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Overview of the terrain types featured in this mod

 

Legend:

Stock terrain types

• Lime green: Rain forests
• Dark green: Temperate forests and taigas
• Ochre: Savannas
• Light yellow: Temperate grasslands
• Bluff: Montane grasslands and shrublands
• Pale green: Tundra
• Pink: deserts and xeric shrublands
• Grey: polar deserts
• White: polar ice caps

New (numbered) terrain types

1. PA0402, ATLANTIC MIXED FORESTS:
   • Western Denmark, Northwestern Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Northern and Western France
   
   
2. PA0403, AZORES TEMPERATE MIXED FORESTS:
   
   • Azores archipelago

List of trees/shrubs species, rock types and sand types featured in this mod, sorted by terrain type

 

1. PA0402, ATLANTIC MIXED FORESTS
   
   Trees:
   • European beech (Fagus sylvatica) - 22.6 m
   • European beech (Fagus sylvatica) - 25 m
   • Common oak (Quercus robur) - 18 m
   • Silver birch (Betula pendula) - 16 m
   • Scots pine(Pinus sylvestris) - 17.2 m
   • Scots pine(Pinus sylvestris) - 21.2 m
   • Norway spruce (Picea abies) - 17.5 m
   • Norway spruce (Picea abies) - 18.5 m
   
   Rocks:
   • glacial till
   
   Sand:
   • silica sand
   
   Terrain features:
   • Snowcover during the coldest months (December, January and February).
   
   
2. PA0403, AZORES TEMPERATE MIXED FORESTS
   
   Trees:
   • Azores heather (Erica azorica) - 5.5 m
   • Azores heather (Erica azorica) - 6.5 m
   • Faya tree (Myrica faya) - 8 m
   • Faya tree (Myrica faya) - 9 m
   • Azores white wood (Picconia azorica) - 7 m
   • Azores white wood (Picconia azorica) - 8 m
   • Azores laurel (Laurus azorica) - 10 m
   • Azores juniper (Juniperus brevifolia) - 6 m
   
   Rocks:
   • magmatic rock
   
   Sand:
   • black sand
   
   Terrain features:
   • Moderately dry grass on some islands during the summer.

Notice on SH5 trees

 

The trees we see in game are in reality 2D square "billboards" with a semi-transparent texture mapped on top of them; they rotate with the camera, so that they are always facing the observer, and from a distance we get the illusion that they are three dimensional objects, while they are not.

Only eight different trees per terrain type are allowed, each corrisponding to a square of fixed dimensions on a texture with 8:1 proportions. The mapping of each tree object on top of that texture is hardcoded, thus preventing us from increasing the number of trees for each terrain type and/or from importing simplified 3D tree models in place of two dimensional ones.

Tree sizes are randomized in game. The heights stated in the spoiler above, are relative to the highest specimens of each tree type. No matter how small is the scale of the 2D objects stored in vegetatio.gr2 file, if the whole texture-space assigned to each tree type is used, the highest specimens of that tree will have an in-game height of about 30 m. That explains why stock trees look so disproportionately big. For the above reason, the only way to make trees smaller (without editing the game code), is to make their texture smaller than the texture-space they are drawn on (a trick applied for the first time by our fellow subsim member echolot). This is a waste of memory indeed, but I could't think of any other workaround.

Conversely, we can make trees taller than 30 m by increasing the size of the 2D billboard they are mapped on, i.e. there not seem to be any fixed maximum size, and while there is a limit beyond which huge trees will look distorted, we will seldomly need to trespass that limit.