Upscaling Textures and other improvements

[DrJester]

VERSION 1.0

This mod changes and/or upscale the default textures some twice, to four times its original size. LARGE MEMORY ADDRESS AWARE required! This may cause low FPS on older hardware.

- Upscaled textures:

• Faces
• Some Guns
• Cliff and Rocks terrain textures
• Some effects, including bow water spray, water splashes, fire, explosions etc.
• Algae
• Sky Dome
• Fixed and upscaled 3D wake

- New textures:

• Trees
• Grass
• Almost all terrain textures(snow, grass, sand, bump maps)
• Moving sea foam
• Clouds
• Moon
• Sun
• Starry Night sky. (The starry night sky is an optional file. )
• Light halos(sun, search light, flares, lamps)
• Water impurity

- New sun light colors:

• Sunrise
• Daytime
• Sunset and twilight
• Night
• Stormy

DOWNLOAD:
Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VS2...ew?usp=sharing
Subsim.com: https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/dow...o=file&id=5647


And as always, a special thank you to Vickers03, his help, insight, and information has been absolutely essential and invaluable in the creation of this mod. Thank you!

======== SCREENSHOTS ========
(Click the spoiler tag)

 

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Old thread - preserved for historic purposes
(Click the spoiler tag)

 

EDIT: Changing the server, switched from sharemods to google drive. It is still the buggy Beta 2. I'm currently trying to fix the other issues.

Updated the Beta, try this new one!
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Here's the beta version of the mod. Since I have been staring at this for so long, I may have missed a thing, or two, or more. So, if you find anything please tell me, with a screenshot preferably, so I can try to fix it before the main release. I've also been informed that I can use DXT1 formating on the textures to decrease its size if it doesn't have an alpha channel. This is good news for terrain AND the sky dome texture! Which means, that the Starry Sky UHD version could be viable!







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I've been modding SHIV lately, and upscaled a few textures(From Fall of the Rising Sun mod), I've also redone a few. I figured that the night sky also needed some love. This is a proof of concept to see if it is even viable. What do you guys think? I have been a member of subsim since 2005 and visited the site even earlier. Time to contribute something (I had to create another account because I could get the name changed from the previous one and to avoid doxxing)

Here are some screenshots:
















Here's the proof of concept. I'm going to play around with the alpha channel, but I can say, real world navigation here is going to be... difficult. There is also an issue with the 3D seams on top off the sky/dome, which I have no skills or know how to fix it.

https://i.imgur.com/7ajauo2.jpg

[DrJester]

Done a few more tests for the night sky, and... That was a bust. I may try later if I can think of anything else. But it looks bad(too stretched out). I did improve the skymap by upscaling it and then blurring it a little so there are no visible bands. I shall continue improve it visually(now I want to fix the weird yellowish light during early morning). And see why only on some boats the caustic/water shimmering happens and in others doesn't.

[vickers03]

ocean textures look really good

[Mad Mardigan]

Nice... especially love the sun & sky, water looks spectacular, as vickers said.



Any idea of when to expect a release of the mod.? Just curious...

M. M.

[DrJester]

Hopefully soon. I need to find out what texture is causing a semi-greyish semi-transparent water splash(probably something due the upscaling), and manually do the trees, since it didn't look good when I upscaled them.

I also need to find the textures for the mounted AA gun to upscale them too.

But here's small flawed demo(no sky textures yet). I've tested it on the museum and doesn't crash the game. [Check the OP for the link]


The scene.dat is from the TMO mod. It was the only one I found that fixed the jelly water for me. So I'm using it as basis for the sun.

When I'm done with everything, I need to document the changes and what I changed for future proofing and making it easy to the modder or some user who wants to merge it to something else in the future.

[Mad Mardigan]

Originally Posted by DrJester

Hopefully soon. I need to find out what texture is causing a semi-greyish semi-transparent water splash(probably something due the upscaling), and manually do the trees, since it didn't look good when I upscaled them.

I also need to find the textures for the mounted AA gun to upscale them too.

But here's small flawed demo(no sky textures yet). I've tested it on the museum and doesn't crash the game. https://www.mediafire.com/file/ljmcm.../data.zip/file


The scene.dat is from the TMO mod. It was the only one I found that fixed the jelly water for me. So I'm using it as basis for the sun.

When I'm done with everything, I need to document the changes and what I changed for future proofing and making it easy to the modder or some user who wants to merge it to something else in the future.

Cool.. cool.. can understand wanting to make sure it is as error free as possible, so no rush... was understandably curious.



Will look forward to when it is , best to you in this endeavor...

M. M.

[DrJester]

A few more screenshots of the work done today. Unfortunately, as you can see at the bottom, the night sky may not be possible to be revamped. I've also converted all textures to DDS from TGA. It decreased its size, and halved the pixel size of some, not as important, textures. This should help in the memory management. I've also tried to stretch the Lightning texture(editing the particles.dat file) so it can spawn from 400(I assume meters in the game), where the cloud layer is located, to hit at the ground. But... That was also a bust(maybe I have the wrong setting?).








Here's the night sky. I've tried adding the milky way(adding the stars as texture is also problematic, as they will look bloated and blurred. Increasing the size of the entire texture is not a good idea, as that will reach 16,384 pixels to 8192(Essentially, doubling the current size) and will probably cause a CTD in the game. I wish they had separated the sky textures, so that way it would unload one set of textures while the other loads. And not a huge file containing all the textures.




I'm also wondering, if I change the sun color and the light on wakes and other things like that, if it will change the AI and its sensors(as I have read in the forum while searching things here)

EDIT:

Yep, the Sky will have to stay without the pretty stars and beautiful milky way. It looks too pixelated. Now I need to understand why the Moon doesn't show up. And then, I think I'm done with the mod(needs the readme)

[Aktungbby]

DrJester! nice pics after a 13 year silent run!

[DrJester]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

DrJester! nice pics after a 13 year silent run!

Thank you! haha

[Wolfpack345]

Wow this all looks fantastic! It really is a step up! I look forward to seeing more.

[iambecomelife]

Excellent work! This stuff has been neglected for much too long. I experimented with the sky myself but didn't get far.

[DrJester]

Some new screenshots(found a few issues with transparency... AGAIN! Mostly caused on the light flares. Some need to be transparent, others need to have a black background, and that is throwing me off! haha). The last two is me experimenting with the night sky. But I think it is going to be a bust. Because to avoid the blurry stars(and thus, looking like blobs when you use any zooming) I would need to increase even further the size of the SKY_PAC.DDS, and that will eventually lead to OOM :/

[DrJester]

Ok, I'm nearing completion, and I will be publishing a beta soon-ish for you guys to try. After looking at this for a while, I may have missed a thing or two, and it is always good to have another pair of eyeballs.

[fitzcarraldo]

Originally Posted by DrJester

Ok, I'm nearing completion, and I will be publishing a beta soon-ish for you guys to try. After looking at this for a while, I may have missed a thing or two, and it is always good to have another pair of eyeballs.

Can´t wait. Looks awesome.

Many thanks for your job.

Fitzcarraldo

[DrJester]

Here's the Beta!

If you find something I missed, please tell me what it is(preferably with a screenshot ) so I can try and fix it.

Thanks to everyone here at Subsim, but more specifically Vickers03. His help and insight was invaluable!

EDIT: Check OP for the link


[Going to post this on the OP, so it is easier for others to access it]