Hi!I wonder if there is something wrong with my FS9.When I fly around Chicago I see funny square depth differenciesin Lake Michigan; black, much darker squares of water.Is this normal/right, or did I do something wrong when installing.I tried to change it with Ultimate Terrain, etc., but thedark blue squares remain.Any help much appreciated.Thanks!Hans HermanssonSweden

Water textures in FS9 are determined by waterclass files. In the default waterclass Lake Michigan is covered by waterclass values 13 and 19. The textures used are found in sceneryworldtexture. Have you installed any replacement water textures? In addition, there are various addons which seek to change how waves are displayed. These can also affect the appearance of water.There is also the "iron cross" effect when water is viewed from high altitude, or at long range. This is at the edge of the area where FS9 draws detailed textures, and shifts to the simplified texture draw system. It tends to stand out more over water than land.scott s..

"There is also the "iron cross" effect when water is viewed from high altitude, or at long range. This is at the edge of the area where FS9 draws detailed textures, and shifts to the simplified texture draw system. It tends to stand out more over water than land."My free add-on "Soft Horizons" which can be found in the file library can also reduce the impact of the shift from detailed to simplified textures. As Scott points out in his reply add-on textures can cause the effect to look worse, since Add-on textures don't have an effect on the simplified textures FS9 uses to draw distant textures. I believe the simplified textures are hard coded into the sim somehow, and some add-ons can really stand out against them.Regards,John

I see this too.

The shift to the distant terrain draw system is controlled by an FS9.cfg switch "terrain_extended_textures" which is a 1/0 switch setting how far away from the viewer the change is made.the lclookup.bgl file controls the drawing of textures. In the distant terrain draw area, the files worldlc.bgl and worldwc.bgl are used to determine landclass/waterclass values, regardless of any addon landclass files installed, or water (hydro or stream) polygons defined. There is a hard code color-to-landclass/waterclass value conversion made. Then, detail1.bmp is applied (at least on land, not sure about water) to give some dithering of color so that there isn't such as blocky color effect.scott s..