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[farang65]

Your map incredible awesomeness 

Just loaded it in my HD version and your lighting effect is wicked 

Now off to make a Tom 2 style tribute for your map

I'm sure you will turn me into a W.W.1 flier

Cheers for the extremely great effort 

Kirby

[SAS~Boomer]

Glad you like it Kirby,thanks 

[SAS~Boomer]

your welcome and glad you like it so far,Looks like your having fun Gunny 

[<Gunny>]

Now how would you know that. LOL   
Thank you so much its a great map.

[max_thehitman]

Hey Gunny, you want some destroyed roofs for the houses you bombed?

[<Gunny>]

Yes I would Max along with those hanger tents and beer tents.    
The tents look very nice Max great job.  Thank you .

[SAS~Boomer]

Nice looking destroyed house Max,
even though it seems strange to say something destroyed looks good 


May be a bit premature to show this
but I have been working on the village texture trying to make it look more natural
It is far from finished so take that into consideration when viewing the before and after

Default sk_country_mount.tga village texture
and below the same texture scaled up to 2048 and then worked on in GIMP adding detail
trying to get rid of the Yellow Brick road look to it,making walking paths look more natural etc.
also trying to get rid of the flat featureless fields

again,
this is detailing the .tga's and has nothing to do with the BumpH files
 as I do not change or edit the BumpH files, until I totally finish the texture editing of which I have not finished yet
so it is the same BumpH file everyone else has,just with a heavily tweaked set of .tga's




hopefully it is moving in the right direction to get a new, more natural look to the villages
we'll see in awhile I suppose after I work on it a lot more

Next,I will be working to distinguish and bring the fields out better on the texture

This should also quell the Myth,that 2048 texture cover more area on a map than 1024 textures,as you can see...they do not do that
default sk_countrymount texture is a 512 x 512 default texture with a 1024 x 1024 default .tgb file
and it covers exactly the same area on the map as the same texture converted to 2048 

2048 textures do not cover more area on a map than 1024 textures!

It is so much easier to work on a 2048 texture in Gimp,that I will never go back to 1024 textures
people want to complain about files size of 2048 textures with 16 mb .tga files.....
then they can delete one of the numerous copy's of there game at around 15 to 30 to 60 Gigs each if they don't have the room for a few lousy MB IMHO
Or.... download the 1024 versions or descale the maps themselves and chuck the unnecessary files away after

Anyway,that is what I worked on last,and where I am trying to take it

Cheers

[max_thehitman]

Good idea Boomer, your way of thinking is absolutely great, that is why I enjoy working on projects and ideas with you.
We must always push our artistic ideas to new horizons and new visions, otherwise we have no progress and this
game will look old and boring. I surely do not want that. I can very well be doing something else with my life, but
so far I have been sticking around with this for these past 8 years, because we all have created some extraordinary things
for this sim. So it is something worthwhile in my life.

Soon I will have some new screenshots of what I am also doing to your new map. I believe you will enjoy the
new painted details I am adding to it. I will send the screens to your PM box.
Sometimes I break off a dogfight just so I can fly low and check out the beautiful scenaries I see below on your maps.
THAT to me, its pure enjoyment of the fine art created on this game by everyone. It is not just the airplanes that look great
 but also the overall landscapes that make this IL2 world an exciting adventure to fly every day.
- http://empirecall.pbworks.com/f/1335480996/E02018%201%20DAC%20on%20Menin%20Rd,%201917.jpg
- http://www.photoworks.org.uk/media/images/Frank-Hurley-2008-Photographing-the-First-World-War-Hurley-Document-Name-05-copy%20sm.jpg
- http://0.tqn.com/d/canadaonline/1/0/g/passchendaelemud.jpg
- http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Second_Battle_of_Passchendaele_-_wounded.jpg
- http://www.smythe.id.au/diary/images/ch10_012.jpg
- http://ypres1917.fr.yuku.com/attach/ma/post-23-1239260739.jpg

Boomer, lets talk about future projects.
I like what you have done with these new texture experiments. They look more natural on that second screenshot. Although I
do prefer to see the patchs of devided terrain land as shown on the first image. Much more realistic on that first screen.
The dirt roads on the second image look perfect. Please leave those dirt roads as they are.
When I create some country style villages, I must think "country-style" . Cities have a completely diferent look to
them. Country roads do have more dirt-like roads, but not as brightly colored as the ones we usually see on these old IL2 maps
we have. Boomers new texture experiments come very close to the real world. One only needs to take a look at Google Earth
satellite images to see it for themselves.
Now lets talk about the other roads on the IL2 maps.
One thing I will be painting one of these days for my maps, will be the other roads.
I am talking about the asphalt roads.
Asphalt roads are great for cities and major highway roads, but if you think about it, back in the WW1 and even in the WW2
years, many roads were not made with smooth asphalt. They were cobble-stoned. Little rocks placed neatly side-by-side.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobblestone

