First it was Smiley_Nick who posted into Afghanistan Arrives to ArmA topic. He released there a 102km sized Afghanistan terrain textured with one desert texture.
Then it was Solus who posted into SLX Desert Island Example topic. He released the OFP Desert Island there with pretty nice ground texturing and more importantly, a really thorough explanation so far about how the texture system work or how you can create ground textures.
Here is the quote:
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How to get OFP .wrp islands into ArmA:
Apparently only ArmA versions 1.05.5 and greater are able to use the OFP version .wrp islands without crashing so make sure you are running ArmA with the latest beta patch. The islands should be usable right away from OFP, nothing has to be done to them to get them to work in 1.05.5+ but they won't be textured. To get island textures working in ArmA you need to hex edit the .wrp to make the texture paths pointing to .paa files point to .rvmat files. Remember that when hex editing a file you cannot add or delete any letters/numbers/characters so the path to the .paa files in the .wrp has to be the same length as the path to the .rvmat files you are going to use. For example,
"LandText\pi.paa" becomes
"SLX_Isl\1.rvmat" which is the same length, 15 characters.
In WrpTool you can replace the island's textures with other textures that have file name paths that are as long as you are going to need.
The .rvmat files are rapified text files, but ArmA doesn't seem to like reading them as plain text so you will also have to hex edit the .rvmat files to point to the paths of your textures. Since you can't change the lenghts of the paths in the .rvmat files you will have to make your texture and folder names the same length as the .rvmat path lengths.
You can unrapify the .rvmat textures with Kegety's unrap tool to make them more readable so you can see what you are trying to hex edit.
The different textures are:
m_XXX_XXX_lco.paa: These are mask textures, they determine where and which kind of detail textures to show when you get up close. The different colors in the mask texture are for different kinds of detail textures. The type of detail textures that the mask shows is determined elsewhere in the .rvmat.
s_XXX_XXX_lco.paa: These are satelite textures, they determine what the ground looks like from far away.
X_detail_co.paa: These are the detail textures that you see from close up to the ground. They show up on the parts of the mask texture that has the color they are configured for.
Naming of the satelite/mask textures:
The first set of numbers is the vertical row/strip, counting left to right.
The second set of numbers is the horizontal column, counting from top to bottom.
For example, in SaraLite 000_000 for the top left and 000_001 for the one to the south of that. 010_000 would be the top right. 000_010 would be the bottom left, and 010_010 would be the bottom right. 005_005 is the center.
ArmA satelite/mask texture .rvmat files seem to be set up to take up many .wrp texture cells, you will have to experiment yourself to find out exactly how many. Once you find out how many they take up you can texture .wrp cells of that size with different textures for each of those large cells so that you can have multiple satelite maps linked together. For example if they take up 9x9 .wrp cells you can texture those 9x9 .wrp cells with the same texture, then the next 9x9 cells with another texture and hex edit the textures to have different .rvmat files so that you can define a different satelite/mask texture for each one.
You will also have to experiment with .p3ds in .wrps to find out how to place them to fit in ArmA.
Also there's a landGrid setting in the config that should be set to the scale the island grid is at.
Some useful tools to use in making ArmA islands:
WrpTool
PaN-Tool
unRap
Hex editor
cpbo
PboX