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Landscape LOD replacement textures for Oblivion
Version 1.1b
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by shaja

Redistribution and/or repackaging of this texture package is expressly permitted, provided that this readme is not removed.
These textures are based on the original Bethesda Softworks files, and copyright remains with them.

History
========

Version 1.1b: June 15, 2006
- Textures generated without mipmaps again.
Including the mipmaps in version 1.1 made the package useless for people running with medium or small texture size settings.

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Version 1.1: June 11, 2006
= Update for Oblivion 1.1
Changes:
+ Textures now have mipmaps included, avoiding a potential stutter problem. Change based on info from jikad @ nvnews.net, via CapNKill.
+ Brightness is increased slightly over version 1.0 level.
+ File timestamps have been postdated to ensure that the replacement textures are loaded instead of textures in the .bsa archive.
* The texture generation process remains the same, there is no major visual difference over the 1.0 textures.

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Version 1.0: April 1, 2006
= Initial Release

What does it do?
===============
Replaces the original 1024x1024 landscape LOD textures with improved 2048x2048 textures.

Makes the far-off terrain look much less blurry.

This version includes only the 12 textures for the 'inner Tamriel' - the part of Cyrodiil you can normally travel across.

Installation
===========
Unzip the .zip file to your "Oblivion\Data" directory, using folder names.

The following files should end up in your "Oblivion\Data\textures\landscapelod\generated" folder:
60.00.00.32.dds
60.00.32.32.dds
60.00.-32.32.dds
60.00.-64.32.dds
60.32.00.32.dds
60.32.32.32.dds
60.32.-32.32.dds
60.-32.00.32.dds
60.-32.32.32.dds
60.-32.-32.32.dds
60.-64.00.32.dds
60.-64.-32.32.dds

Note: This folder does not need to exist prior to installation.

Uninstallation
=============
Delete the 12 dds files from your "Oblivion\Data\textures\landscapelod\generated" folder.

How it was done
===============
* Each original 1024x1024 texture was opened in Photoshop.
* The texture was resized to 2048x2048 using the Bicubic sharper filter.
* Film grain filter was applied, with Grain: 3, Highlight Area: 0, Intensity: 0.
* Brightness was reduced with the Brightness/Contrast tool by -4 to compensate for the brightness added by the film grain.
* Texture was saved using the Nvidia DDS plugin with DXT1 compression, and generated mipmaps.

Bugs & Limitations
=================
Lighting does not affect the normal high-detail close landscape and the LOD terrain in exactly the same way, so the dividing line between them can be very visible at certain times.
Initial game load times are slightly longer.
No detail was added by hand, so it is certainly possible for someone with actual artistic talent to improve the quality even further.
I've tested and found no framerate reduction using the high-res textures on my system, but it is possible that lower-spec systems might see a framerate impact.