Making FS9 Look Great For Free Version 2

***norab*** · November 3rd, 2011, 12:26

something I lke the looks off

http://www.fs2000.org/index.php/down...-more-waves-ii

Attachment 51178

Also like the changes to the night skys with this

MyFsStars increases the number of stars shown at night in Flight Simulator 2004 and also gives a more realistic view with adjusted brightness values. Optionally and "just for fun", constellation lines can be drawn as well.

Attachment 51179

found about half way down here

http://www.elbiah.de/flusi/

***OBIO*** · November 7th, 2011, 22:16

Here's one that I have to add to this thread:

realterr.zip by Sascha Peiger over at Flightsim.com. Total replacement for those butt ugly stock airport grass surrounds. This package is well worth the download time...which is not long at all.

OBIO

***OBIO*** · December 3rd, 2011, 16:14

Just found another free enhancement that is worth adding to our installs. It is a revamped set of VC Rain textures by Joe Binka. Found them on Flightsim.com. Really makes the VC rain effect more visible and more realistic. The rain drops are the same size, just more visible.

vcrain.zip is the name of the package.

OBIO

***OBIO*** · December 4th, 2011, 22:45

A couple posts up, norab recommends a package called MyFSStars. It is well worth downloading and installing....and it's a very easy install. Just one file to copy into your installs. And the results are amazing. The night sky has never looked better. I just completed a flight from Columbus, Indiana to Mansfield, Ohio in the freeware CLS Piper PA-28 and really enjoyed looking out at the star filled sky. Not sure how much you can see in these screen shots......I know that they did not show all the stars that were visible on my monitor.

Attachment 53711

And in the post above I mentioned the tweaked VC rain effects package by Joe Binka. It rocks!

Attachment 53712

Was a great flight...one of my first longish night flights (nearly 1 hour and 45 minutes). And I actually pulled off a successful landing and taxi to parking at KMFD (Mansfield Lahm Regional...my home airport).

OBIO

**rwatson** · April 9th, 2012, 11:47

I've found this post but can't see a link to the article..I had it before and it worked great could someone post a link to this article Thank You

***norab*** · April 9th, 2012, 14:23

here you go, all credit goes to OBIO

Making FS9 Look Great for FREE V2.txt

**rwatson** · April 9th, 2012, 15:01

Norab
Thank you for the help and to obio for a great read

**caffeinegum** · April 30th, 2012, 16:14

Great document.

Late starter here, only just picked up fs9, but it seems like the right choice for my low end laptop! The addons described here are a great starting point for someone late to the game like myself, the shear volume of files available after all of these years is pretty overwhelming, which is not a bad thing

Thanks for the good work!

***Tom Clayton*** · May 1st, 2012, 05:25

Since you're new to FS9, I'm guessing you might not have the 9.1 update. It was released by MS to correct a number of issues involving both performance and missing scenery. Run this installer as soon as you can before you go adding too much to your sim:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl...s.aspx?id=9727

**caffeinegum** · May 3rd, 2012, 15:32

Originally Posted by Tom Clayton

Since you're new to FS9, I'm guessing you might not have the 9.1 update. It was released by MS to correct a number of issues involving both performance and missing scenery. Run this installer as soon as you can before you go adding too much to your sim:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl...s.aspx?id=9727

Great, thanks Tom, I've gone and done that. Still haven't added things, doing my reading before I go and get confused.

Just a quick questions however. I understand scenery can be added from an outside location (ie. I have a separate partition I'd like to keep all of that stuff on, however with addons such as mesh, clouds and sun etc, it seems I have no choice but to overwrite the stock files. Would this be a correct statement?

I've already made a backup of the stock installation folder in case I mess things up, but seens as I'm new to the game I can see myself experimenting with various textures and addons and was wondering if there is a simpler more non destructive way of say, using 3rd party mesh replacements. Maybe I'm over thinking.

***Tom Clayton*** · May 3rd, 2012, 21:14

Anything like sun, clouds, or trees require overwriting stock files in the main Texture folder. Having a backup of that is a smart idea.

As for putting addon scenery packages on a sep. partition, that will work as long as you point the scenery library to the right folder, just like using the Addon Scenery folder. You can even use an external drive as long as you make sure it's plugged in and running prior to starting FS. If you start up FS and there's scenery missing, it will throw up an error. (Which is why you also never just delete an addon scenery package without first removing it from the library.)

***norab*** · May 4th, 2012, 03:34

, if you have the space on your drive, you may want to consider multiple installs, IE leave one stock, one set up as WWII, one as Golden Wings, and one just as an experimental test bed to see if you like a particular add on. Several of our members have set ups like that HTH

**caffeinegum** · May 4th, 2012, 12:45

Great, thanks for clearing this up for me gents. So basically, to create these separate installs I can just duplicate the installation folder and rename accordingly?

I'll give installing some mesh a go this evening!

Cheers