How to get ArmA 2 Visitor 3 Using 40960 Resolution Satellite Texture guide.

Problem: Visitor 3 crashes when you try to import very large satellite texture and mask, this is some 2gb limit.

Important part here is that your 40960 resolution png image still has to be smaller than 2gb on disk, if its not, visitor 3 crashes on import.

First create your large satellite texture and mask png files in Photoshop.

Reduce the Colors

You must reduce the colors in your satellite texture (not and issue for mask) to make its size smaller. You can use contrast, posterizing and other filters etc method you prefer to get the color count down.

Your goal is the keep details and quality in the image while reducing the colors as much as possible.

Saving using SuperPNG Plug-in

When you have them, you must use SuperPNG Photoshop Plugin as the normal PNG saving makes the image file way too large for our use with all kinds of alpha channels, metadata etc information which is no use for Visitor 3.

When saving use options: smaller file, no alpha, no interlacing, no metadata.

Download SuperPNG plugin from almost direct link without needing to give out your email address etc as in its homepage (stupid).

Important Note! In our own tests we never had to use SuperPNG plugin yet, Photoshop saved the PNG's just fine without it so Visitor 3 would accept them without crashing.

Two Resolutions

Then save them both normally as 40960 resolution, then resize them down to let's say 1024 in size, make sure you save them under a different file name so you can keep them separate. Suggested is to have file names like Satellite_Texture_40960_lco.png and Satellite_Texture_1024_lco.png for example, same for mask of course.

Now in Visitor 3 make sure your buldozer is not running, then import the 40960 resolution satellite texture and 1024 mask.

Save your project PEW file and exit visitor 3.

Create a temporary backup directory within your project dir, perhaps under Source\ and call it lets say Satellite_40960, then go to your Layers directory and move all S_*.png files into this new Satellite_40960 directory.

Now launch Visitor 3 again and import the 1024 resolution satellite texture and 40960 mask.

Save your project PEW file and exit visitor 3.

Now go to your temporary backup directory Satellite_40960 and move all the S_*.png files from there into your Layers directory overwriting the existing small ones.

All Done!

Now that the magic trickery has been done, you can use ConvertWRP to save the PEW into a WRP and our suggested Howto Convert Layers PNG Fast method to actually convert the png into paa files.

Now you are ready to binarize and bring your massive 40960 satellite texture terrain in-game.