The old continent of Europe has many roads with cobblestones still to this day around country villages and even in the cities.
Yes, its true, that they are slowly being replaced by more modern asphalt roads, but if you ever visited Europe , or live here,
you will remember that even back in the late 1980´s many roads were still looking like they came out of the 1900´s.
Old style road building.
Sometimes the roads were half made with cobblestone and parts of it with asphalt. This would be perfect for all of the
IL2 maps for WW1 and WW2 period. Even the Pacific island maps.
I want to change my maps and paint some textures on some of the roads we now have to have this cobblestone visual look.
I am very sure this will add much more eye-candy and realism to many IL2 maps.

Do an image search in Google for "Road 1915" and keep on searching and looking at images by changing the
dates. For example "Road 1915", Road 1916" etc, etc and then also , "Road 1939", "Road 1940" etc, etc.
Try also placing country name on the search name...

some examples...
- https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8120/8670909091_6aa5435c1e_z.jpg
- http://static.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article29221760.ece/ALTERNATES/h342/BELFAST+400+NMNI+309.jpg
- http://cdn1.vtourist.com/4/6375329-Kerkgate_cobblestone_road_Mater.jpg
- http://www.canadiense.net/photoalbum/images/m2r.img_0895.jpg
- http://www.ww1westernfront.gov.au/menin-road/images/awm-e00700.jpg
- http://jimgrey.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/nr1917franklinco.jpg
-

[agracier]

Wonderful idea about the cobblestone roads ... and believe me, even now there are still many around.

[SAS~Boomer]

excellent idea Max,I have already accumulated some cobblestone textures in 2048 and p[planned to do the same thing on the roads with 2048 texture
see if it worked or not,but definitely have to change the roads eventually

It can be done on the Mid city and outer city ,as well as the industrial texture also

I was going to try reskinning them in 2048 cobblestone,if it did not work out good then I had planned to switch to dirt roads eventually
The RGB Value for Ashphalt roads in IL-2 Map_T is much easier for me to see than the dirt road /secondary road RGB Value
and is why I used the Ashphalt RGB instead as there are a lot of roads to work on and fix etc. so it eased the strain on my eyes
Easy to use select by color though later when roads are fixed,and switch to other RGB value for dirt road if neccassary

Although,if you are into doing these cobblestones I would be honored
I'll bundle up the road textures from the game and make a Mod for you to stick in your game to work on them
and I will send you all my cobblestone textures to check out Max   

I also totally agree with the fields in the village still need to be distinguished better
I plan to put back,the yellow and brownish fields etc. but with a lot more detail
what I have now is my starting platform,with warm browns and nice green texture mixed throughout hoping to have the village texture overall blend better into the country textures surrounding the village

So for sure,I will be trying to get back now the individual fields amongst the villagers
and with more detail 

I have Just been downloading and getting some new 2048 textures of small fields from around Arras,and Cambria and also up around Calais
to use for in the village,basically in layers pasting them and tweaking them to fit ,opacity down to overlay over each of the default fields in the village
to get back the actual look of the sk_counrtymount texture but with natural fields

A mix,of IL-2 Default texture,a bit of Gimp work and some true 2048 texture fields
A regular IL-2 Cocktail of textures   

I'm starting to actually get a technique down now,
to where I can now start a texture off quicker to get to the starting point the Village texture is above that I tweaked
That before took ages 

So now,it is slowly becoming easier to work this way with a technique to use
I have also converted and worked on my two main Dominate textures of the fields throughout the country side
They are now a lot greener,with warm medium browns and light browns fading in and out of the fields etc.
Much more lush looking,and things like that with a lot more texture look to them
Also tweaking the brown and yellow fields to have warm reds lightly sprinkled about through them,
and I mean light as the red can hardly be seen but makes the light brown and yellow fields look warmer to me

Awesome Max,thanks for the thoughts and polite constructive criticism which I take more as your Humble opinion than anything
and your eye for art with your opinion on things truly means a lot to me

I need help in viewing and deciding if things are going good,or not and which avenues to take once in awhile while working on the map

Thanks for the links as always Max,very much appreciated 

[SAS~Boomer]

A few pics of the field textures, with some more work done on them

[pippin]

Boomer thats looking really good!

                     Ian