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[Birdman]

Hi all!

I have noticed that many important maps have their textures reduced to 512x512 resolution from the original 1024x1024 resolution causing significant loss of ground texture detail in UP3 and DBW. Thus, I have collected original higher resolution textures as an easy to install pack for those who want to have highest possible ground texture resolution and have good enough graphics card to handle those textures without stutters.

This pack includes updates from 512x512 textures in UP3/DBW to original 1024x1024 textures for these maps:
- 3BG KTO Winter
- 352nd Cross Channel
- CAN Channel (all versions except those based on the beta map)
- Redko Okinawa, Palau and Kyushu (Redko Kyushy now has working bump mapping after I fixed BumpH texture format)
- VKG El Alamein
- mixx Zapolar'e (textures from latest version) and also old textures used by some other maps
- Many winter maps that use GW_ and Mbug_ winter textures
- Many textures in _Tex/land/summer (used for example by summer Viipuri and Syväri maps)
- Many separate textures I found, for example some Bombsaway's shallow water textures

You can download this high resolution texture pack in two parts:
Part1 (101.98MB): https://www.mediafire.com/?pyv6pi5ihkpkzex
Part2 (173.13MB): https://www.mediafire.com/?hrxbqdp6rqhy4dg
Unpacked size of these textures is about 431 MB. Almost all textures are indexed to save space and only those textures are included that actually have higher resolution.

Installing instructions: Just unpack these two packs into your #UP# or #DBW folder and enjoy more detailed ground textures.

Compatibility: This pack should be compatible with any UP3 or DBW version and also all other installs that use texture and map SFS archives from UP3. There shouldn't be any compatibility issues with custom map mods or repaints since this pack only includes textures that are just higher resolution versions of the same UP3 textures.

Hardware requirements: These 1024x1024 textures use more graphics memory than original UP3 textures and may thus cause stutters with 512 MB or less graphics memory. If your hardware can't handle these you may get annoying FPS drops, stutters or paratrooper errors while loading maps. There are already many maps in UP3/DBW that use 1024x1024 textures, so don't install these if you have stutters or paratrooper errors on some maps already and you can't fix those. You can also try to improve FPS or fix paratrooper errors by selecting smaller RAM usage in selector (smaller Java memory usage means more memory available for textures) and/or enabling texture compression, but I recommend removing this texture pack if you suffer from those issues. These textures shouldn't affect plane limit and any IL-2 crashes.

Credits: Of course, all credit goes to all those great texture artists that have created textures for maps included in UP3/DBW, and I hope this pack is OK for texture artists since I'm actually just returning their work to original resolution. I just tried to collect original versions of all downscaled textures, fixed some bugs and indexed some textures. Boomer also helped me a lot since I found many textures already in indexed format in UP2 texture packs.

I hope that you like these higher resolution textures! Please report all possible bugs that appear with this pack installed and are fixed by disabling this pack. I also hope that you post some nice before and after comparison screenshots so that others can see the difference.

[Birdman]

I also hope to see these packed in an optional SFS pack, but I posted this version for testing and feedback.

You can post hints to some missing high resolution textures if I have missed some despite pretty thorough looking at extracted UP3/DBW textures.

[CWMV]

Dude, rock on!

[vpmedia]

Nice, much appreciated...I wasnt even aware that textures were downgraded in DBW

[Toasted_Toad]

Thanks Mate,

Got the power to run with this, looking forward to seeing better textures 

Cheers,

T_T.

[MANYSH]

jesus ! all maps should looks like this ! I'm impressed !! Thank you

[Gurner]

Makes a huge difference to the CAN channel maps - Thanks!

[cgagan]

Many thanks, Birdman! Impressive visual improvement!

[SAS~Malone]

...I wasnt even aware that textures were downgraded in DBW

...and therein lies the rub. yes, the DBW textures were down-sized, and this is because we want to make it more easily accessible to members who don't have state-of-the-art pc's, and the simple fact is that for most people, the difference is hardly noticeable.
i mean, if a guy like vpmedia, texture artist supreme, hardly noticed it, then it should be obvious that the difference is minimal.
for those who have uber-rigs, by all means, use these - but for the majority of regular users, it's a no-brainer - save on resources (read loading times, etc) with minimal visual difference. for those with kick-ass uber rigs, by all means, use these.
when putting together a community pack like DBW, it stands to reason that we would try and do it in such a way that it works for the majority of users, and not just the handful that are using next-gen machines which won't noticw the difference, FPS-wise.
i am not trying to diss these great textures here, please, gents - i am just trying to defend/explain the reason why this was done for DBW. (and UP, for that matter)
when making a pack like this, we need to focus on what will be best for the community at large, and not just those select few who have super-rigs.

[PSchild]

Thank you very much

[LuseKofte]

Many thanks 

[lokitexas]

Silly question, but after I DL this, I just extract into my C:/IL2/#DBW folder? Thats it?