Hello FolksWell i have been using the 'soft horizons' download and in my last two flights i have indeed had good unsharp(bad)horizons.Just one thing now i am not sure which textures i have got(softhoz,Asky)I have unchecked the auto submit of textures in Asky so weather that means i am using the SoftHoz textures or what i don't know but if the horizon is soft and the weather looks good then i am fine with that.PS For my first try of Softhoz i used the default weather download and i don't quite know what occurred ,but i had horizons so soft there was nil visibility from ground level to FL33 Now thats what i call soft:-) I shall continue to experiment.cheers to allAndy

Thought I'd lift this topic rather than start a fresh one, hope that's ok...I've downloaded the softhr07.zip package and set it up as an optional texture set in ASG - that works very well and the colours and horizon softening do indeed work. However, I have a small issue with it because even at altitude (FL300+), 'softening' pale band around the horizon is just way too wide - it looks like you're still in a haze layer and it's unrealistic compared to what I see from a real flight at this alt... I thought it was ASV visability but I cleared all weather and it remained. I also removed the 'bloom plugin' which I've been testing so any effect is just from FS and it's textures. Graphics/monitor contrast settings are default also.My settings are vis = 60mi and clouds = 50mi. At higher vis range I can see the edges of the furthest detailed ground texture squares which is worse than hard horizons!Is this a normal effect that I'm seeing and is there a way to make this band smaller while still keeping these textures? It seems so close and yet not quite there!!Cheers,Geoff

Hello thereLift away..all helps increse the knowledge base.Geoff quote" It seems so close and yet not quite there!!"Sums up the flight sim hobby perfectlycheers Andy

Hi,Reduce your visibility to a lower value than your clouds.Thanks!Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

>Hi,>>Reduce your visibility to a lower value than your clouds.>>Thanks!>Jim>>http://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpg>http://www.hifisim.com/Ok - I'll try that... Before, I was always setting the clouds a little closer than the furthest vis to avoid seeing clouds sitting high above the hard horizon. I guess that will be reduced now so perhaps it works...By the way, could someone explain how the sky textures work with respect to location and season? I noticed when testing that the sky was slightly different at "summer" + 12:00 local time in Finland vs. North Africa...As I see it there are textures for night, predawn, dawn, postdawn1, postdawn2, morning, afternoon, presunset1, presunset2, sunset and postsunset. Then there are ten of each (0-9) but do they just all run in sequence or is it more complicated? For example, in the soft horizons pack, sky_noon_1.bmp and sky_noon_3.bmp look like the type of sky transition I'm looking for but sky_noon_2.bmp looks hazy!? I'm confused, this is one of a very few areas of FS9 I didn't mess around much with so far!Cheers,Geoff

Hi Geoff,The first pic is an example of Soft Horizons with sight distance set to 60 miles and clouds @ 50. Assuming this is what you see, my suggestion would be to increase your sight distance slightly rather than decrease your clouds. It won't change the view too much and might reduce the over softening of the horizon you see. The second shot is with sight distance @ 80 miles. I am not sure how MSFS picks the sky textures, other than I know they are picked based on date and time, and possibly location. That's why I changed all that you noted in your earlier post.I used to fly on business two or three times a week and did that for so many years if you name a part of the globe it is not hard for me to imagine what the real earth looks like from above. Saw lots of sky during my travels. Soft Horizons is my best try at getting the MSFS skies close to what I saw (and still see every few weeks), on average. I feel it's better than the default but still the sim and my own work has its limits. http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/188168.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/188169.jpgThe last link here is an airliners.net shot from the flight levels with about the same visibilitieshttp://www.airliners.net/photo/Ryanair/Boe...-8AS/1244471/M/ Regards,John

JohnCi, when you say "increase sight distance" do you mean in the FS9 program or do you mean in ActiveSky?I run your soft horizons along with AS6.5 and I would like to have my cake and eat it too, sight distances as far as possible while still having a realistic looking horizon up at the flight levels.

