Lucky_Strike

Hehe, will for sure need testing. Reckon I can do a few at a time and slide them your way.
I haven't, but I will, it seems to be linked much more to regional variations so doubtful it will work in the other games. Yeah rain is tough, it's too 'big' in game and looks best with a bit of mistiness, the latter is better achieved in ReShade.
Definitely will try puddles, maybe even use that water shader thing which is used for ponds and the like, if I can figure out how to.
Also will try some normal maps on a couple of ground textures, would really boost the mud look. 

And in case your curiosity was peaked by my mention of mud - this is somewhere in Northern Italy winter '44 ...

.. mud, glorious mud! All other textures stock ... ish!

For these Franken-vehicles, I use the following terminology: you have a shell mdr coming in to wrap itself around the host mdr and that host mdr's game code parameters. The shell and host should be the best apples to apples as possible in the main categories such as crew number, speed, armor protection, weapons, wheeled or tracked, turreted, etc.
In Blender you import an mdr and see the naming nomenclature is very consistent. weapon can replace weapon, turret can replace turret. The axis of the shell mdr's turret can be adjusted to match up with what the host is supposed to do. When things are not matched up, as in a STOCK PzIII we got with F&R, the turret will do odd things. Bad QA on BFC's part. Weird oddities with the 3D model. 

Or just a bunch of knockers ... sorry OP

The Franken-Csaba progress continues thanks to @Lucky_Strike and Mark's superior skills at the PS joystick.
I am adding Hungarian crosses and license plates. I waited for hours down at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to get the damn tags. Insurance papers and my war vehicle license. The lady had it almost all done and THEN said she was going on break and I must return after lunch. DMV joke. FRANKENCSABA  hahaha I have to alter the SdFkz222 MG to be a water cooled looking MG. I had to swap the sides of 2 weapons on the turret,  cannon goes to the left, MG goes to the right. Messing with the crew spots. Effing with the hatches the best I can. Still gotta make vehicle crew uniforms for Hungarians! Fun stuff. Work in progress.    EDIT: I might mess with editing the fenders. I will grab the low hanging fruit to push it more towards a better Csaba look. Am I 100% making it a Csaba? No way man. It aint worth it to me. This is a hobby and I see @NPye staying up until 4am doing stuff. I have to bloody ask where the actual BFC people are. It seems the fans can crank out the content but BFC still has bunkers that shoot wrong for every title. I don't run a business so I guess I work for free here. But BFC must carefully plan the 15 minutes they budget in to have somebody on the clock to do a small 3D change? If SOMEBODY was paid to make those bunkers then it should be warranty work and be done for free and released in a special email. You do not need a big release and activation headache process to give us the corrected files. Very depressing.  

I think Johnnie Lenin said that they were neither mods nor rockers, but mockers.

LOL Ain't that always the way.

Wowwa, that is a real labour of love. Looks fantastic. I think you're right to keep it more intact, the game doesn't really handle railways very well, this looks better without loads of destruction. I think you have excelled yourself this time!!!

Yeah, you previously said that the window apertures are actually much bigger than what we see (to prevent the pixeltruppen from clustering around the) so from your other observations it seems that by having these enlarged apertures the building walls then provide very poor cover as well. This would explain a lot of other issues that folks have noticed in the past such as vulnerability to HE and being spotted too easily. It's no wonder that BF are having to constantly revise the mechanics of these things. Probably started as a simple solution to the clustering around apertures issue but ended up as a very difficult problem to solve and not easy to unpick once embedded in the game. 

A few of his newer maps have some good chunks of forest so should stress test us a bit., if we ever get to see them 🙄
Yeah there's no rush, so much to explore in it and they're always coming up with new stuff.

Keeps your whites whiter than white ...

With George beeing more of the EF armor kind of guy I think forests will still play a minor part. But we´ll see. 😎 Though nothing to compare with my projected hurtgen forest and ardennes type maps. 🤪 Will be interesting to see my next  "map stops loading near 50-80%" occurance. Though I don´t hope these will happen. Fingers crossed! 🤞😜
 

Ahhh this explains why some modders don't bother with Hi-res grass textures (or even downsize their textures).
To make a decent resolution grass texture of that size would require 1.2GB (2.4GB for the green & yellow combined) & that's assuming CM would even load such a huge texture* .
Either way, I can confirm that there's a clear visual difference between how the grass textures are rendered in FI compared with RT.
Here's a 3x3 action square coloured grass texture in RT...

Here's the exact same texture in FI...

@BFCElvis is it possible that FI recieved some kind of upgraded graphics as part of the v2.0 engine upgrade of that time?
An upgrade which was forgotten about & subsequently never transferred to the other titles?
 
*An interesting aside, it appears that CM will load 256-colour 8bit BMP's (an interesting feature which could shrink the size of a LOT of mods).

