How to handle Scenery and Weather in an in-depth review such as this one is just one of the dilemmas we faced over the last month. In essence, this entire review is about the scenery in FS2002. It is just that some of that scenery is static and the other quite dynamic. It was obvious to us that it was not a part that could be handled by a single reviewer. For one thing there is a tremendous amount of research time involved—close to 200 hours between the two reviewers in this part alone. In addition, the content is quite different. For these reasons we made several decisions: The two components making up Scenery would run on the same day. Craig Wyzik, our scenery specialist, would handle the static or more traditional scenery and Chuck Boudreaux, the AVSIM Weather guru, would handle the dynamic scenery (weather). And while perhaps a bit cumbersome, we opted not to integrate the two components, but presented these separately for better clarity. With all that said, lets get on to what may be the biggest advance in FS2002—Scenery, both static and dynamic. Scenery You could make the case that the scenery improvements in FS2002 are the best since vectors gave way to polygons. You would only be partially right, but the new FS2002 scenery engine is impressive nonetheless. The basic scenery engine in FS2002 is very similar to that found in CFS2, with its 16-bit textures and highly contoured terrain. In reality this improved terrain offers something that third party designers had created for FS2000, so it would be disappointing if the terrain wasn't as good as it is. Among the other features that this scenery engine provides is increased visibility to the horizon, and a generally larger textured area in the scenery window. What this means is that you can see objects from greater distances, and you can see higher quality scenery textures covering a greater portion of the ground below you. In FS2000, the detailed textures only covered a smaller radius around your position, creating some peculiar looking views from high altitudes. The look of the ground is much more consistent from high altitudes in FS2002.
You can adjust the scenery detail settings to give you the highest quality all the way out to 150 miles, but you may need to back that setting down if you don't have a very powerful CPU and video card. My P-III 1GHz and GeForce 3 seems to be satisfactory for having all the details sliders maxed out or close to it. Luckily – or unluckily depending on your system – FS2002 puts more of the scenery drawing load on your video card, whereas previous versions put more load on the CPU. Take that into consideration if you are trying to decide whether to upgrade your CPU or video card.
Combining the new levels of detail with some of the more impressive graphical effects like reflections off water and glare from the sun, you end up with a much more visually appealing environment. One of my first complete flights was from London Heathrow to Brussels National. It was an evening flight, and the sunset reflecting off the English Channel looked spectacular. There were many other planes making their way to Belgium, the Netherlands, England, and beyond, and it was nearing darkness as I made my approach to EBBR. The experience was very similar to a EGLL-EBBR flight I had taken about a year ago. Another example that comes to mind is Princess Juliana International Airport in the Netherlands Antilles. From the starting position on the active runway, the beach is close by, and in the shallow areas the water looks as though it is rippling or moving. (The rippling/moving water effect looks much better with the lighter colored tropical oceans/beaches than it does with the normal dark blue water.) There are little waves that lap up on shore, and some large hotels are nearby. Now, granted, the Autogen trees look nothing like palm trees, but that doesn't ruin the illusion that much. Another definite improvement is the way that bodies of water are now lined by a clearly defined shoreline. Often times in FS2000, the boundary between water and land resulted in a jaggedly blur of blue and green, but that seems to be gone for good. All in all, FS2002 has a lot of eye candy, and it takes a while to notice it all.
Along with the higher color textures, there are now different textures for horizontal and vertical surfaces. What this means practically speaking is that the steep slopes of mountains and canyons shouldn't have the same overall look as the flatter surfaces of plains and plateaus. The effectiveness of this design feature is very subjective, so you'll have to fly around some mountainous areas and see what you think. In some places the difference is more noticeable than others. In a test flight around the North Cascades in Washington, there were some steep slopes that were meant to look like they were rockier with less vegetation, but that effect was not present everywhere. As is so often the case, your mileage may vary.
What the higher quality textures and better visibility combine to do is create a better sense of you as the pilot being surrounded by a realistic environment. It's a better sense of immersion, I would say, and it's something that FS2000 never achieved, even with 3rd party add-ons. FS2000 always had a bland, sterile feel to the scenery and environment that never really caught my fancy. To be honest, when making the switch from FS98 to FS2000, I went several months without developing much enthusiasm for the scenery. Over time, I grew to appreciate the obvious improvements, but it wasn't the huge increase in realism that I was expecting. FS2002 is the increase I had been hoping for, despite its bugs that need fixing.
