If you are British you will know what 'pink gin' is all about... certainly not an umbrella drink, and it was the drink of choice in the mess after an extremely hot and dusty patrol.. As soon as my patrol report was completed I always used to take my veh commanders straight to the bar to have a long one with lots and lots of ice.. lovely!

I've never really been a fan of gin, pink.......hell yeah!

Hi all here are a couple Late War map updates with the new Kevinp roads Mod.

Booze

Ming has been spending his time with Rise Of Flight. Seems to be really into it. Still waiting for my copy.
Uh, while we're on the subject of waiting.................

Booze, I didn't want to have to be the one to tell you this but, there has been a conspiracy. Yes it's true and every time you fall for it, myself and a few others purposely take this thread off topic to lure you into posting new pictures. Don't feel bad, we are an advanced unit, specially trained in forum subversion tactics, you're not the first to fall prey. As you see, we never fail, we like the new screenies and appreciate them lots, we have control and expect more will follow, don't fight it, we are in control, cheers

more likely "Rise of Beer Foam" or "Pinky Out, Pinky Down" the new manly stool challenge

Holly cow!
Custom objects too?

I can't hardly begin to tell you how GLAD I am that you guys do NOT use those horrific "photorealiostic" textures. I do appreciate the mapmakers work - believe me - too bad they spoil it all with texturelayers of utter ...... sorry I just get carried away when I see work which is in other aspects excellent and the destoyed by the notion that textures from sattelite images makes a good looking map...

Your's is.... quite frankly beautful! (don't tell my mrs that I define a piece of polygons and such as beautiful .... it might lead to ugly consequences )

Ahhhh, ok ®uger now I see your diabolical plan. Pretty slick. My head hurts now. LOL!! Your advanced unit is good!

Klunk thanks for the compliment, not sure if its beautiful, but we're trying our best. And your secret is safe with us, no mention to the Mrs.

Booze

Actually very cool shots Booze, I'm also glad that you guys considered the domestic side of rural Englang during the war, gives it the homey touch...

I think it is time to change the title of this thread; remove the word "other" and use capital THE Channel map

As the 'horrific' photorealistic texture maker you're probably refering to in your post above Klunk I'd like to say that you're very welcome to your opinions. I think the map in this thread looks truly excellent and I'm looking forward to using it. However, variety is no bad thing and Cannon's map looks amazing too and will be much used as well. I don't see our hobby as a competition, nor an excuse to insult others' hard work. There's room for everyone here. I don't regard anyone else's work as a threat and I'm sure the guys at 352nd feel likewise. Vive la difference!

S! Comp

Sorry Compans if I hurt anyones feelings. "Horrific" might be an unsuitable word. As you probably read my post you also saw that I wrote that I appreciated the work and also called it "in other aspects excellent". I can't see how that is insulting.
Canon's map ( the one we use in the community which is now called Beta) is much appreciated by anyone, also by me (again). It is excellent work (again) and I am sure his upcoming map will have an even higher standard.
BTW, I didn't even have this map in mind. You just assumed it.

I am not referring to ANYONE, I am referring to what I have seen.
I have no clue what textures you have done Compans, I only refer to some screenshots from different recent maps. If those are by you I have no idea.

However, I still have the opinion that cropped sattelite pics for textures in in general looks flat, and inferior to these ... some textures even really really bad. Sorry but I do and though it came out harsh, I AM glad they do not use it on this map.

Hmm how do you get the impression that I think it is a competition? I think you overanalysze my input and opinion, but I do apologize if I used a word that you found insulting.

Vive la difference and freedom to express an opinion about it

Holy cr@p, I've forgotten to comment on the latest Booze-pics!!!

.. Great screenies, it's ready.. now release!

The real problem about textures is not how you make them, but how well you blend them together. The way each texture is laid out on a map is what really makes a difference : avoiding of repetitions, realistic riverbanks and cities... There are some great maps out there which are utterly ruined for me in some areas because the maker just applied the same texture across wide, flat areas.

