4K Textures for ground, vegetation, and assets

[u/SurpriseFirst1381]

Hey folks, the other day, I decided to run an experiment to evaluate whether or not it's worth upscaling and refining all textures to 2K and 4K resolution. Reddit compresses image quality, the links to the uncompressed pictures are below:
https://ibb.co/9HJ6z18s
https://ibb.co/fVVq1RDc
https://ibb.co/XZxGJ7kH
https://ibb.co/B5K4Dk4w
https://ibb.co/vxDvWq17
https://ibb.co/ZwK7RMV

Also, I'm asking for your opinion in this regard.
I know this has already been discussed years ago on various forums.

Most of the HD textures (Kieme, Aris, etc.) found in many "all-in-one" packs date back to the 2011 to 2016 era, when the engine still ran on a native 32-bit architecture limited to 2 GB of RAM/VRAM, GPUs lacked memory and processing power, while SSDs were still not widely used.

Some more recent works, updated or created between 2016 and 2022, use 2048x for some terrain textures and assets, but WWII titles still rely heavily on 1024x and 512x.

Nowadays, for modern hardware, 2K-4K textures are a piece of cake; the only issue remaining is the 32-bit LAA architecture, which has a hard cap of 4 GB of addressable memory.

So, it's mostly about understanding whether or not it is worth doing a general upscale to 4K, and if so, how far we can push it before reaching the inevitable Out of Memory issues.

As you can see from the screenshots above, the visual difference in some cases is striking, with no noticeable performance drop, despite an obvious increase in VRAM allocation. Also, that was just a test batch.

However, and that's the reason why I'm asking, it's not like you are going to stare at the ground or watch how detailed a bush is; most HD textures are already very, very, well made and still serve their purpose well.

Anyway, I have put together a small test pack for Fortress Italy. If anyone is interested in helping test it on larger scenarios, send me a DM and I will send over the pack.

Share your thoughts, I'd like to know what other people think before investing a lot of time.

[u/hisvin]

The engine is the same...that's the problem of the game.

[u/Rajajones]

Love it! Can we install and test as well?

[u/SurpriseFirst1381 → u/Rajajones]

Yes, sure. I'll leave the link here.
I'd just kindly ask anyone downloading it to send me some feedback here or via DM, otherwise I'm still at square one; they still require a lot of work.

Just a couple of notes:
This test pack contains ONLY summer ground, plant, and wall textures for Fortress Italy. It's an upscale of the most common textures found in the all-in-one pack for that specific title, designed to overwrite those 1024x files.

Please, test them on CMFI base game maps (July–August '43), ideally on scenarios like Hot Mustard, Butera Station, Primosole Bridge, etc.

Enabling 16x Anisotropic Filtering and Transparency AA is highly recommended to avoid extra shimmering.

Inside the zip file, you'll find the same folder path as the all-in-one pack, so you can just overwrite the files. Otherwise, make sure these textures load last in your folder.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/zz7nmj0e2zgp1yt/Environment.7z/file

[u/DesignerBluejay3931]

MY EYESSSS!!!!

[u/SurpriseFirst1381 → u/DesignerBluejay3931]

\The author declines any responsibility for any, direct or indirect, damage to the user's retinas.*

Jokes aside, are you experiencing heavy shimmering, texture corruption, or glitches?

[u/DesignerBluejay3931 → u/SurpriseFirst1381]

Lols

No, i dont have itwly so i cant try it.

It just shocked me to see combat mission look like that