With higher quality textures, things like airports should look significantly better, too. In some respects they do, and in other respects, well, let's hope for a patch soon. Some of the detailed default airports look very nice, especially KLAX and KORD. All of the significant buildings are there in their proper places, and they look very sharp. KSFO also looks good, although not nearly as nice as the box cover screenshots would seem to indicate. Still, for the airports that only have default buildings in generic locations, the default building types aren't very exciting. They appear to be the same buildings from FS2000, but with higher-colored textures. Along with better looking airports, the default urban area textures are much better, especially at night.
Nighttime views of cities in FS2000 seemed to show an orangy-green smear representing a city, but the color and sharpness of the new textures is much more convincing. The city lights look better, and it's easier to see where major highways go. While highways themselves no longer have a specific texture that looks like two lanes of asphalt, they are much easier to follow when flying VFR, even at night. On a nighttime flight from Seattle to Denver, I was treated to a nice view of Billings, MT from 35,000 feet, and I could clearly make out the airport, the major roads and highways, and the boundaries of the city.
There are 22,980 airports in FS2002, and I must admit that I have not checked them all out. Despite that laziness on my part, I have looked at a lot of them, and they are generally very nice. I was especially pleased to see that there are now more starting positions for each airport, including a combination of the different runways, gates, and parking positions. I would be nice to see Microsoft come up with some way to easily include runway and taxiway signs, but I guess that would make the progressive taxi instructions unnecessary, and I like them.
There are a couple particular problems that I have encountered with some regularity, and I'm betting that most folks have seen similar flaws. Firstly, Microsoft once again forgot the ramp/apron polygons at some fairly significant airports. It would be somewhat acceptable to have a slight glitch at a tiny airport like Thudwhomp (06IL), which is fine, but fly in to Kansas City International, and you'll find that the terminals are surrounded by grass. If it has recently rained, you'll want to skip taxiing to the gate. This problem comes and goes, and it has been noted by several folks on the AVSIM forums. It is possible that this is a memory usage problem, and hopefully it will be taken care of in the first Microsoft patch for FS2002.
Secondly, the new more detailed terrain appears to have led to some layering problems at different airports. The problem doesn't present itself every time, but I've seen it three different times. The first time was while doing touch and gos at KLAX. On one of my landings, my TWA 767 sunk through the runway, leaving only the tailfin and nose sticking up out of the concrete. I tried again, and everything was fine. However, the same thing happened to me on a landing at KSTL. Again, I came in for another landing, and everything was fine. Perhaps I just hadn't waited long enough for the concrete to dry.
A further variant of these two problems is a weird receding taxiway texture bug. When you are taxiing around, and using spot view, sometimes the taxiway will flicker immediately in front of or behind your aircraft. Certain combinations of viewing distance and elevation are better than others, but this is another problem I've seen with regularity.
Let's get back to the good things, though. One of the most highly touted features in FS2002 is Autogen, which fills areas with appropriate 3D objects, whether they are houses, buildings, or trees. This feature works much better than I thought it would, and I can't stop myself from trying to determine if there really is a house right where my house is located. One word of warning, though: you will have to adjust the Autogen density in accordance with your computer's horsepower. Autogen does cost you in terms of frame rate, and in reality the differences between having it maxed out and having it at about ½ or 2/3 are pretty subtle. It's hard to accept that you can't just max out every setting and have smooth flying when you install FS2002 for the first time, but this version of the sim is far more generous in terms of performance than its predecessor. On my P-III 1GHz, 512mb SDRAM, GeForce 3 system, I started out with all settings maxed out, and things were smooth, but not fast. I backed the Autogen and terrain detail down a little, and things were noticeably faster.
Another scenery feature that bears discussing is the improved cloud modeling. Previous versions of FS handled clouds pretty poorly, mostly because of the color limitations, but partly due to their scenery engines just being dog slow. You could add some nice cloud packages, like FSClouds, but frame rates were sure to dip accordingly. In FS2002, clouds have a more convincing voluminous look to them. Dark rain clouds look dark and dense, and wispy clouds look nice as well. Most impressively, frame rates don't go into the dumper with it starts to rain. They do dip a little, but rain doesn't automatically force things into slide-show mode. One thing I found a little disappointing is that even when it is supposedly pouring down rain, the air doesn't seem as "filled" with raindrops as it should. The rain really doesn't reduce your visibility in and of itself, it seems more dependent upon the visibility slider itself. It's just a peculiarity, and maybe one that doesn't bother most people.
