Sky Replacement

[layne_suhr 0]

What M249 model is that??? It looks awesome

[Daniel 0]

Skavan's. Get his weapons pack, unmissable.

[the.d 0]

Hello everyone, I just reworked the sky pack textures.

Ryan isn't here right now but I will let him now to update the first post.

Many of you might have noticed the horizon did not blend in too well. This is now fixed.

Take a look for yourselves:

I am sorry if this is getting confusing but this should definitely be the final version (I hope - I'm open to suggestions, of course):

Quote[/b] ]

Sky Texture Replacement by Ryan and The.D

...

This add on will replace the original sky textures with high resolution ones (2048*2048)

Textures have been remade to properly blend in with the horizon.

Unzip "sky_replacement.pbo" to your an "AddOn" folder of your choice (e.g. ..\Armed Assault\@Replacements\AddOns)

If you are unfamiliar with this procedure, read more about modfolders here.]http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Modfolders]here[/url].[/url]

We hope you enjoy this add on, feel free to modify the textures to your needs,

Regards,

Ryan & The.D

Get the latest pack here!

[the.d 0]

What M249 model is that??? :crazy: It looks awesome

It is, in fact, a replacement for the original M249 taken from Dr. Rebus' "Italian Soldiers & Weapons 1.0"

The original author of the M249 Mk2 is "Schmung" as far as I know, it first appeared in CS:S. Namely Robert Hammer and Skaven are the two heroes who managed to import these beauties into ArmA.

Read more about replacements here. This should hopefully cover it.

[Ryan_D 0]

The D made me update it again.

Quote[/b] ]Me and The D made a little sky replacement addon. It replaces most of the cloudy sky textures, and the clear blue sky texture.

Updated to v3.0 (hopefully the last)

Credits: The D - made all of the cloudy sky textures.

Download here

Pic - '>http://img146.imageshack.us/my.php?image=srpcloudycq2.jpg

[ArmaVidz 0]

wow, okay NOW its seriously kickbutt. Downloading! Thanks!

[hoot 0]

Something different: If you look up into the sky in vanilla ArmA and point the mouse straight up until it or your view cant move further, you can clearly see, that the background skytexture seems to be squished, right at the top of the dome or sphere. That bothers me a little to be honest. Of course it is just a question of eyecandy, but i feel it thwarts the immersion a little. In Germany we would say it triggers eye cancer.

So here go my questions. Are those textures made to fit into a skybox or are they stretched respectively deformed pixel-wise to fit a skydome's geometry? Did you used Terragen/Terragen2 for computing the textures?

I am asking because i was reading some articles on how to implement and texture both, boxes and domes for visual authenticity in a game, and also to try to understand some of ArmA's 'features' from outside the code. What of course does not mean to get or own some x-ray goggles.

Maybe the creator is also interested in such articles, so i would like to hand out some interesting links:

Gamasutra Old but still good intel on basics

Flipcode's Skydome Howto with OGL + Sources

Epicgames Forums Some excellent skydome textures

Vterrain Very good resource (here: sky/atmospheric effects) for realtime graphics regarding outdoor engines

One could also use citeseer to get scientific papers on this topic, but i fear those papers likely go far to deep into maths and physics and are therfore interesting for geeks (in a positive meaning) only.

Back to topic: Nice pack anyway. I liked the OFP replacements already, so finally someone started creating skies for ArmA

[the.d 0]

I made the textures from scratch - Of course, we did notice the bad texture transitions at the top of the "sky dome" but this is a compromise that had to be made in order to leave the "top cloud border" intact and without compromising sky colour transitions. If you want to completely remove the fragmentation you had to use a monochrome background which would look just as bad, sadly.

You will be able to notice the same thing happening to BIS' original textures and currently I don't know any way to solve this issue.

I am a bloody amateur in terms of texturing and scripting and you're most welcome to further improve the sky backgrounds. Feel free to add me in ICQ or PM me if there are any questions, I'm able to speak German as well.

[Guest]

New version frontpaged at the Armaholic.com homepage.

The updated Armaholic.com download page can be found here:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=2863

[Maddmatt 1]

I just tried it out. Looks good.

About time someone modded the sky

[hoot 0]

You will be able to notice the same thing happening to BIS' original textures and currently I don't know any way to solve this issue.

Hi,

my post was addressed to the BI 'vanilla ArmA' skies, as these are the origin you have to work with if you try to make any replacements. Your work is successively following these given patterns because of the missing access to the sources, geometry et cetera, and maybe sparse intel on the BIKI regarding this topic. However, i must admin that i was not specifically searching for it.

Im just trying to find out whether it could get fixed, somehow with a work-around, or not, and we should better don't look straight up into the sweet sky, fed with whatever texture.

I'll try to pm you later, because although it's sunday, i have some work to do. Strange, but happens :P

[the.d 0]

The problem persists in either version - you can't get around it without making the (clouded) sky look odd.

This is for anyone who is interested in this:

Make a test pattern.paa and include it in the .pbo - I set it to clear sky in this case:

The result looks like this:

You can significantly "dampen" the texture clipping by making the upper part of the textures as monochrome and symmetrical as possible but, of course, this will make it look bad with any clouded sky textures - at least I wasn't able to get it right (which doesn't mean much, on the other hand)

[hoot 0]

So is it precondition to use a real quadratic (with four equal sides) texture and not just x^2 and y^2, as it was in Flashpoint (256x512, 256x256, 1024x256 etc. pp)? Your example test texture implies so.

The link to the Epicgames forums that i have posted, shows what i mean with pixel-wise deformation on a texture itself. Have a look at the shots and you can clearly see what i mean. Damping the distortion with precalculated pixel-based deformations to pretend some 'spherical coordinates' could be possible, as long as the sky texture ArmA defaults permitts the usage of x^2/y^2 textures. Maybe a little effect could be achieved with using this format instead of something similar to 512x512? But as told, your shots just imply that you are not using x^2/y^2, and maybe whatever you use won't help much - don't know. Trial and error

[the.d 0]

Yes, unfortunately textures have to be square in order to blend in correctly - unlike UT3 (thanks for the link by the way, I tested these textures the first time ) ArmA won't get the right proportions and it all gets squished up:

I made them 2048² as that seemed to be a good compromise of quality and texture memory size - most actual graphic cards should be able to handle it.

[hoot 0]

Damn! Anyhow, thanks for clarification.

[inferno7312 0]

Did anyone try a totally clear weather(I mean withou any cloud) after using this addon.

the color of sky looks very strange.

[the.d 0]

Works for me:

What do you mean? Can you post a screen shot?

[inferno7312 0]

I doesn't mean this addon doesn't work. I just feel it no so real.

the following screenshot is BIS original sky. you can see not all sky shows same color.

full size

[the.d 0]

Now i gotcha :-)

Yeah, good idea - I'll make a new clear sky texture with a stronger transition towards the horizon! Thanks for the suggestion!

Edit: Reworked all textures - How's this?

Download the new pack here*. Please feel free to write us if you have any ideas or suggestions

*proper link now!

[inferno7312 0]

fabulous !

[lebson506th 0]

That's the wrong link....

That's the delete link

[Ryan_D 0]

Another update!?

Bah, okay. The real life sky seems the same blue colour all around though, at least where I live.

[HGuderian 0]

great...but a working link?

[Ryan_D 0]

Yeah... will update first page once The D gives us the link.

[the.d 0]

Haha, oh dear... that's what you get with 3h of sleep a day.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/b70j79

Sorry!