Make IL-2 look stunning with improved ground detail and visibility! How-to

[Pand]

Original Thread posted on the IL-2 Forums by BlackHellHound1: http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/23699-make-il-2-look-stunning-improved-ground-detail-and-visibilit/



UPDATE: I have added the section "New test results"
I will keep updating the info as we learn more. I will post the last date this has been updated here on the top.
Last date updated: 5-7-2016

Hello there fellow pilots,

In 2014 =LD= Penshoon found a solution to the blurry ground textures. A lof of effort from the community resulted in some amazing visual improvements. This amazing fix was then patched out by the devs. Coconut found the new file responsible for the ground textures and with it came back the great ground textures.

The original post ended up being cluttered and eventually disappeared to the background.
To reinvigorate this fix I thought it would be a good idea to repost instructions, how it works and a summarised version of the test results in an orderly fashion to allow new and experienced pilots to improve their game once again!

Before we get started I would like to make something very clear: All the information in this post is found by several community members including myself. I will make sure each and every person who contributed is credited correctly!

I have split this post into a few sections to keep this post organised.
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Let me explain what I am talking about:

What exactly is the problem?
In Il-2 the ground textures are divided into square tiles. If a tile is close it will have a certain high quality resolution. If a tile is far away it will have a low quality resolution. The division between these high quality tiles and blurry low quality tiles is clearly visible. Especially at higher altitudes.
When zooming in these tiles will sometimes change quality so that you can see more detail when zoomed in. This too creates an undesired effect since the transition between low and high detail is clearly visible.
There is no smooth transition between high and low detail. This means that the quality of a tile will change in an instance.
The devs have added an option to improve this detail but even at its highest setting it is still  terribly bad.
Here is a video made by =LD= Penshoon that clearly demonstrates the problem.

What does the fix do?
This improves the quality of all tiles to a higher standard so that higher detail can be seen from further away. The clear dividing lines between low and high detail also disappear completely.
At the same time it removes the annoying transition between low and high detail when zooming in. However, the biggest improvement is the improved visibility and detail of airfields, towns, rivers, lakes and forests at medium and long distances.

What are the advantages?
The most noticeable advantage is that your game looks a lot better and feels more realistic. No more blurry background and sudden transitions between high and low quality. Instead you see a realistic detailed world with forests, towns, roads, rivers and much more. The higher you get the more noticeable it is.
Secondly, navigating is made a lot easier! Airfields, rivers, lakes, forests and towns are accurately visible from massive distances allowing you to find your way back even at high altitude without the use of GPS.
Finding ground target also becomes more easy since reference objects like towns, river and forests are not only visible but also identifiable from longer distances.

Note: This does not increase your view range or tree render range! It only improves ground texture resolution!

Here is an example of what improvement to expect:



I put some more images under this spoiler:


Some images made by =LD= Penshoon:
Change this:


Into this or better!


Example of what zoom can do (exaggerated example!)



Remember that these screenshots are not a clear representation of what you see in-game. A much bigger difference will be noticed when flying!
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Let's get this working on your PC.

Disclaimer: I can not say what effect this will have on your PC. Some have reported small FPS drops while others experienced small FPS increases. Make sure you do some testing before you stick with a certain setting!
You can always remove these settings and go back to the default settings!

How to improve your graphics:

Find your IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad / graphics folder. You can find them here:
C:\Program Files\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad\data\graphics\
For steam users:
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad\data\graphics\
Download the [attachment=1]terrain.cfg[/attachment] file.
Paste terrain.cfg file in your graphics folder.
Start IL-2 BoS / BoM.
Go to settings → Graphics and find Distant Landscape Detail.
Set the value to x4 and restart the game.
Fly around in a quick mission at different altitudes to see if your PC can handle the new settings!
Read and test the info given in "Testing!" and "Adjusting the ground terrain". You may need to lower the setting a bit.