So, in the end, how much better is FS2002 than its processor(s)? It's clearly an all-around improvement in terms of scenery, but there are a few limitations. There is clearly more detail to see, and a more visually appealing look to everything. Autogen is pretty nifty, but it isn't always convincing. For example, it just doesn't capture the look and feel of high population density areas very well. Think about most European or Asian cities, and how closely packed the buildings are. Autogen does not create that same look and feel at all. The buildings have a generic pan-cultural look, so you're not sure if you're seeing a French chateau or an American split-level home. Even New York City—which in FS2002 has many more buildings placed on Manhattan Island—doesn't come near the density and urban feel of the real thing. Generally, the natural landscape is much more convincing than the man-made landscape.
I've included some side-by-side screenshots for comparison purposes, highlighting places I fly frequently.
Thinking specifically of the part of the country I live in, the Pacific Northwest, FS2002 does a much better job creating the look and feel of the heavily forested mountains of the Cascades and the high desert to the east. Trees fare much better under Autogen than buildings do, so when you're flying out of a remote mountain airfield, you really get a sense of how big and how close the trees are. The more detailed terrain mesh looks great when you are flying over mountains and down through valleys, so I've spent a good deal of my time flying through the Cascades and around the Olympic Peninsula. Mountains that are more rugged look more rugged, and hills that are supposed to be "rolling" hills have a pleasing rounded look. Finally, the Alps look different from the Cascades, and the Ozark hills don't look like tiny mountains.
For folks who fly smaller aircraft in rural areas, FS2002 is a huge improvement. However, if you expect to find your house, you will probably be disappointed. Still, understanding what FS2002 does better than FS2000, you can't help but be impressed with the new scenery engine, and assuming Microsoft gets it properly fixed with an update sometime soon, it will get even better. Plus, once third party scenery designers get to work designing add-ons for FS2002 (or at least tweaking FS2000 scenery add-ons for FS2002 compatibility), things will get very interesting indeed.
Weather While we often tend to look upon "scenery" as airports, cities, mountain ranges and other such physical features, the Flight Simulator series has for quite sometime now also modeled the other – often forgotten – half of scenery; what most of us refer to as weather.
Before we dive into the FS2002 weather itself, let's take a bit of a trip down memory lane. Just a few short years ago, weather was considered blocky white chunks put forth as clouds and a really poor excuse for rain—or at least I think that is what it was. But we were also in the era of 233 MHz processors, 32 MB of RAM and video cards capable of limited 16-bit color. And while we look back on that with disgust today, it was beautiful to those weather nerds who also love flight simulation.
Jumping to modern day flight simming, we have 2 GHz processors, 256+ MB of RAM, and 32-bit 3D video cards with 64 MB of DDR RAM. To put that into context, the top video cards of today, sans a computer, have more processing power than NASA had when it put a man on the Moon. And weather modeling has come along quite a bit thanks to the work of simulation platform designers and third-party add-on developers using this new graphics power to its limits and often beyond.
But you already know all that—I know you do. I just wanted to show you how far we have come in a few short years. I think it will help give you some perspective as we look at the weather capabilities of FS2002 as it comes out of the box and hints at the potential for future expansion.
Test
System Flying Time: To get the best look at what FS2002 offers in the weather arena, I opted for a two-pronged approach. First, I chose two airports in the United States experiencing adverse weather conditions and flew into the heart of the weather. One instance looks at a line of heavy thunderstorms; the second snow showers behind a cold blast in the Rockies and Mid-West. In this first run, I used the Real World Scenery option with the download of upper-level winds.
Second, I used the weather design functions of the simulator to create my own version of the same kind of weather for comparison. The locations chosen ended up being Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the winter features and a mix of Dallas, Texas, and Fort Smith, Arkansas, for the severe weather.
Before we jump into the results of the testing, we need to take a quick look at the menu items related to weather setup and configuration. When you are ready to take care of the weather, just head to the 'World' heading on the main menu bar and click to activate the drop-down menu. On that list, you will see a label for 'Weather'. Click on it and you are brought to the main weather page:
But what if you wish to go further and set up a complex weather scenario? Then you would click on the "Advanced Weather" button. This opens up a window with several tabs. Here you can set Winds, Clouds, Temperature/Barometric Pressure and Visibility. Spend enough time in these windows and you can set-up just about any weather scenario possible.
The Clouds window allows you to set up multiple cloud layers, specifying the type of cloud, cloud base, cloud top and variation. The last option will give the base of the cloud layer a much more natural look than just a straight line of clouds. This is also where you setup Turbulence, Icing and Precipitation. The Winds window allows you to setup multiple winds levels. Just like clouds, you can set the top and bottom of a layer. But in this case you also can set the wind speed, gusts level and wind direction and wind shear.