This is actually the only grudge I have against photorealistic textures, which are otherwise very good me thinks : they feature lots of small 2D villages and farms which can easily create very noticeable repetition patterns. I've been slowly working on removing them on Compans' textures, also creating new tiles from his textures by rotating them or adding new fields to break up the patterns. Might release those one day when I'm happy with the result, and with their original author's permission of course.

This is something I'm really interested in with this map and would like to see more pics of. Though the airfields look absolutely stunning, it seems to me that the fields textures could use some more blending. Look at the fifth pic from the top in Booze's latest batch of screens : you can see a field pattern repeating itself quite noticeably at least four times over an area roughly the size of the airfield. This is not the first time I've noticed this in Booze's pics.
In most of these pics, the camera is probably no higher than just a couple meters high, but the higher you'll fly, the more obvious these repetitions will be, which would be a pity on a Western Front map where combat altitudes were generally pretty high.
With regards to repetitions, Compans' photorealistic textures can really go both ways : some of his textures will create noticeable repetitions (FrenchFields) while others, because they are so dense, (BOBfields) will conceal them.

Mapmakers need to find the right balance and stop focusing on the textures themselves but rather on how to create believeable scenery with what they have at their disposal.

Cheers

Nico

U might have a point there VB. Also I guess it's a matter of textures blending in on the overall "graphical design" of the game ... that some parts are "photo realistic" whilst others are not, such as cloucs, objects, airplanes.... it makes a non-consistant impression; for me anyway. What I like with the textures I have seen on these maps is that the colour scheme and "cleaness" blends in naturally in the game. They don't collide with the graphical impression of the game

I understand what you mean Klunk. In that regard, Compans' textures make sense in the greater scope of his overall work in the sim, his aircraft skins blending very nicely with the photorealistic landscapes. One problem that seems to persist in his and other's photrealistic textures is the different colour levels in each batch, due to original pictures quality or season during which they were taken, causing different sets of photorealistic textures to look weird when used simultaneously on the same map.

Booze, how did you go about the job of creating the Map-t file ? I know it can be pretty time consuming and difficult due to the greyscale format of the files, but I have a little technique which allows to create varied Map_T layouts in just a few clicks. It may require a slight edit of the load.ini to assign some of the most repeating textures to slots where they'll be less obvious, and some fine tuning in some areas, but the effort/result ratio is pretty unbeatable.
I'll stop here as I believe SimHQ policy on Mods only allows me to discuss the matter this far

Cheers

Nico

Hi Compans very nice to see you, hope all is well and you are having a nice summer.

Guys we totally respect everyones opinions and are glad to have everyones interest and input. But perhaps it would be better if we kept everything at a level where we do not say anything that might be a negative please. We welcome any and all constructive criticism regarding our map and are always open to suggestions. I am personally a Big Big Fan of Compans skills his work is wonderiful IMHO and we would be using them ourselves if we were going in that direction but our map Team decided a different plan which is good because now everyone will have 2 very different maps to use. There is no competition, there is no choosing, everyone can have both. And if you do not like one or the other we promise noone will show up at your house and force you to fly them. The reason for us putting up screenshots is because we are taking a journey so to speak and wanted to have those who were interested take it with us and to help us get opinions and imporvements along the way. The last thing we want to do is cause arguments or have anyone feel bad, our intentions were for this to be a positive thing for all. So as a personal favor to us we request that we all take everyones feelings into consideration before we hit the Submit button and we all play nice please.

Nico I would love to see what little technique you are using. We are still working on texture placement but have not totally nailed down all of our textures yet. We have close to 100 new textures we have made but are still testing, so I'm very interested in hearing what you are using.

Many thanks,
Booze

Not trying to hijack this thread but by all means release them. I should say that producing my textures is not just a simple matter of taking sattelite images and making a tile out of them. There is much editing, pasting and colour/tone transformation that goes on. A very lengthy process. I feel that my tiles do work together and are designed as such, with the exception of the last 3 French tiles I've produced which are seasonally different to the previous ones.
I agree that they don't work perfectly with some game objects, but my philosophy is to improve things and other people will improve objects, houses etc...and the game'll catch up.


S! Comp

Spoken in real standup fasion!!

Update anyone?