If you don't want to download the terrain.cfg file then you can make it yourself. Simply follow these instructions:

Find your IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad / Battle of Moscow graphics folder. You can find them here:
C:\Program Files\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad\data\graphics\
For steam users:
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad\data\graphics\
Make a new text file named "terrain.cfg" (Make sure it becomes a .cfg file!)
Paste the following text in the new "terrain.cfg" document (copy and paste all of it!):

Code Select Expand

PixelSize=50 //meters

LodCount=5


[setup]
texlod=4096,8
texlod=2048,8
texlod=2048,8
texlod=2048,8
texlod=2048,8

[end]

[setup]
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=2048,8
texlod=2048,8
[end]

[setup]
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
[end]

[setup]
texlod=8192,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
[end]


Save the file and start IL-2 BoS / BoM.
Go to settings → Graphics and find Distant Landscape Detail.
Set the value to x4 and restart the game.
Fly around in a quick mission at different altitudes to see if your PC can handle the new settings!
Read and test the info given in "Testing!" and "Adjusting the ground terrain".

Testing!
It is important to do some testing. Every modification to a game will impact your PC in a specific way. The only way to know if your PC can handle the new setting is by flying around at different altitudes. If you notice that your PC is having some issues then you should make the settings a bit less detailed. Keep reading to see how to do that.
If you notice your PC is running just fine then you can leave the settings as they are.

Adjusting the ground terrain.
I have added several different improved values to the file. From low to high. (all will make your game look better)
The above given x4 improvements are the max settings that I advise. Changing these to higher values will give nearly no noticeable improvements in quality while taking up lots of GPU processing power (expect problems like stuttering and FPS drop if you do). If your PC can handle the x4 setting then you should stick with it.
If your PC is having problems then you should try setting it to x3 then to x2 and then to normal. If you are still having issues after this then I advise removing them completely and just use the default settings.

How to remove the settings:
If you notice your PC is unable to deal with any of these settings then you should disable them completely. All you have to do is follow these steps:
Go to your IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad / Battle of Moscow graphics folder.
Delete the "terrain.cfg" file and start the game.
Go to settings → Graphics and find Distant Landscape Detail.
Set the value back to your original setting and restart the game.
Your settings are now back to the default settings that the game uses.
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How does all of this work?

An explanation on how the game determines what resolution to use:
The gameworld is divided into tiles of equal size. The resolution of a single tile is determined by 3 factors:
A predetermined values in your terrain.cfg file.
Distance from you.
How far you are zoomed in.

Terrain.cfg value breakdown.
I will break down the values in the terrain.cfg file first so you know what those numbers mean.
What ultimately determines the resolution is the "texlod=2048,16". So what does this mean? The "2048 and "16" are important here. The 2048 is the Level of Detail of the ground. The second number "16" is an area size. Meaning: 2048 / 16 = 128 pixels per area. (see test results)
Increasing the 2048 to 4096 doubles the pixels per area to 256.
However, if instead the the second number is decreased to 8 we will also double the amount of pixels per area to 256.

The distance from you.
This one is pretty simple to understand. If a tile is close you it will have the quality as determined by the top "texlod=" count. If a tile is far away it is determined by the bottom "texlod=" count.

What happens when you zoom in?
When you zoom in the game thinks you are closer to the tile then you actually are and therefore it will increase the quality by a step. This is very noticeable with the default settings.

How these work together?
First your game has to figure out what the distance is between you and a tile. When the distance falls between a set value then the corresponding "texlod=" resolution is loaded.

What creates the blurry textures and dividing line in the default settings?
In the default settings the values change quickly. I will take the "normal" setting as an example. Tiles nearby correspond to the value texlod=4096,8 which is nice high detail. The 2nd, 3th and 4th value decrease to texlod=2048,8. This is half the detail but still acceptable. These values blur the ground to the point that forests, towns and rivers are blurred. Roads, trees and other small detail will simply disappear. This decrease in texture is clearly noticeable. However, what comes next pretty much breaks the game. It jumps from 2048,8 (256 pixels per area) to  1024,16 (64 pixels per area) that is a massive drop in quality. It is literally 1/4th of the quality. This is not only noticeable but also annoying. The quality is so low that everything is a blur. On top of that the line between these two parts is incredibly noticeable and disturbing.

