In response to RollerBall's thread.....

[AnGeL_MaKeR]

I didn't want to do the wrong thing and take up too much space on RollerBall's thread about Koorbygen scenery... but check it out!!!  This is the eurocopter in downtown Orlando, Florida!!!

I just had to see for myself the big improvement!!!

Thanks RollerBall for pointing in the right direction!!

[ozzy72]

The buildings do look better

[RollerBall]

:)

Looks good to me. Earlier on I did New Orleans and that looked pretty good too. Didn't see any floods though.....

The main improvements are in the texture images - they're just more realistic somehow. I guess if people are worried about FR they could reduce em in size to 512x512 or even 256x256 (although I don't think going from 512 to 256 will have any noticeable effect - they're only at 256 as default to keep the CD size down).

If you do decide to do that though, you will have to go through a clickety-click process....

use DXTbmp.exe to save em as 24 bit images (noting the type of extended bmp they are - when converting any extended bmp to 24 bit I always just add 'N' to the name so I know what it is eg image.bmp --> imageN.bmp)

use Pixia, PaintShopPro or Photoshop to reduce the size of the 24 bit image by 50% (which in area is 4 times)

use DXTBmp.exe to convert the reduced size 24 bit back to an extended bmp, saving with the same name as the image you started with ie overwriting the larger image with the smaller one.

Be interested if anyone doing this can tell us if they see an improvement in FR

[NicksFXHouse]

:)

Looks good to me. Earlier on I did New Orleans and that looked pretty good too. Didn't see any floods though.....

The main improvements are in the texture images - they're just more realistic somehow. I guess if people are worried about FR they could reduce em in size to 512x512 or even 256x256 (although I don't think going from 512 to 256 will have any noticeable effect - they're only at 256 as default to keep the CD size down).

If you do decide to do that though, you will have to go through a clickety-click process....

use DXTbmp.exe to save em as 24 bit images (noting the type of extended bmp they are - when converting any extended bmp to 24 bit I always just add 'N' to the name so I know what it is eg image.bmp --> imageN.bmp)

use Pixia, PaintShopPro or Photoshop to reduce the size of the 24 bit image by 50% (which in area is 4 times)

use DXTBmp.exe to convert the reduced size 24 bit back to an extended bmp, saving with the same name as the image you started with ie overwriting the larger image with the smaller one.

Be interested if anyone doing this can tell us if they see an improvement in FR

That defeats the purpose of the 1024x1024 visuals

I would not install them if I was going to degrade their quality

I reduced them in Photoshop and found the loss of sharpness was not worth using the texture anymore so I reinstalled the 1024 textures again.


Much better visuals overall!

[RollerBall]

Thanks Nick. Well there ya go everyone. It had to be tried but have to say I've kept em as per the download.

[NicksFXHouse]

Thanks Nick. Well there ya go everyone. It had to be tried but have to say I've kept em as per the download.

here is the comparison

Top is 1024x1024 650kb+


bottom is 512x512 350kb+

When your talking about going from 47kb(default MS) to 300+kb its not worth the visual loss to try and reduce the size. You will simply be running MS quality with 6 times the files size

[RollerBall]

Agree 100%. Thanks Nick

The other thing is, when you take a look at em, he's got some lovely photo-textures in there. He's taken great trouble to make these and can only assume he took the shots himself. Can't wait to find the delis, shops, hotels and other stuff he's included and would be a shame to lose the detail by reducing the texture size.

Still don't know who the author is though

Just taken another look - the night textures really are a work of art