I am basing my environmental research generally within America and Canada's national parks, the vast scrolling landscapes will really help the game feel like it is a more expansive than it actually is. There is also a beautiful range of colours going through a lot of these images I have stitched together: deep ocean blues mixed with the rich greens of the trees and plantlife, the autumn leaves which compliment the small forest flowers.
The above selection of images shows the dominant surrounding landscapes, but also the variety of different mountains there are. Theres smooth flowing mountains but in other areas there are almost sheer cliff faces of solid rock, I want to intergrate this in to my world to help the player navigate the large map.
You can also see how the floor is generally lighter than the above plants/trees which will be useful for when I'm trying to develop the games colour pallette, and then applying these to each asset.
The tree line of the trees gives real character to these photos, outlining the landscapes contours with a variety of tone and height. It will be important to replicate a similar concept for the backdrops, but perhaps simplify the shapes and see how it affects performance at varying distances and quantity.
The stream plays an important part within the game, supplying the village with its moat of water and also giving the player the opportunity to fish. The above image helps me understand how I will go about merging different land sections to the stream and giving it a more natural look (with shelves and irregular widths).
It also displays how the plantation around it changes, how the water rich soil affects the growth of the plants, the colours, the angle at which it grows and what types of plants really flourish in this area. I will refer to this later on in the project when I begin looking at the environmental rules which make up the landscape (to make the world believable and consistent).
The above flowers have re-assured me I can my flowers as little explosions of saturated colour within the world to really bring out certain areas, to make them subconsciously more attractive to the player to move towards. (Such as mining spots, oak trees, good fishing spots etc.)
These mushrooms have shown me what a great variety of different species you can have living within a single forest, it inspires me to make variants of each model I do either by material or actual mesh modification. The small details will really make the world come alive.