRUE and not using Mue's extender draw distance shaders. That is because the sim engine apparently does not have to load ALL the TODs at once during mission loading, just later when need be. Anyway that is my assumption, I might be totally wrong Legal stuff: CA Fair Use license apply, not to be used as base or part of any sort of payware That should be all, have fun (I hope) and if you are terrain modder, try my method. Again, 500m res is soo 1999 :P Stary Click here to download this file

rarely these days, BUT that said I do have TONS of unfinished stuff -and yes the biggest issue is finding the actual time, so that is why I stopped posting WIPs as frequently as I used to as I can't say when something will be finished cough new Green Hell, 27K, Badger, T-33, Yak-9U cockpits cough

Volker, by chance, it might have something with modded flightengine.ini horizon distance ranges? I advised in readme moving it a bit closer to force reduce number of simultaneously drawn polygons and doing some further tests I can confirm that these denser terrains work best with objectsfade=true but =false works too when using wise ranges etc

Happy308 be careful with the second value you adjusted, OffsetDistance=0.13, which I think by default is 0.1 (that is 10 cm) as this is NOT distance to the cockpit panel but the zero position in cockpit (the global origin point, or more correctly world-space 0,0,0 coordinates when in Max) then that OffsetDistance value also determines the distance at which head position (cockpit view) pans when looking around, the head/eyes postion is not fixed and thus can move a bit to the sides when turning head to the left or right, that is more visible in smaller, more cramped cockpit meshes (think Bf-109E vs F-15C)

yeah what Blackbird said, but while the specuilarity is supported the normal maps are not on alpha objects. That said I'd love to have soem skilled shaders guy who could add this to canopy shader fx

yup Kevin, I shall post my denser resolution terrains soon and I am sure you'll be happy to dig into it just will need your permission for Korea3 one

Kamchatka terrain, the old and the new:

nah I have and run 8 (when usinh 250 meters resolution heightfield data) or 16 (125 meters in Korea3 test) times the spacing in the rebuild test versions of Korea3 and Kamchatka, works ok with additional tweaks to data ini Mue, so you say it is defined in .hfd too? Which bytes by chance? Also, any dat about the highest point in given terrain? Doing some tests I was able to move the clouds back to more realistic altitudes (say above 2 kilometers compared to now over 4km) and got the impression the flatter the terrain the lower the clouds -so the clouds bahave based on some highest point data; I wonder if that is defined in the header etc as this way we could HEX the values and move the clouds lower

first two pictures I was like "oh Texans"

was taht a loft bombing? uhh ohh that 90 degree rotation at the end... yeah realistic much love the cannon vents animation

Aren't you all bothered by the always perfect real time computations and displays of all the HUD elements? All the pipers, boxes, CCIPs, steering symbols etc? If so is there way to force reduce the update rates of these elements? So we get bit more interesting bit jerky and jumpy HUD in earlier jets?

Given my efforts into making NA LOD-based format terrain stalled due to lack of dedicated tools/exporters for COL files and know-how's among other things here's my effort at further updating the old proven tfd/hfd format 125 meters heightfield resolution compared to stock 500 meters? Doable and nice looking for sure, Wrench's Korea3 shown: I disabled the per-tile _HM bitmaps that further add to the detail for these presentations but ofc that can be turned on too; other bigger issue is finding way to update older terrains if need be in some good workflow; using some other source of data than DEM (STRM30? Google Earth Pro?) for refinements and added detail is the open question, anyway this does work ingame with corresponding tweaks in terrain's _data.ini and flightengine adjustments for higher number of vertices transformed I have Kamchatka (together with millenia old never released tileset/treemod) in 250m resolution as that map is a bit of TE hack being 1500km across which makes the 125 meters version reaching over the limits of engine

Ankor Ankor Ankor! Guy did amazing thing to CFS3/WOFF I never had so much fun with CFS3 before, going back to classics like MAW or ETO -with his shaders it's one of the biggest dogfighting funs

But you have to accept, you are among the last of the serious modders for this sim and this is the last English speaking forum that cares about this sim to that degree. So when the one remaining expert asks for help... you are probably only to get one or two types of answers: total silence or half-humorous/half-sarcastic comments. Which saddens me deeply Streak as there are soo many areas that we could improve further if we had more of coder type of users; Swambast, Mue and Gerwin can't do all by themselves and yeah sorry for silly tone of my previos reply, I am a bit jagged by the state of affairs and silence from Thirdwire's side. Hope no offense taken. To cheer you up Stephen here's 125 meters resolution heightfield data for Wrench's Korea3 (compared to stock TW's 500 meters) already implemented and working without issues so far see, we still can improve things here and there (have Kamchatka too but in 250 meters res as that is 1500km map and things get funny in higher mesh version)

no one knows right now so yeah... I'd hold my judgement (Though either ISIS or neon is the most obvious culprits)

Precisely. Interestingly the "new" NA/Iceland terrain system even if incomplete and porked (so they say) has in the inis buried sort of automatic trees generation together with what seems to be splatmaps for objects generation. But if that works I can't tell. have even one or two test terrains in LOD format done but without some guidance from TK or some additional tools/plugins I wouldn't be able to finish them. COL files taht seem to be collision meshes come to mind. I think more sane would be the other way around, asking someone in the know of HFD format like Gerwin or errr... Gerwin to do some additional HFD terrains tools to increase the pure meters per mesh resolution, be it some other higher resolution import files than DEM (simply heightmap files?) for heightmap generation or some tools to add some procedural detail into the HFD. Just thinking out loud here ofc. I consider the "old" format pretty good still, just could be upgraded here and there by TK -but as the guy never replied to my mails (been like 9 years now!) then we are left with what we have or we could look for some wizard's help (again, Mue or Gerwin)