Texture compression radius

[hun_with_a_gun]

I bet a lot of people here have played cfs3 and wished that all the land in the game looked as good as it did immediately under the plane. As you get further away from the plane, the textures get compressed until the horizon looks like land soup.
When you turn the graphics up to 'high quality' the radius of nice detailed land is bigger, as is the draw distance of trees, etc. But even at max levels (where my 9800 Pro still isn't stressed by the game), from up high the land in the distance still looks like shite.
My question is, can you tweak this aspect of the game (the texture compression radius) to make the radius bigger, or even extend to the horizon? Because then, with a very powerful graphics card, you would have a game where the ground, at least, was photo-realistic.
If anyone can figure out what I'm talking about, and knows how the game engine works or whatever, an answer would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Mathias]

Yes you can.
In the terrains folder is a file "terrdata.zip"
Make a backup of this file outside your CFS3 root and extract the file "compositetexturebudgets.xml".
Open this one in a text editor and edit the first line

Budgets PatchPixelDim="128"

to

Budgets PatchPixelDim="256"

If you have a real good graphics card you can even try

Budgets PatchPixelDim="512"

Save and zip it back into your terrdata.zip.

Be aware that this can lockup your PC.
In that case just return to your backup file
Oh, don't forget to delete the "terrdata.zx"
This one will be re-created when you boot the game the next time.

If you want to go deeper into tweaking your terrain I'd suggest to check http://www.sim-outhouse.com
for Winding Man's Scenery Revision 4.

[trap]

Why not just install WMScenery and get good looking scenery? Install Skyboxs.