Making FS9 Look Great For Free Version 2

[norab]

Here is a screen shot just off Hawaii with all three of the water downloads I mentioned and set at tropical waters and heavy breeze waves. What the picture doen't show is that the surface of the water appears to be in constant motion
Attachment 21372

[vonstroheim]

Anybody ever tried this?
"Full Throttle Simulations Xtra Water by Hector Davila"
Still available in simviation and similar places.
Easy to install, and a huge improvement for FS9 sea and inland water as well.
Now I'm looking for something similar in FSX. But do I need one? The default FSX inland water is way too blue, same with harbours and deep bay area...

[Motormouse]

Thanks Obio! I will look through your assements and give them a try. As far as wordy I don't think you can beat me in that department. LOL!

I am forever looking for some dark inland water textures that mimick the real thing. I've yet to find such textures.


If anyone knows where I can get some day-long sustaining inland water textures I would like to get them into my FS9. A nice very dark brownish mono-color would be nice. Like real tanin water. FSX seems to have it incorporated in that platform. Wish it were made available for FS9.

-----> http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php...cen&DLID=46606


ttfn

Pete

[Daube]

Anybody ever tried this?
"Full Throttle Simulations Xtra Water by Hector Davila"
Still available in simviation and similar places.
Easy to install, and a huge improvement for FS9 sea and inland water as well.
Now I'm looking for something similar in FSX. But do I need one? The default FSX inland water is way too blue, same with harbours and deep bay area...

For FSX, the very first thing to do is to adjust the water reflections with FSWC (freeware). By playing with those parameters, you can get a very nice rendering which compensates the poor quality of the default water textures.

If this is not enough, then you might have to gor for addons like REX. I don't know if there's anything freeware for the FSX water, I never looked into that...

In the screeshots below, you can see what I could get with the default water and FSWC, including an alternative wave animation that can be downloaded from the FSWC website.
On the first, the water of the lakes gets really dark in the evening with bad weather condition, that looks much more realistic than the default blue-ish color:
On the second one, it's more in the early morning, somewhere in the northern seas.

Now for FS9, I remember that my favorite package was called morewatr.zip. I was using it together with another package nammed "inland water textures", that was providing a much more pleasant color to the lakes and rivers. Morewatr was bringing some new and beautiful water textures for the seas and oceans, as well as new waves and water reflections that I liked a lot. I can however remember that there was another package with better waves, I don't know the name, though...

[phantomx1]

Thanks Pete. I just installed these textures and are very impressed with them although they look more of a mud color.

His textures keep the rich color on up into the day which is what I was looking for.

I have tried my hand at creating a, what I thought to be a proper lake texture, but unsure of how to create a texture format that FS9 will use, I simply painted over a default texture. I think that may be why my altered texture turns bluer as the day wears on and may be picking up the color layer underneath the paint I put on it.

Not putting down the "Murky Water", but it does look like the heavy rains had come and washed mud out of the hills down into the rivers and lakes. They look very nice in dawn and dusk. I like the fact that the Murky Waters keep their rich deep color on up into the day.

What do I need to create a fresh texture that FS9 recognizes? Will MS Paint produce one or does it have to be a special paint program? I'd like to try my hand at making one using the color I think looks more of a real life color of lakes and rivers.

[phantomx1]

For FSX, the very first thing to do is to adjust the water reflections with FSWC (freeware). By playing with those parameters, you can get a very nice rendering which compensates the poor quality of the default water textures.

If this is not enough, then you might have to gor for addons like REX. I don't know if there's anything freeware for the FSX water, I never looked into that...

In the screeshots below, you can see what I could get with the default water and FSWC, including an alternative wave animation that can be downloaded from the FSWC website.
On the first, the water of the lakes gets really dark in the evening with bad weather condition, that looks much more realistic than the default blue-ish color:
On the second one, it's more in the early morning, somewhere in the northern seas.

Now for FS9, I remember that my favorite package was called morewatr.zip. I was using it together with another package nammed "inland water textures", that was providing a much more pleasant color to the lakes and rivers. Morewatr was bringing some new and beautiful water textures for the seas and oceans, as well as new waves and water reflections that I liked a lot. I can however remember that there was another package with better waves, I don't know the name, though...

I like the color tones of the water in those two pictures Daube. Are they for FS9 or FSX and/or where to get them?

[Daube]

What you see in my screenshots is FSX.
The waves can be downloaded, as I said, from the FS Water Configurator website.
http://www.strikingsoftware.com/fswc.shtml
http://www.strikingsoftware.com/downloads.shtml#dlfswc

For FS9 I suppose you'll find all the packs on avsim.

Found back some old screenshots from my FS9. Here is how the clear water around Hawai was looking like with the morewatr pack.

At dawn:


During day:

[phantomx1]

That water is excellent Daube. Wish someone could come up with something similar to it for FS9.

[Willy]

I missed the bit about the trees the first time I read this. Downloading them now. Anything to get rid of those Mexican Jumping Redwoods that lay in waiting for me at the end of the runways.

[OBIO]

Nice one Tim ! here's some more textures, I Use Trees V3 which I think are very realistic.

http://sites.google.com/site/aimecreations/ALCreations

I tried the Tree V3 a while back...and they bogged my system down something terrible. Feng's Tree Gen not only improved the look and size of the auto gen trees, that package actually increased frame rates on my system.

OBIO

[Fleet Canuck]

I started a thread a week or so ago about dealing with tall trees at the end of runways, and I asked about making exclude files. I was directed to ADE, Airport Design Editor, which looked to me like a steep learning curve for just getting rid of a few trees.

Tree Gen has greatly reduced the problem of trees at the end of runways near small airports. Much, much easier!

[norab]

another free download I use and have been very happy with is this at Flightsim

FS2004 (ACOF) - FS2004 Scenery FS2004 Koorbygen Lite
[ Download | View ]
Name: koorbygn.zip Size: 2,904,981 Date: 10-12-2005 Downloads: 2,558
FS2004 Koorbygen Lite is a replacement set of autogen buildings in the North America region. It features incredibly realistic building textures taken from real photos, with many subtle details which adds tremendous realism to flying below 500 feet AGL. You've never seen autogen as detailed as this in Flight Simulator before! You can literally see people working in office buildings, see detailed foyers, cafes, pizza shops, hardware stores, hotels and beautifully detailed houses with porches, shutters, garages and bay windows - this is about as real as the autogen engine will get. And then wait until night falls. The most utterly gorgeous night lighting brings your towns and cities to life with softly shaded lighting, halos, shadow and color used to really depict a city at night. Koorbygen Lite makes low and slow flying a joy!

Attachment 21483Attachment 21484Attachment 21485

[Willy]

Another vote for Tree Gen after installing and checking them out in all seasons. It appears that the Mexican Jumping Redwoods have disappeared.

[Flyboy208]

Tim, thanks for starting this thread, some very useful information from everyone!

I have always wondered if there was a way to use the realistic palm trees from the Phuket scenery as replacements for the deault versions. I will experiment a bit and lrt you know.

Cheers! Mike

[Hurricane91]

After installing a number of mesh upgrades, I have rivers that flow up hills and mountains. Is there a way to correct this? Thanks.