Hi John, thanks for the reply.I've played around with settings and now have FS9 vis = 150mi, FS9 clouds = 70mi and have set ASV to limit visibility to 70mi also.This appears to be working well (one flight does not a full test make!) because the haze from ASVs vis limiting does not make much impact on the horizon but does hide the texture edges to a tolerable level. Meanwhile, setting the max vis if FS9 gives the best effect with your textures... We'll see after a few flights!Thanks again for making these textures,Geoff

I mean in FS9, since I don't have ActiveSky I don't know what types of settings are available in that application. I regularly fly with my sight distance at 150 miles in the sim unless I fly in the Southern U.S. which tends to have lower vis.Regarsds,John

>Andy:>>I think if you use ActiveSky Graphics, ASG overwrites SoftHr. >I use Flight Environment Pro and Ground Environment Pro, so>everytime I change those, I just copy the SH files back in. >I've actually written a batch file to do that so one click and>I've got Mr. Cillis' beautiful textures right back where there>supposed to be.Hello ChuckCan you tell me what a batch file is and how i create one so that like you i can install SOFTHOZ with just one click.At present i am installing a weather environment from ASKY and then recopying pasteing the SOFTHOZ textures over that.PS SoftHoz is very good,gone is the horrible sharp edge horizon.cheers Andy

Andy it's just a text file with commands in it, saved with a .bat extension.I did mine in notepad and wrote it as follows:<< copy C:"Program Files""Microsoft Games""Flight Simulator 9"TextureSoftHorizons*.* C:"Program Files""Microsoft Games""Flight Simulator 9"Texture >>Assuming you have your MSFS files in the same place as mine and have put your soft horizons folder in the Textures file, you can copy and past the above right into notepad and save it on your desktop. Just leave out the >> and << and rename it with a .bat file extension istead of the .txt extension notepad will give it.

Activesky also has two, native smooth horizon textures. In the active sky graphics section for day color textures, there's "seasonal smooth horizon 0001" and "seasonal smooth horizon 0002."

>Andy it's just a text file with commands in it, saved with a>.bat extension.>>I did mine in notepad and wrote it as follows:>><< copy C:"Program Files""Microsoft Games""Flight>Simulator 9"TextureSoftHorizons*.* C:"Program>Files""Microsoft Games""Flight Simulator 9"Texture >>>>Assuming you have your MSFS files in the same place as mine>and have put your soft horizons folder in the Textures file,>you can copy and past the above right into notepad and save it>on your desktop. Just leave out the >> and << and rename it>with a .bat file extension istead of the .txt extension>notepad will give it.>>Hello ChuckI think i have done it.At first i kept trying to save with a .BAT but its a *bat)duh!) anyway a SOFTHOZ.BAT now sits on my desktop,so thanks for that tip,very useful.AndyHope you got FSNav autopilot glitch sorted.

Really glad it worked for you, Andy. And thanks for you well wishes: The guy who replied, along with the last two successful flights have reinforced that it's probably that I forgot to set pitot heat to "on".Now if I can just get my autogen to stop going crazy! (see the hardware forum for my thread there, if you want to know what I mean.)Best regards and

>Really glad it worked for you, Andy. And thanks for you well>wishes: The guy who replied, along with the last two>successful flights have reinforced that it's probably that I>forgot to set pitot heat to "on".>>Now if I can just get my autogen to stop going crazy! (see>the hardware forum for my thread there, if you want to know>what I mean.)>>Best regards andHello ChuckI used to have pitot heat problems as well,and now that you mention it i am sure i also had this problem with aircraft going out of control for no apparent reason as well.Believe it or not i used to think it was PILOT heat and was something to do with keeping the pilots tootsie's warm.Anyway i always set PITOT heat to on for all my flights now.I believe its something to do with PITOT tubes(i did read up on the subject but have forgotten exactly what it is or they are so must check again)cheers Andy