Caucasus Still Beautiful

I took a break from the PG map and flew in the Caucasas some more. I was just struck with how amazing this map still is! ED has created an incredible sim!

Agreed. Caucasus is a superb map. Definitely my favourite of all the maps.

agreed, too!!!

Yeah , still my fave...

It's especially nice in Winter, early morning.

Basically the only map I like to fly for any length of time!

I have gained a further appreciation of the map since picking up the huey in the summer sale . I resisted the dark side for years , but the huey and the Caucasus in VR are amazing !

With its variety of terrain, different seasons, and combined with different times and weather conditions, Caucasus remains fresh and interesting. I was flying last night over a patch that I knew well, but it still felt novel. Definitely the best map; none of the others even come close.

and it is the only map that has seasons!

Its a great map, especially for ground attack aircraft. What I am wondering is if they will ever flesh it out a little more. Like fill in the Turkish border or the Armenian areas with more roads, settlements etc. If we had this map in high detail out to the Caspian sea to the east, it would be a jaw dropper for all the scenario's a person could come up with!!:thumbup:

What I am wondering is if they will ever flesh it out a little more.

Spending development effort on a free map? ED already did, spending a lot in order to make it v2.5 compatible .. I doubt they would want to invest more so soon, it is more likely the development of new Maps, like Syria.

I know they wanted to expand it to the Caspian Sea at one point, I would be happy if when we get Vulcan we can have normal sized trees

Even with the 2.5.6 performance challenges, I was tooling around Caucasus at simulated midday in the summer... It is still beautiful! It is remarkable to me still that this is a free map. :thumbup:

Even with the 2.5.6 performance challenges, I was tooling around Caucasus at sumulated midday in the summer... It is still beautiful! It is remarkable to me still that this is a free map. :thumbup:

It remains my favorite , even to the extent that i have PG and NTTR disabled .

I have no way of knowing what the Caucasus part of the world really looks like since I've never been there... But, flying through the tree-filled valleys is really cool :)

I gotta admit that while some parts of the Caucasus map are a little bland and "cardboardy", some of it really is just gorgeous. The NTTR and Gulf maps really do kind of pale by comparison.

I just wish the Caucasus map looked good in the summer. It's just weird. The autumn and winter seasons are great though!

AD

Please don't watch if you think DCS is beautiful and realistic enough atm :)

Please don't watch if you think DCS is beautiful and realistic enough atm :)

 

ED should improve trees. Too generic at this moment. We need altitude, terrain angle and moisture+wind based tree variations.

Moisture+wind generated by new weather system, and terrain engine knows slopes angles and altitude.

We as well need more different height trees of same species, so not all are at same height.

There is as well such engine texture generators, when in 90's such technology as "multilayer texture mapping" came to RTS games where depending various map properties the textures got blended and revealed automatically.

so example you made nice rock texture, sand texture and grass texture and they got blended by various heights and Slope angles.

As it is well known how predictable it is different flora to grow and live at various places (shade, direct sunlight, next to river, high slopes, soil PH values etc etc).

Nah, the trees look great: striking a good balance between look and performance (2.5.6 performance hit aside :))

I would personali pay for a proper caucasus 3.0 map with modern airfield, infrastructures and satellite rendering terrain.

ED should improve trees. Too generic at this moment. We need altitude, terrain angle and moisture+wind based tree variations.

 

Moisture+wind generated by new weather system, and terrain engine knows slopes angles and altitude.

 

We as well need more different height trees of same species, so not all are at same height.

 

There is as well such engine texture generators, when in 90's such technology as "multilayer texture mapping" came to RTS games where depending various map properties the textures got blended and revealed automatically.

 

so example you made nice rock texture, sand texture and grass texture and they got blended by various heights and Slope angles.

 

As it is well known how predictable it is different flora to grow and live at various places (shade, direct sunlight, next to river, high slopes, soil PH values etc etc).

You want a flora simulator !

Several Texture Mods available including a cool Better Trees!

100% - Caucasus deserves respect.

I recently started experimenting with some of the excellent Texture Mods out for Caucasus. You can search all of them up in the Forums.

All of them give a new refreshed and sometimes much more realistic feel to the map.

Fun to experiment with if you want to kill a couple of hours on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Examples:

Better Trees V2 (Light and Dark)

CGTC - Caucasus Ground Textures Compilation

MUSTANG

STARWAY

Ga-BIKA textures MOD

BARTHEK

I am loving the Caucasus map. It's beautiful, and so much fun to build missions on. Play around with the start times and the weather and you can have one very realistic experience.

I honestly think this map should not be abandoned. I have seen trees mentioned in an above comment, but I have to somewhat disagree - I think the main issue with the map is the flat terrain textures. It appears as if three or four main textures are used throughout, most notably light and dark green grass.

What we need is some sort of photographic texturing, i.e. MSFS2020. Overlay a photo of the region onto the map itself. That, or add more colours to the palette.

3 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

I honestly think this map should not be abandoned. I have seen trees mentioned in an above comment, but I have to somewhat disagree - I think the main issue with the map is the flat terrain textures. It appears as if three or four main textures are used throughout,

 

this map was updated 3 years ago, so it is too soon to be considered "abandoned", and what you say about using 3-4 textures is simply untrue, as this is one of the few maps that have four distinct seasons, each with its own set of textures.

To me Caucasus (in DCS) looks beautiful. If I could ask for anything, though, I'd like those Georgian villages look a bit less generic. I find it very hard to tell between one another, they're all built from the same highly repetitive set of houses/buildings/etc. It becomes particulary acute when you're roaming around in a chopper (my favourite sport in DCS). At some point it starts to feel a bit like "auto-gen" scenery from FS2004. Flying over or near a specific village hardly, if at all, tells me where I am. I rely mostly on the terrain shape - I've got this mountain to the left, S-shaped valley to the right, so I must be more or less here. Something like that.
On the other hand, what would my computer say if there were a 1000 of such house models? Is it only about RAM (I could buy more RAM), or would it require some crazy "fire power" from the PC in general? I don't know.