The Temperature/Barometric Pressure window lets you set—well, the temperature and barometric pressure. But again, you can set these features to various flight levels. This allows for the more accurate modeling of icing, snow and rain. Finally, there is the Visibility window, which allows you to set a layer of reduced visibility. This would allow you to set a fog layer, or even more simply reduce the 100-mile visibility to more realistic values. I know there are those of you in the US southwest who might get 100 mile visibility often and there are a few other such locations. But the norm is going to be more like a max of 20-30 miles. You will also be amazed what this does to increase performance. Well that covers the weather setup screens
Okay, enough with the mechanics of weather. Let's get to the heart of the issue, how well is weather modeled in FS2002? In essence, the weather modeling in FS2002 marks a major leap forward from its predecessor. While there will certainly be specialized third-party packages out there that bring everything together in even better fashion, this is the best overall weather package yet to hit the shelves as the default weather of a simulator platform. Now it is not perfect, but it is a truly enjoyable experience.
Let's look at the first thing that comes to most simmers minds when weather is mentioned—the modeling and aesthetics of clouds. FS2002 provides a full range of clouds that rival those of specialized third-party efforts. You will find everything from socked-in fog with no visibility to wispy cirrus clouds. The use of cloud height variation does wonders for creating a real looking environment and flying toward and through a scattered cloud layer is quite enjoyable. One very big change is in the use of multi-shaded clouds. This goes so far that it even simulates the rain curtains we often see in real life in a very realistic way.
As for the stuff that falls from those clouds, both rain and snow have been modeled better in FS2002 than in FS2000. Raindrops hitting the windshield often take on a slight teardrop shape and then bleed across the windshield. Snowflakes appear to behave a bit more realistic than before and they are especially enjoyable sitting on the tarmac as you run through your pre-flight checklists.
While the raindrops are an improvement, they also are involved with one of the few true bugs I found in the weather. Most of the time when you fly into an area of heavy rainfall, the rain just does not want to stop as long as there are clouds around. I found this happened more often when using the real-world weather option and thought it might just be a lack of a new METAR to change the weather. But it also does pop up in created weather as well, so it is likely a bug. There are already some workarounds out there and I am sure there will be an add-on fix in the future. The rain modeling is just too good so you can ignore for this minor bug.
Let's take a quick look now at some of the specifics related to the two different weather situations I tried to gather data. First up was a look at a line of heavy thunderstorms with high winds and tornadic activity stretching from the Dallas area up through Fort Smith and into the Mid-West. I used the real world weather option, with upper level winds, as provided by the default connection to the Jeppesen database.
Despite running a high-speed cable modem, I often got METARs that were over two hours old. Now that was definitely the worst case and isolated. Most of the time the weather was anywhere from 30 minutes to well over an hour old. While this is about on norm with FS2000, it definitely lags behind what is possible today. On the positive side, the conditions, both at the surface and aloft, were either right on or very close to those recorded at the given time.
Our second look at weather starts at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the midst of a nice winter snowstorm. While it was possible to crank the conditions up to blizzard like with whiteouts, I opted to go with a more moderate snow event to show more of the winter weather features. The rain bug does not appear to effect the snow, which hopefully means it is a simple glitch and not a major problem. Overall, I think the images speak for themselves in this case.
So with a few exceptions noted, the weather modeling in FS2002 stands up to the comparison test with its predecessors. Just as important as what you get out of the box is the potential this platform holds for third-party add-ons. Yet don't expect to see the major leaps of the past several years. Flight Simulator is now close to providing as close to real-time, real-world weather conditions as possible. But just as with real-world weather, the limiting factor is data. There is often 50 to 100 miles between reporting stations and some of those only provide a limited data set. So weather programs have to interpolate the weather in between based on the weather at the closest stations. Even using massive supercomputers, weather forecasters still often miss phenomenon in those areas between data sites. So even the hottest PC is still going to come up far short. But don't let that get you down; if you love weather and flying, FS2002 should give you hundreds or thousands of hours of enjoyment.
You'll see many more examples of FS2002's scenery and weather effects as you look through the numerous screenshots in other sections of this review. Especially don't miss Steve 'Bear' Cartwright's "photo essays" in his lavish treatment of bush flying in the Pacific Northwest, along the Amazon river in South America, and the Nile in North Africa—you'll find these in the forthcoming Part 6.
Up Next
In Part Four AVSIM turbine aircraft specialist Ed Rutledge takes a look at the "Big Iron," the turbine powered aircraft included in FS2002. Ed looks at the new visual features that all of the turbine aircraft share, reviews the updates to the carryover aircraft from the Lear-45 on up, and then gives us a special visual tour of the new Boeing 747-400.
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