Making FS9 Look Great For Free Version 2

[phantomx1]

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.

I tried my own hand at making a dark texture which is basicly one texture that has been renamed to replace all of the 001b2wa1 through 060b2wa1 textures with. The color of the single texture is right looking at the texture itself but it does not look the same after installing the repititioned texture files. It looks it's best in dawn and dusk time of day but as the daylight advances it begins showing up at progressively lighter shades of sky blue as the daylight progresses.

Thanks for putting together and sharing your collected choice files Obio.

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.

[aeromed202]

I tried to get that water package to work a year ago. Looks like I'll have another run at it. My preference is for water without that pulse effect and with as small a wavelet as possible. I think I have Vilk's Water, vater.zip, with an ocean height field, newwave.zip, by Bill Lyons that looks superb. It has the most invisible patterning of anything I have tried so looks great from any height or angle.


BTW Obio-- Another little improvement goes by the file name glacier.zip. It greatly softens and whitens those charcoal color splotches for all snow surfaces. That plus choosing the right detail1 file makes all the difference in snow but will make non-snow textures a bit blander.

[norab]

My apologies to all, had it on my system so long I forgot about it. This is a frontend for the water texture packages that let it work properly and effects be switched in FS2004, at Flightsim, please be sure to read the directions

FS2002 - FS2002 Misc. FS2002/FS2004 OceanFX v2.00
[ Download | View ]
Name: ofx20sa.zip Size: 948,236 Date: 08-10-2003 Downloads: 5,351
FS2002/FS2004 OceanFX v2.00 - Front-end for Ed Truthan's oceans effects and textures. Enables the user to select the desired waves and textures through the use of a Windows application. Compatible with both FS2002 and FS2004. Stand-alone version: requires OCEANSFX.ZIP and OCEANSTX.ZIP. Freeware by Johan de Vries. (Previous version had 5040 downloads.)

[SOLOBO]

Thank's well norab !!! HHAAA ! This thread is very interesting...!

[full]

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

[Daube]

Those photorealistic trees look very good indeed, they are a quite famous addon for FS9.
But in my opinion, nothing comes close to the visual impact of TreeGen. TreeGen will change your perception of distance in the sim, that doesn't happen with any other texture addon.

[teson1]

Hi Obio,
thanks for the guide. Interesting collection, and an easy to follow guide for improving optics of the sim.

Question: Would you have some screenshots that display how your sim looks like?

I believe there is no question as to the benefits of detailed mesh.
However, I am asking myself whether I could benefit from some of the free texture add-ons.

Ideally shots focussing on one feature at a time, e.g. showing a region with cliffs, then different woods, grass, ec
Mega-ideally comparing with default FS9, but that's probably too much to ask for...

Alternatively (or in addition) you could also link to some of your previous representative shots in the forum to get an idea how your sim looks like. (did a search, but didn't come up with too many).

My issue/reason for asking:
I have a sim pretty beefed up with payware (that I found some of these in a bargain bin when starting with fs was a happy coincidence, but I disgress ).

Texture add-ons:
Ground Environment (non-Pro) - Ground
REX 2004 - Clouds, sky, airport, water
(+ Treegen)

(+ non-texture add-ons:
FSGlobal 2005 mesh + more detailed local freeware meshes; UT Europe, USA, Canada; Myworld 2005 landclass +several local freeware landclass; AS6.5)

I wonder whether I would benefit from any of the additional files, thus the reason for asking for some shots.

Thanks! And good work!

Gunter

[OBIO]

I can't give you any screen shots of stock FS9....don't have a stock install. But I can take screen shots showing various aspects covered in the guide, such as the cliffs, clouds, runways and taxiways, grass air strips, and the like. Give me a while to get the necessary screen shots set up and taken....luckily I have nothing to do today but laundry and the machines do 99% of the work involved in that.

OBIO

[Terry]

OBIO,

Question about the freeware mesh you listed. I bought FSGenesis World Wide a couple years ago and it puts most of the airports on plateaus. Does this happen with the freeware mesh?

[teson1]

I can't give you any screen shots of stock FS9....don't have a stock install. But I can take screen shots showing various aspects covered in the guide, such as the cliffs, clouds, runways and taxiways, grass air strips, and the like. Give me a while to get the necessary screen shots set up and taken....luckily I have nothing to do today but laundry and the machines do 99% of the work involved in that.

OBIO

Vivat Oblio!

Thanks for taking up the task.
Waiting for the shots.
And I bet flying will be much more interesting than looking at the laundry machine...

Gunter

> I can't give you any screen shots of stock FS9....don't have a stock install.
Thought so, and as I have a beefed up sim already would just have been for general interest.

[Trans_23]

OBIO,

Question about the freeware mesh you listed. I bought FSGenesis World Wide a couple years ago and it puts most of the airports on plateaus. Does this happen with the freeware mesh?

I have FS Global 2008 and it will do the same thing. It will also put some airports in holes or valleys. I think what the meshes do is correct the default FS landscape elevations but don't move airport elevations. In FS9 there is an anomaly in that puts the airport Korce Northwest (LAKO) in a big hole. It is a favorite destination for our online sessions over at Transload. With FS Global activated for that region the hole is twice as deep as default. I still made it in and out OK with a Saab 340. Fun stuff.

[Meshman]

OBIO,

Question about the freeware mesh you listed. I bought FSGenesis World Wide a couple years ago and it puts most of the airports on plateaus. Does this happen with the freeware mesh?

I'm not OBIO, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn a few years back...

Short answer = most every add on mesh will expose the bad terrain data surrounding default airports.

Long answer = when MS makes their mesh they eliminate the mesh surrounding the airports and fill the buffer area with artificial data to smooth the area. This artificial data extends about 1km out from the airport flatten. Adding more accurate data up to the airport flatten exposes the plateaus, sink holes, etc. So unless steps are taken to adjust things, adding mesh creates problems.

It's been guesstimated that 75% of the airports in FSX or FS9 have problems, either in location or elevation. I'm trying to formulate a programmatic solution to this, but I aint that smart about it yet...

[Terry]

I'm not OBIO, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn a few years back...

...

Love it, good one!

I think they are correcting the problem on the new releases but I can't afford to buy it twice.

[Cees Donker]

Such inspiring people here: Tom with the gem-thread and Obio doing this kinda stuff. I love it! Rami is another one I deeply respect. That guy has done a lot for cfs2. As has Obio.....




Cees

[wombat666]

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.

I tried my own hand at making a dark texture which is basicly one texture that has been renamed to replace all of the 001b2wa1 through 060b2wa1 textures with. The color of the single texture is right looking at the texture itself but it does not look the same after installing the repititioned texture files. It looks it's best in dawn and dusk time of day but as the daylight advances it begins showing up at progressively lighter shades of sky blue as the daylight progresses.

Thanks for putting together and sharing your collected choice files Obio.

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.

I am highly impressed with the water textures that are included in the FS9 VOZ scenery package, big download for water textures I know but the murky inland water merging into the bays and oceans are (to my eye) right on the mark.