A resize of all relevant external textures of the HB F-14B module. Inspired by Japo32's similar pack, I started by redoing a few things I tough deserved improving or adding to his pack and ended up re-doing all of it...
Mainly aimed at myself and my aging GTX 970 with 4Gb VRAM, I think this can benefit others and VR users in particular.
In summary if your FPS struggles around Tomcats in DCS, this might be for you.
Inspired by Japo32's own mod
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3303918/
Why bother when the other was already available?
-It includes the ChromeCat skin in the Liveries Folder.
-It includes more files fr om the Textures folder, 115 total.
-The wing edge metallic surface is no longer jagged. (This in particular prompted me to remake all the texture re-sizing as I wasn't sure if Japo32's resizing had used some less accurate method, or if he was using older HB textures which had that problem on the wings. And even tough nothing else was sticking out for me, I was unsure if there would be other issues later on, so I just went with all of it basically)
My approach was similar to Japo32's, for the most part I reduced textures to 1/2 and saved them in DXT1 with some exceptions:
-Phoenix Pylons were reduced to 1/4 as they originally have a 4K texture for the relative small size of the pylons (they still look great).
-Some textures like the Refueling probe were not touched, or only saved in DXT1 (DXT1 files are generally half the size of a similar resolution BC7).
The refueling probe in particular was left this way because even tough it's relatively small on an external view. It already has a relatively low-res texture when viewed from inside the cockpit.
-Normals were reduced in size but saved as BC7s as I soon found that some surfaces particularly metallic ones(like the exhausts and the whole plane as the ChromeCat) looked very pixelated otherwise.
Personally I think it all looks great still, unless you go to extreme level of zoom on the plane you probably won't tell the difference. Maybe if you play on 4K, I can't tell because I'm still on 1080p.
The ChromeCat screenshot was taken with this pack installed.
Installation:
The CoreMods folder must be placed on your main install root. But I recommend using a mod manager like OvGME or jsGME.
This will be overwritten with DCS updates.
Part 2 is here:
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3307950/
Any question or suggestion, you can reach me on ED Forums, feel free to send me a PM.
