Simviation Forums

Hi all,

Most of you certainly already know about the package "cliff.zip" (or cliffs.zip ?) which provide great replacement textures for all kind of rocks (on mountains) in FS9.

The red rocks in this package are nice, but there is one problem. If I am not mistaken, those red rocks are mainly used for the Grand Canyon area, right ? The problem is that the actual rendering does not correspond to the real thing.

Look at this picture:


Look at the slopes: the main "details" are made of horizontal lines. It would be great if a texture artist out there could remake those red rocks textures to add some kind of horizontal "lines", and show us the results.

What do you think about this suggestion ?

Nobody wants to try ?
I would be really curious to see the visual impact of such a simple modification  8)

Another member has posted some shots of the Grand Canyon in FSX. Here is the result, it's a bit better than FS9, but still doesn't compare with the real picture:

Still nobody to try ?

Interesting contrast... the two images side-by-side.  Says a lot.

best,

.....................john

I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what you're talking about.  What horizontal lines?

Look at the rocky parts of the grand canyon (I mean, the parts which are most vertical).
The rocks are red, but you can see the main horizontal layers of sediments, causing a variation of the colors, more dark or more light red (especially visible in the background, and in the center of the above real picture).

In FS9's current rock textures, we don't have those horizontal layers, it would be nice to have them.

Here are two crappy examples to show what I was meaning. This would be the actual red rocks textures in FS9 and FSX, as we can see on the screnshot:


And this would be the kind of modification  would like to see:


This would allow those horizontal layers to appear in the sim, and I'm pretty sure the effect would be quite convincing, if done by a true artist, not by me

When texturing an entire planet, I bet even Micro$oft reuses the same textures for the same type of formations all over the world. Are you ready to see the modified textures on your sim in inappropriate places? The real world photo could be cut and layered into a passable "photo real" texture. Do you know which stock textures to replace? I wish I had time to work on it. But I am in the middle of a scenery and still have several months of work to finish it.

This red rocks texture is not used widely.
Where is the world d oyou get red rocks texture used ?
Most of the mountains out there are just using the regular grey textures.

For the textures names, I don't know, but since the file 'cliff.zip' contains replacement textures for rocks only, it may be easy to spot which does what.

Most places the "red rocks" type texture would be used are geologically similar in their formation so the sedimentary deposition layers would not likely be ouit of place wherever they are used.

So personally I think this is a good concept....and it might just improve the look of places in other parts of the world.

best,

...............john

The problem here is that ms smooths the terrain too much. compare the pictures side by side and you will see what i mean. that would almost fix the problem. it wouldn't change the textures but it would make it look better

Just remember:

More crags = more polygons = more computations per cycle = fewer FPS

That's why it looks like that.  You could probably, with a better mesh, make it look closer to the real thing, but you would lose tremendous amounts of FPS.

If you did it they way Daube is saying, you might get some better shots from a distance, but up close it would look a little fake.

At least, I think so.

It may look a little fake from close (I'm not even sure, that's why I would like somebody to try this out), but it cannot look more fake than it looks with the current textures.

Actually, only the terrain's shape makes it look like the Grand Canyon. Some textures would definitely make it look better.

Just remember:

More crags = more polygons = more computations per cycle = fewer FPS

Not necessarily.  I am running the FSGenesis 10 m mesh for the Grand Canyon.  It looks great and has no noticable hit on framerates on my machine.

best,

.....john