Tis a fair point, permafrost is not the same as freezing.  I could still do with those Shermans back though...

Played through (a slightly edited) Getting Ugly. Likely would've been a bloodbath if the Germans hadn't done the old "immediate counterattack" schtick one times too many. Made a little vignette of the final attack. Read it here:  Springboard: A Red Thunder Vignette AAR (rinaldiaars.blogspot.com)
Some of my favourite shots from the blog:

Consolidating behind Chernverka.

Aftermath.

Dying hard. 

I just updated and both RT and FB works just fine for me.

Messing about with trying to create a generic muddy looking landscape for all the WW2 games - I started in RT. Replacing a few textures at a time to try and figure out the mod tags (that's another story 🙄). Anyway I've gotten to a point where I think I can make it work across ALL the WW2 titles for ALL locations and ALL seasons/weather (excepting snow for obvious reasons - though slush might have to be thunk about separately), using one generic set of ground textures to look really muddy - think Spring Awakening in RT, Hürtgen in FB, Anzio bridgeheads in FI ... you know the kind of thing.
So I was just looking at some of the textures in FI, checking how the tags work when I noticed that the generic ground grass (and ground grass yellow) texture tile looked different than in other titles (BN and RT, haven't checked FB). Further investigation shows that the Italian terrain uses a higher perceived resolution of grass tile than the other titles. Grass is one of the worst texture tiles IMHO, it is a complete blurred mess at anything close up, only really resolving into a texture when looking down from quite high up, and it looks really poor next to a nice sharp AFV for example. This may not be an issue for many folks, but I like to play down in the long grass so I find it irksome seeing the ground texture. The reason that grass tiles look so blaah is because each tile is stretch across 50 x 50 m2 that's 2500m2 - to represent the texture correctly would require a tile of 20480 x 20480 pixels - the existing stock tiles are 2048 x 2048 pixels.
Many modders have tried to improve the grass texture over the years but really there's not a lot of point as they all just end up looking either nasty at low level or weirdly out of scale from up above, this is not a reflection on the modders but rather how the game handles the texture. However, it seems that the game engine is not so equal as I thought, and that with a little tweak from on high we could have a higher resolution. I don't notice any particular hit on my GPU/frame rate with the alternative tiles used in FI so I wonder why this hasn't been implemented across the other titles? It's not like we would need to redraw maps, or anything like that, as it's an engine based change affecting how much each tile is stretched or repeated within a specific area of terrain. Plenty of the other tiles occupy much less relative space, that is, they are stretched less and repeated more often. Here's some images from RT and FI for you consideration. The ground grass tiles have been replaced with a different texture that I was considering for a sodden ground grass texture, the doodads are the same in both games (from my Hedgerow Hell mod 😉)
First RT from ground level, as close as possible ...

Nice grass shame about the boat race ...
Now FI, same distance:

That's better - notice how the blurring doesn't jar so much, it all just melds together better IMHO.
Now at camera Level 1 ... first RT ...

It's all kind of floaty ... Now FI ...

Again, IMHO the grass doodads seem more attached to the ground.
This is a matter of taste for sure. There are plenty who will not care, but for those that do, self included, it would be nice if all the games were created equal in this respect.
 

And in case your curiosity was peaked by my mention of mud - this is somewhere in Northern Italy winter '44 ...

.. mud, glorious mud! All other textures stock ... ish!

Messing about with trying to create a generic muddy looking landscape for all the WW2 games - I started in RT. Replacing a few textures at a time to try and figure out the mod tags (that's another story 🙄). Anyway I've gotten to a point where I think I can make it work across ALL the WW2 titles for ALL locations and ALL seasons/weather (excepting snow for obvious reasons - though slush might have to be thunk about separately), using one generic set of ground textures to look really muddy - think Spring Awakening in RT, Hürtgen in FB, Anzio bridgeheads in FI ... you know the kind of thing.
So I was just looking at some of the textures in FI, checking how the tags work when I noticed that the generic ground grass (and ground grass yellow) texture tile looked different than in other titles (BN and RT, haven't checked FB). Further investigation shows that the Italian terrain uses a higher perceived resolution of grass tile than the other titles. Grass is one of the worst texture tiles IMHO, it is a complete blurred mess at anything close up, only really resolving into a texture when looking down from quite high up, and it looks really poor next to a nice sharp AFV for example. This may not be an issue for many folks, but I like to play down in the long grass so I find it irksome seeing the ground texture. The reason that grass tiles look so blaah is because each tile is stretch across 50 x 50 m2 that's 2500m2 - to represent the texture correctly would require a tile of 20480 x 20480 pixels - the existing stock tiles are 2048 x 2048 pixels.
Many modders have tried to improve the grass texture over the years but really there's not a lot of point as they all just end up looking either nasty at low level or weirdly out of scale from up above, this is not a reflection on the modders but rather how the game handles the texture. However, it seems that the game engine is not so equal as I thought, and that with a little tweak from on high we could have a higher resolution. I don't notice any particular hit on my GPU/frame rate with the alternative tiles used in FI so I wonder why this hasn't been implemented across the other titles? It's not like we would need to redraw maps, or anything like that, as it's an engine based change affecting how much each tile is stretched or repeated within a specific area of terrain. Plenty of the other tiles occupy much less relative space, that is, they are stretched less and repeated more often. Here's some images from RT and FI for you consideration. The ground grass tiles have been replaced with a different texture that I was considering for a sodden ground grass texture, the doodads are the same in both games (from my Hedgerow Hell mod 😉)
First RT from ground level, as close as possible ...