How to fix this and increase quality?
The most important part is to remove the big decrease in quality. Keeping the values the same or nearly the same will remove the long range blurry tiles.
To increase the overall detail per tile we simply need to increase the pixel per area count of all values.
Now that we know all this let us have a look at some of the test results from the community.


Why are there 4 sets of values?
The game now as a setting called Distant Landscape Detail. This setting has 4 options: Normal, x2, x3 and x4
the game reads the first 5 lines if you have Normal selected. It reads the second set if you have x2 selected and so on. In the file that I provided 4 different settings are found. The easiest way to explain the difference is by dividing them into what quality groups just like the game does. The first values are the "low" setting, the second medium, the third high and the 4th is ultra.
___________________________________________________________________________

Test results:

Many different things have been tested by several community members. The following is a summary of the test results. This means that not all test results and test data can be found here. If you want to read all the test results with all test data then you should go to the original post!
I will organise the following summary by type of test to keep everything orderly.

How does it work?
4 main tests have been done to try and figure out how everything works. I will go through these step by step. I will use the "texlod=2048,16" as a starting example for each test-result.

First we will look at the first number in "texlod=2048,16". This number indicates the amount of detail in a set area. The higher the number the higher the quality.
2048 / 16 = 128 pixels per area
4096 / 16 = 256 pixels per area
Using numbers over 8192 can make your game incredibly slow or even crash your game.

The second number "16" indicates the area size of that set area. This means that the number works in the opposite way of the first number. Increasing the second number creates a larger area to put the same amount of detail in. Therefore a lower Level of Detail. Making the number lower then obviously makes the detail higher.
2048 / 16 = 128 pixels per area
2048 / 32 = 64 pixels per area
2048 / 8 = 256 pixels per area
However, making the second number too low (lower then 8) will introduce problems.

Performance is of course a big issue. Having to trade performance for detail is not always the best option. Luckily these changes don't seem to have a major impact on performance on a medium performance system. Some (including myself) even noticed small FPS increases. This is not for everyone though. Other people reported small FPS drops in certain situations. On some systems it could also be detrimental if the values were set to high. Luckily this can be solved by decreasing the values a bit.

Lastly there were some experiments with more "texlod=" by changing the LodCount=5 to LodCount=10 and adding 5 more texlod= to the list. This changed nothing when it comes to improving ground quality. It did introduce stuttering and FPS drops into the game so it is best to stay away from this.

Value tests:
Various values have been tested to see what effects it has on quality and performance.
I will start with =LD=Penshoon's original settings:

texlod=4096,8
texlod=2048,8
texlod=2048,8
texlod=2048,8
texlod=2048,8

These settings are an improvement on the default settings. The last "texlod=" was 1024,16. It has been replaced by 2048,8. This change removes the blurry tiles at long range. However, the same medium-low quality is kept for the rest of the map. This should work fine for anybody even if your pc is not the best. It does not seem to impact performance so should be good for low end systems. (always test it for your own system) (setting "normal" with my custom terrain.cfg in place)

____

texlod=8192,16
texlod=4096,32
texlod=4096,16
texlod=2048,16
texlod=2048,8

This setting is a bit weird. These values will keep your performance as is but not for the right reasons. I will rewrite it to make it more clear what actually happens (the resulting quality will be the exact same!):

texlod=4096,8
texlod=2048,16
texlod=2048,8
texlod=2048,16
texlod=2048,8

This simplified version shows that the quality differs a lot from one distance to another. I would advice not to use this setting. The result is in fact slightly worse than the first I mentioned. The 2nd and 4th line cause lower quality while the 3rd and 5th line cause medium quality. This makes little sense to me.
____

texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=2048,8
texlod=2048,8

I added these values as a nice intermediate. It has a good balance of medium quality while maintaining performance. It does not really improve that much on the first setting but It is an improvement nonetheless. (setting "x2" with my custom terrain.cfg in place)
____

texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8

These values create a far greater level of detail. Most people speak highly of this setting and seem to have very little to no performance decrease. I ran these settings myself for a while. I could run these settings fine with the following specs: intel i7-600, GTX660, 1080p on balanced settings.
Loadings times did increase slightly but not too much. If you have the game on an SSD this should not be an issue.
One issue that was mentioned multiple times is that the GPU memory usages goes up to about 3 GB. This means that for some GPU's it is wise to either lower the ground detail or decrease the overall graphics to a lower setting (make sure to test it). (setting "x3" with my custom terrain.cfg in place)
____

texlod=8192,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8

These are the values I now use. They are a bit more demanding than the other settings but create a slightly better looking ground when taxiing. However. When flying low the difference between these values and the one with all 4096,8 is not all that noticeable. (setting "x4" with my custom terrain.cfg in place)
____

texlod=8192,8
texlod=8192,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8

The use of more than 1 line with 8192,8 has also been tested. This will impact your performance massively. Stuttering was not uncommon. Best to stay away from this. With all lines set to 8192,8 was a bad idea. This will reduce your FPS to a measly 1 FPS or less!

I encourage you to do some testing of your own. Perhaps you can find some new settings yourself.

New test results:
I will keep updating this post with important findings.

5-7-2016
Apparently the developers have already added the 4th setting into the game its default settings.
Some testing revealed that the game developers have (at some unknown moment in time) added the "Ultra" setting. (It would have been nice from de devs to tell us this)
There is still a small difference between the default x4 and the custom x4 values. The custom settings smooth out the long range textures a bit making them a bit more pleasant to look at.
The image below will show you the difference. The image is zoomed in.


This image is made by coconut

These tests have also revealed that higher settings can create even better visuals. Keep reading to find out what settings can be improved:
I noticed that my GPU VRAM was not using 3.5GB anymore. instead it was running at 2.1GB of VRAM.
This is probably because of the 64 bit update.
This got me to do some more testing with higher values.
I first tried out the game with the following lines:

texlod=8192,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=8192,8

This ran fine at only 2.7GB of VRAM. Still maintaining 60+ fps

I then tried some crazy stuff to see how my GPU and the game would act.
Next up was the all 8k lines

texlod=8192,8
texlod=8192,8
texlod=8192,8
texlod=8192,8
texlod=8192,8

This ran fine at 3.1GB - 3.5GB of VRAM depending on altitude. I did notice at lower altitudes my fps would go down to 50-55 but stayed around here without going down.
Lastly I tried something that I expected to be a bit too crazy:

texlod=8192,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=16384,8

And

texlod=8192,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=4096,8
texlod=8192,8
texlod=16384,8

The 16k line used to crash the game before. Not anymore!
This ran surprisingly smooth. Using only 3.1GB - 3,5GB of VRAM. Although the performance is not too bad, the quality gain is not noticeable when flying. Only on a picture can the difference be noted.
I feel save to say that you can increase the custom settings to contain 2 or 3 lines of 8192,8. That is if your GPU can handle it. (mine is a EVGA GTX 970 SSC 4gb)
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I ask everyone to share this post with your friends and squadrons. It would be amazing if we can reach the majority of the IL-2 BoS / BoM community!
I would highly appreciate it if someone could translate this to Russian and post it on the Russian forum.

Credits:

Original find and post:
=LD=Penshoon

Rediscovery terrain file:
Coconut

Testing of the workings:
=LD=Penshoon
BlackHellHound1
=LD=Hethwill_Khan
71st_Mastiff
Venturi
12.OIAE_Stick-95

Testing of the values:
=LD=Penshoon
BlackHellHound1
=LD=Hethwill_Khan
6./ZG26_5tuka
chris455
=LD=dhyran
TG-55Panthercules
coconut

Let me know if i forgot to add anyone to the credits. Everyone that contributed deserves his/her fair share of the credits!

BlackHellHound1