Our Blue Marble [OBM] [v2.1]

[gotaa]

Our Blue Marble Texture Modification Thread

OBM is intended to provide high resolution textures for the Earth and stars in SP2.

Download OBM on the Superpower 2 Nexus
https://www.nexusmods.com/superpower2/mods/1

Remember to read the notes below concerning the Large Address Aware patch. This is essential or your game will crash at boot.

Installation :
• 1. Make a backup of the SP2 folder located in "SuperPower 2\MODS\"
  
  
• 2. Paste the SP2 folder that came with this download into your MODS folder located at "\SuperPower 2\MODS"
  
  
• 3. Patch your Joshua.exe located at "steamapps\common\SuperPower 2" (root folder) with the Large Address Aware software. This is mandatory or your game will crash when you boot the game. Scroll down for a link to this software.
  
  
• 4. Start the game and increase the texture setting to "high" at "Game Options>Video". This toggles the OBM textures.
  
  
• 5. Enjoy! Please provide feedback!

Notes about VRAM usage:

Superpower 2 normally uses mostly 256x256/512x512 resolution textures, which won't stress any modern machines with decent GPUs.

OBM utilizes 72+ new high resolution texture maps, all which are 2K in resolution or larger. This will have an effect on VRAM usage on your graphics card.

The default high resolution textures uses upwards to 350MB VRAM on my end. With OBM installed this number increases towards 800+ MB VRAM or more. Please make sure your GPU has enough available VRAM to use OBM.

Large Address Aware Patch:

As OBM overhauls a lot of textures with high resolution counterparts, this is reflected on the games memory usage. After some stability tests I've concluded that a "large address aware tool" is required to be used on the Joshua.exe.

Normally the game will receive a runtime error around 1.6 - 2.0 GB RAM usage. With the large address aware modification on the .exe this number increases to 4GB (on 64-bit systems only).

Use this link to download a easy to use large address aware tool: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/attachments/laa_2_0_4-zip.34392/

Go to the thread dedicated to the tool and read the details, the download is embedded at the bottom of the original post as well: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/

Make a backup of your Joshua.exe file and proceed with patching it with the large address aware tool. Make sure to tick step 2 in the large address aware tool (Large Address Aware Flag.)

Do not use the large address aware tool if you have less than 3 GB RAM.

I recommend monitoring your game's memory usage after this change. If the game is nearing 4GB memory usage, refresh the client or brace for a runtime error.

As the developers haven't recompiled the Joshua.exe to 64-bit this is a necessary step before using OBM or you will get frequent runtime errors due to the game hitting its 2 GB memory cap.

My PC is the following, I get no performance hit with OBM:
GTX 980 4GB VRAM
i5 4670k 3.4GHz
16GB RAM
Game running on SSD

I am very curious to know how weaker machines handle this mod. Please let me know.

Please report any issues you may encounter with the textures. This was made using the JPG version of the Blue Marble Next Generation (July) image, original resolution 86Kx43K. https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=73751

Be aware that I'm an amateur texture artist, if you're experienced at handling DDS files please don't hesitate to provide me with advice.

Join the SP2 Discord; http://steamcommunity.com/app/282400/discussions/0/1496741765128892575/

All credit goes to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Reto Stöckli, for providing the images necessary to create this texture modification.

[p2]

looks really good

[ZDisket]

Nice! However, the low res stars now clash with the high res textures. Hopefully GolemLabs gives us a .glm utility.
I remember that in the client code one could modify where textures are loaded from, if I modify that value maybe a custom stars texture could be forced in.

[gotaa]

Originally posted by ZDisket:

Nice! However, the low res stars now clash with the high res textures. Hopefully GolemLabs gives us a .glm utility.
I remember that in the client code one could modify where textures are loaded from, if I modify that value maybe a custom stars texture could be forced in.

Now that sounds exciting, if that works then a total texture overhaul would be imminent.

[hillbillyrocketman]

Very nice

[gotaa]

More to come.
https://i.imgur.com/n6tYd8T.jpg (work in progress)

4K cloud textures. Considering 8K version. Courtesy of NASA who provided high resolution images from their website.

Credit goes to ZDisket for providing me with insight and the default textures.

Will be available soon, a seperate download will be available of any additional textures added (clouds, etc), for those who already downloaded the Earth textures.

[blake]

Originally posted by Gotagetgoing:

More to come.
https://i.imgur.com/n6tYd8T.jpg (work in progress)

4K cloud textures. Considering 8K version. Courtesy of NASA who provided high resolution images from their website.

Credit goes to ZDisket for providing me with insight and the default textures.

Will be available soon, a seperate download will be available of any additional textures added (clouds, etc), for those who already downloaded the Earth textures.

at some point would it be possible to make the country highlighting HD?

[che]

Good job :)

[gotaa]

Originally posted by horts:

at some point would it be possible to make the country highlighting HD?

You mean the white highlighting that appears when you select a country, right?

I'm not entirely sure how that is rendered, can't find any textures related to it.

[gotaa]

Update.

After some changes, OBM will now use the "high" texture setting in the game. This will require a redownload of the entire mod. Sorry you folks with bandwidth limits, won't happen again.

NOTE: a new download for the updated earth textures will become available with the next release (version 0.2.)

For any tech savvy folks; batch rename the earth textures from "earth_256_01" to "earth_512_01" etc (I recommend the BulkRenameUtility software for this.) Might save you some time (and bandwidth.)

[Individual]

Keep up the good work!
What is the highest resolution the textures could possibly be?

[gotaa]

Originally posted by IceyVVind:

Keep up the good work!
What is the highest resolution the textures could possibly be?

Good question. I'm currently experimenting with an 8K cloud texture and it works just fine. However I had to blur the entire image a tad because the small details simply caused a lot of flickering in-game. Not very pleasant to look at. This flickering got even worse at 16K.

As for the earth textures, 2K is the limit. There simply isn't enough detail on the original maps to warrant any higher resolution versions, it would only render as a blurry mess. Need even larger and more detailed satellite maps from NASA.

[RandomUser]

It would be really cool if you guys found out how they render country borders. In game it looks blurry but on the country info screen it is really sharp. Would be cool to see it as sharp on the globe.

[gotaa]

Originally posted by RandomUser:

It would be really cool if you guys found out how they render country borders. In game it looks blurry but on the country info screen it is really sharp. Would be cool to see it as sharp on the globe.

We haven't come that far yet. We were recently able to export and re-import a model (the skybox) into the game.

[gotaa]

While v0.2 is being worked on. Here's some pictures of OBM during alpha stage (before initial release) :
https://i.imgur.com/TRjWiox.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/EZnlkaV.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/tLK2mMP.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Z97cNmT.jpg

[Paco Jiangxi Dandong]

You both doing kick ass job trying make game more enjoyable with graphics and other stuff thanks you guys are assets to SP2 Community cheers .