Nice grass shame about the boat race ...
Now FI, same distance:

That's better - notice how the blurring doesn't jar so much, it all just melds together better IMHO.
Now at camera Level 1 ... first RT ...

It's all kind of floaty ... Now FI ...

Again, IMHO the grass doodads seem more attached to the ground.
This is a matter of taste for sure. There are plenty who will not care, but for those that do, self included, it would be nice if all the games were created equal in this respect.
 

And in case your curiosity was peaked by my mention of mud - this is somewhere in Northern Italy winter '44 ...

.. mud, glorious mud! All other textures stock ... ish!

LOL, CM health warning: Not tested on animals, just retirees

Somebody has to be first! Well done for taking the plunge.
Off the top of my head, so excuse complete ignorance here, is the slow start perhaps related to iCloud? Do you use iCloud? Maybe disable it temporarily if it's enabled.
I doubt I'll go there yet as my Mac has to stay pretty stable for work as well as play, but will watch your findings with interest.

Yep, well and truly bogged (well immobilised by me actually for artistic effect).
Not sure how much permafrost is simulated by freezing, might need to be extremely cold for iron-like ground conditions. It might also depend on ground conditions as well - freezing with snow, freezing and dry, freezing and muddy could, nay should all be different.

And in case your curiosity was peaked by my mention of mud - this is somewhere in Northern Italy winter '44 ...

.. mud, glorious mud! All other textures stock ... ish!

Messing about with trying to create a generic muddy looking landscape for all the WW2 games - I started in RT. Replacing a few textures at a time to try and figure out the mod tags (that's another story 🙄). Anyway I've gotten to a point where I think I can make it work across ALL the WW2 titles for ALL locations and ALL seasons/weather (excepting snow for obvious reasons - though slush might have to be thunk about separately), using one generic set of ground textures to look really muddy - think Spring Awakening in RT, Hürtgen in FB, Anzio bridgeheads in FI ... you know the kind of thing.
So I was just looking at some of the textures in FI, checking how the tags work when I noticed that the generic ground grass (and ground grass yellow) texture tile looked different than in other titles (BN and RT, haven't checked FB). Further investigation shows that the Italian terrain uses a higher perceived resolution of grass tile than the other titles. Grass is one of the worst texture tiles IMHO, it is a complete blurred mess at anything close up, only really resolving into a texture when looking down from quite high up, and it looks really poor next to a nice sharp AFV for example. This may not be an issue for many folks, but I like to play down in the long grass so I find it irksome seeing the ground texture. The reason that grass tiles look so blaah is because each tile is stretch across 50 x 50 m2 that's 2500m2 - to represent the texture correctly would require a tile of 20480 x 20480 pixels - the existing stock tiles are 2048 x 2048 pixels.
Many modders have tried to improve the grass texture over the years but really there's not a lot of point as they all just end up looking either nasty at low level or weirdly out of scale from up above, this is not a reflection on the modders but rather how the game handles the texture. However, it seems that the game engine is not so equal as I thought, and that with a little tweak from on high we could have a higher resolution. I don't notice any particular hit on my GPU/frame rate with the alternative tiles used in FI so I wonder why this hasn't been implemented across the other titles? It's not like we would need to redraw maps, or anything like that, as it's an engine based change affecting how much each tile is stretched or repeated within a specific area of terrain. Plenty of the other tiles occupy much less relative space, that is, they are stretched less and repeated more often. Here's some images from RT and FI for you consideration. The ground grass tiles have been replaced with a different texture that I was considering for a sodden ground grass texture, the doodads are the same in both games (from my Hedgerow Hell mod 😉)
First RT from ground level, as close as possible ...

Nice grass shame about the boat race ...
Now FI, same distance:

That's better - notice how the blurring doesn't jar so much, it all just melds together better IMHO.
Now at camera Level 1 ... first RT ...

It's all kind of floaty ... Now FI ...

Again, IMHO the grass doodads seem more attached to the ground.
This is a matter of taste for sure. There are plenty who will not care, but for those that do, self included, it would be nice if all the games were created equal in this respect.