Also Quake Wars uses the crazy technique that has a single huge texture for the entire landscape.

The technique is called Mega Texture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaTexture and can max out at something like 128000?128000 pixels

---

Back on topic. I really like what you are doing, I don't quite understand the mesh edit and what effect it has and why having one single texture that big and yet seamless did not work before.
Not all sky textures are to my taste but hey! That's why mods exist at all =)

Grand job SWG! =)

Progress Update! The http://i42.tinypic.com/33ehdma.jpg are now done, as well as a bunch of other stuff.
Here's what I've finished:
-The Moon textures
-The Night Sky texture
-All of the sky textures exept for snow, blizzard, and overcast
-An updated 2048 texture for the Dwemer Observetory
-New rain particles
-New snow particles
-New Blight particles
-New Ashstorm particles

So what's left for me to do? Just the snow, blizard, and overcast skies, the blizzard particles, more INI editing, and some fine tweaking after that.


The mesh edit is reqiured since the vanilla UVmap just tiles the texture 4 times across the entire sky, my UV stretches one big texture across it.
What don't you like? I said I want to hear every opinion, this has gotta be perrrfecto!

This looks fantastic! :woot: Will one huge mesh and one huge texture cause any noticeable fps slowdowns? (apologies if this question has already been addressed.)

There's not really much difference with the mesh other than the edited UVmap and a better dome shape, and I've compared framerates with the textures 1024 vs. 4096, there's no difference, it won't slow you down, nothing here will.

Thanks for the quick response BTW, whenever I touch this thread, someone always comes to chat.

Am I misreading you? Are you now saying that a 1024 textures and a 4096 textures product the same fps. Please tell me I've miss something. You've been doing textures for awhile now you can't really believe that statement.

Projects still look good.

Honestly, no difference in FPS, as seen here. Look in the top left corners:
http://i42.tinypic.com/52cjyo.jpg
http://i44.tinypic.com/96w7eu.jpg

See, it's the same. Skydye, why are you so against textures over 1024? They make a huge difference and look awesome.

I have no opinion on what size anyone uses. I'm against a statement that is misleading. Just because you show now different means you have a high end card. I know no one in gaming that will back you on the no size fps issues. I would hope that you would not mislead people. Make want size you like. But please don't mislead people that's all I ask. I will no longer post about this to you as we just disagree on this issue.

4096 seems kinda big to be honest, but still the skys look beautiful and I am sure it will not hurt my pc too much.

As said, it's needed, I can't get this method to work and look good any other way with the current engine limitations. So I'm cutting out one complaint, texture size, I'm not changing it, so find something else to complain about.

What's your GPU?

GeForce 9400 GT / NVIDIA nForce 620i

What's yours?

:hubbahubba:


:P

I have an overclocked nVidia 8800 GS with 384Mb VRAM. I'm thinking of upgrading sometime this fall. I've got 3 Gigs of RAM, but can add more, as I have a 64-bit OS. How much vRAM does your GPU have? I can imagine this is an important aspect with regards to framerate? I'm not terribly GPU savvy - I just know that bigger numbers with core clock speed, pixel pipelines, and memory transfer rate -- well, the higher the numbers, the better! :hehe:

I'm not sure if this was already addressed in the thread: what format will the textures be in? .dds would definitely reduce the file size, but I don't know if there will be a visible (negative) difference in quality between .dds and .tga at that large a resolution. What are the file sizes so far for, say, a partly-cloudy sky?

They're all DDS, and all the 4096 textures are 21.3 MB. The total size of everything is pretty large right now, but hopefully the compression on the archive will squish the download into a not-as-huge size.

Woah woah woah! So sick!
I like all the skies, but the foggy one just made me hit the table with my jaw!

Awesome work, can't wait to see more!

I have a question, and it seems better to ask here than start a new thread.
I have been considering installing http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7066 because it looks amazing.
But my concern is about the .Ini changes.
Are the changes mandatory and/or non-avoidable? Or are they optional?
I already have my .Ini tweaked a bit, (mostly just Quadratic Lighting, and to make night time truly dark) Will this mod need me to change those settings?

Looking forward to version 3, but might as well have v2 while I wait.

The V2 ini changes aren't mandatory, but the v3 ones will be.

However, if you know what your doing, I'm sure you won't have trouble extracting and inserting the assets of the ini that you do or don't want.

_______________________________________________________________________________
Concerning INI though, I'm thinking of making the ini changer more customizable (more options to choose from) than the last one, so here's my plan:
-I'll have an INI folder in the release directory with these changers:
>Earthlike atmosphere - ENB
>Earthlike atmosphere - full vanilla
>Earthlike atmosphere - dark nights

>Concept art atmosphere - ENB
>Concept art atmosphere - full vanilla
>Concept art atmosphere - dark nights

>Blue starred planet - ENB
>Blue starred planet - full vanilla
>Blue starred planet - dark nights
_______________________________________________________________________________

Anyway's, that's what I was going to do, what other options would you guys prefer/like? Are these settings good for you?

Great, thanks for the info.

Dark nights are essential IMO. Really adds a lot to gameplay and aesthetics.

I love the screens!

By the way, on one of your older SWG skies, it wouldn't ever show an esp in my data files... I put all the files in Data Files but to no avail :/

Yeah, the thing is my v2 INI changes didn't include them since ENBseries makes nights dark anyways, which is why this time I'm splitting customization for ENB and dark nights.


Have you used very many replacers? They don't have esp/esm's because they don't need them. All replacers are are a bunch of files you stick into your data files that the game reads before the archives, making them do exactly what they are supposed to do - replace the files.

what does it mean your spliting customization for ENB and dark nights? Are you going to model the skies .ini around the ENB?

It means, with a dark nights INI and ENB the nights will be TOO dark, so I'm splitting the INI customizations to work and look good with enb and without.

Ahh ok. Sounds good. Yeah the ENB sometimes makes things to dark but anyone can correct that by editing the color correction settings in their own ENB

As to the INI file changes, are you going to be using MIT files? These can be processed by anyone with Wrye Mash or there's MiNi (included with the Atmospheric Sound Effects or Realistic Colour Config for Morrowind mods) by Vladimir Kraus. Much easier than hacking around with the INI directly.

Yes, I am, The SWG's Skies v2 INI changes infact already make use of the MorrowINI application.

Hey SWG, was wondering how these are doing, they look hellishly awesome!