In expectation of FS-WWI Plane Pack 5, and to further the completion of the FS-WWI mod for SDOE I have decided to further enhance the Somme terrain in light of Recon3's texture improvements. The list of improvements I have already completed or wish to complete are as follows:

-Fixed many shading oddities. Some still remain around the airfields and towns however. I'm still looking for a fix for these...

-Add "fields of battle" to font lines area

-Remove "invisible ground" that aircraft crashed into or ground objects got placed ontop of (Done)

-Add a permanent Zeppelin Shed to the terrain (Done)

-Make the two bridges able to be driven or landed upon (Done)

-Correct shading on many of the tents, hangars and buildings (Done)

-Airfield building and hangars are now mostly hi-res (Done - Recon3)

-Airfield tiles are hi-res (Done - Recon3)

-Add hi-res support to the terrain (Done)

-Fix "floating" windmills and lighting issues of the windmill object (Done)

-Correct the error that the windmills all were either Axis or Allied in the Mission Editor. Now each of the three windmill targets can be set to either/or (Done)

-Correct all Training Takoff and Landing missions so the Allied aircraft take off on the Allied side of the front and the Axis aircraft take off on the Axis side of the front (Done)

-Correct all of the airfield AI take off coords and positions. They are now not so randomly placed on the airfields (Done)

-Create a new Allied and Axis observation balloon object. The placeable object now has a squad or so of men to protect it, a few tents around and you can see the cable ran from the balloon to the ground. The men do fire on enemy aircraft, and they can also be killed or ran over (Done)

-The above mentioned object has been modified to have a flak gun. These objects are permanent now on the terrain up and down the front lines on both sides. I would not venture to the front so half-hearted now!! (Done)

-Add balloon bases to all airfields (Done)

-Add more buildings, houses and trees to the town of Bertincourt (Done)

-Add a stationary train object to the railroad station (Done)

Not all of these are 100% completed, but I am getting close. I'm also looking to add more objects on the terrain to shoot at and to liven up the atmosphere a little. I expect this terrain project to take me a couple of more months. When it's finished, I will attempt to transpose these modifications to Snowy Somme. Then, FS-WWI Plane Pack 5 will be completed and released.

Some quick screenshots:

Thank you for the update

Thank you ArgonV. Beautiful work, making this WWI simulator even more attractive and very worth the anticipation. I hope all is well in Texas.

Hey Argon that looks great mate i like the trees.
Happy landings
Gypsy

Gypsy!! Good to hear from you mate. What are you up to these days? Been a while since I've seen you on OPS... I miss your skins and texture improvements.

Recon3 has posted some exciting Cambra texture updates:







These are all a work in progress of course.

I've fixed the forest and the tree models and textures. Before in the forest you had trees hovering above the ground. Also, with all of the tree objects you got those little corners on the top with pieces of texture so it looked like the trees had green bits hovering over the top. No more!

Another update from Recon3:



More buildings will follow once the texturing is complete.

How about this for a "field of battle"?





There will be ten of these for each side up and down the front lines. When you get close (If you're an enemy) you will here war noise (Shells going off, gun fire and so on). Also, the infantry and tanks will fire at you! And of course the tanks, arty and infantry are destroyable. The barbed wire stays however.

Thanks to Recon3, I've made some name changes in Somme. Cambra has been renamed to Cambrai (This was always a misspell) and Marquion Airfield has been renamed to Epinoy Airfield to properly reflect the historical area. The Headquarters now has been made a Zeppelin Base too.

Ok I've done some LOD tweaking on the front line additions so the FR is friendlier. Also reduced the range of the flak so it doesn't start firing until you're on that side of the front and I decreased the rate of fire on the flak cannons so patrolling the front lines is a bit more survivable.

Here are pics of the German battlefield:





There are 10 of these spread out along the German side of the front lines directly across from the Allied battlefields.

Some pics showing a few of the new features:

A new deflated and burning damage model for the balloons:




After it reaches the ground:


New tree textures






Permanent Zepp hangar

Currently I'm working on improving the look of the terrain around the airfields and the town of Cambrai. By this I mean I'm doing away with the "plateau look" of many of the airfields and making them blend in with the surrounding terrain. The same goes with Cambrai. I always hated how the fields looked like they popped out of the ground..

At the front lines inbetween the German and Allied battlefields smoke has been added to a couple of the craters. This spreads up and down the front lines and makes spotting the battlefields from a distance a bit easier as well as adds a touch of realism.

Just a bit of an update:

Lots of things happening on this front! Tons of bugs are being squashed and the Somme terrain is still undergoing vast improvements. Recon3 is actively retexturing the towns and areas around the factories. An effort has also been made to flatten out the terrain (The old Somme had mountians and plateaus which was totally unrealistic) and add many new tree objects and forests as well as to fix the old ones.

A pic:

For accurate heightmapping (assuming you are modelling a real region), you can fetch height data from ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2/SRTM3/Eurasia/

using the helpful instructions and programs here
http://www.agtim.ch/fu3/BSQ.php

Thanks! This is not a totally accurate map. It is only representing the area realistically to give the user a feel for the time period and what the areas roughly looked like.

Ok lots of updates to report!!! New bridge textures (Included rail tracks and better looking brick), added more hangars for the airfields, fixed take off positions for German airfield 3 (Now named Epinoy), and a few other goodies for the airfields (Lamp posts, crates, a wind sock that moves and a AEC truck).

Thanks to Recon3's revamped and detailed texture work Marquion got an overhaul!!!



Notice the bombed out buildings and the church.

The other two towns to be worked on soon.

Dear ArgonV,

You are doing tremendous work on the Somme. What happens at Arras, Paschendale, Vimy and, of course Verdun 1916.....Well, I am viewing that much of what is done in the Somme sector can be transported as "miserable" WWI scenary to many parts of the Western Front.

What will all this do to HD real estate, CPU horsepower, global memory and Vmem in the end? What are your projections?

Hello 5555!

These improvments will cost some performance for sure, but do not take up that much more in terms of hard drive space (Less than 30mb). I've optimized as much as I can in terms of sound and texture memory footprints. Across the board depending on your system, I expect a 5-10 fps hit. On my system I get no FPS hit unless there are 5 or more aircraft.

Here is the new Cambrai! Notice all of the new buildings including ones that are already bombed-out.



Recon3 did some excellent work texturing!!!!

I agree Argon, that's looking good.

(I know you probably like the chimney smoke, but I'd kill it for everything except snowy Somme)

Hi FlyRetired!

He did didn't he...

That sounds like a good idea for the Snowy Somme. I do like it tho. It gets chilly in the Summer months too! And they could be cooking lunch or dinner. No electric ovens back then!

Yes, coal and wood stoves over much of the western world til about the '50s, but the smoke very rarely went straight up, usually a nice random dissipating drift.

Ah true.. It will blow with the wind if there is any tho.