I've been putting in some time in having a go at redoing the terrain textures.. very slow process... but here's a (detail) comparison screen of default and modified.
http://www.imageupload.org/?d=8889B8991
I realised that I really do like the tiles in higher res (currently the 1st tile is being authored at 4k), and the photographic detail looks great at low altitudes. There doesn't seem to be much of a performance hit on my computer- but I have not updated the bump maps yet.
Issues-
It's really slow going. I'm working from stitched together maps taken from Flash Earth, editing out the lighting/shadowing information, and then trying to work out how the bits need to fit into the original template.
This comparison shot isn't colour graded yet. Personally I don't have too much of a problem with the original colours, and I've tested ingame some modded textures colour graded to the originals. To me they look fine.. some people may prefer a more muted or desaturated look. Anyway, changing colours is the easy part- it's no big deal. What's really needed is to get that texture detail in there. I noticed in CloD, that anything below around about 900 feet looks awesome- it pretty much does the reverse of all other flight sims- where going higher produces a better visual result. After 900 feet, the vegetation in CloD fades out and you're left with just the plain texture, but to me the resolution isn't really holding up there. Using 4k maps takes care of that problem and things should hopefully look nice from any altitude above that range.
Anyway, just thought I'd give a preview. I'm a little busy so no idea when or if this will get done to a finished level. I'd like to imagine I have the energy for it.
