=================================================
Landscape LOD replacement textures for Oblivion (extension)
Tamriel worldspace border regions
Version 1.0
=================================================
by shaja
History
========
Version 1.0: April 2, 2006
- Initial Release
What does it do?
===============
Replaces the original 1024x1024 landscape LOD textures with improved 2048x2048 textures.
Makes the far-off terrain look much less blurry.
This package includes the 24 textures of Tamriel worldspace not in the base package, covering the border regions that you can't normally travel to.
It is possible to use these textures without having the base package installed, but that would be a bit pointless.
Installation
===========
Unzip the .zip file to your "Oblivion\Data" directory, using folder names.
The 24 dds files should end up in your "Oblivion\Data\textures\landscapelod\generated" folder.
Uninstallation
=============
Delete the 24 dds files from your "Oblivion\Data\textures\landscapelod\generated" folder.
Note: If the 'generated' folder includes dds files with names ending in _fn.dds, they are normal maps from a different texture package.
How it was done
===============
* Each original 1024x1024 texture was opened in Photoshop.
* The texture was resized to 2048x2048 using the Bicubic sharper filter.
* Film grain filter was applied, with Grain: 3, Highlight Area: 0, Intensity: 0.
* Brightness was reduced with the Brightness/Contrast tool by -8 to compensate for the brightness added by the film grain.
* Texture was saved using the Nvidia DDS plugin with DXT1 compression and no mipmaps.
Bugs & Limitations
=================
If your video card control panel is set to optimize performance over speed, it may interfere with the ability to display 2048x2048 textures, meaning you would see no improvement with this package. Try setting it to optimize for quality if you are not seeing the improved textures.
Lighting does not affect the normal high-detail close landscape and the LOD terrain in exactly the same way, so the dividing line between them can be very visible at certain times.
Initial game load times are slightly longer.
No detail was added by hand, so it is certainly possible for someone with actual artistic talent to improve the quality even further.
I've tested and found no framerate reduction using the high-res textures on my system, but it is possible that lower-spec systems might see a framerate impact.