Best water textures for FS9?

[Guest belga1]

Hello,Zinertek water :(

The best textures I´ve found is presented as a bonus feature in a small indie addon pack called Real Sky PRO edition (FS9 version) by Sandon Lyon.

Regards.Gus.

[Capt. Windh 3]

I can take a stab a his addons...FZ02 Portland, POSKY 738, REX, and Zinertek water. The sound is a dub-over from a real 737...although it would be completely awesome if somebody would make a 737 soundset that sounded like that.

Almost on the penny (if you didn´t cheat by reading the info in youtube.. :( )However: As stated the water is from Real Sky PRO edition... (That was what the post was all about... and Gus got it!)And it´s the PMDG/Posky merge (but you can´t tell from the wingview, so I´ll give you that one) The rest is correct! :(

[Chuck_B 2]

I have to say I'm starting to get a bit annoyed here: with all this other great water can anyone tell me exactly WHY REX can get away with charging almost $50.00?? I've owned it for a few months now and I'm seeing people chip away at the various pieces REX is supposed to enhance with other, more specialized add-ons. Throw in the fact that it's got an inferior real world weather engine and flight planner and all you're left with is the clouds? $50.00 for the clouds??? Thanks for any insight here.

[windycloud 30]

$50.00 for the clouds???

Nope! I've got HDEv2 for Clouds. I don't own REX and this is exactly why I don't. Back when it just came out people, me included, were buzzing about buying. That's when some started to name all these other piecemeal addons. That's how I learned about Real Sky Pro. Another reason I prefer these smaller, simplier addons to bigger undertakers like REX is that I am very anal–retentive about touching my FS9, after years of tweaking, breaking, fixing, patching and all that. These days I rarely introduce new addons to FS9 and when I do I want it to modify as little as possible, do exactly what I need done and let me understand everything it does to my FS. I actually install most my addons to a fake FS folder on a separate HD first, dissect to see every bits of the installation, make a note, delete most repaints to keep the size small and manually move it to my FS folder. That's how anal I am...not to say it makes good sense. :(

[Glynn 405]

I have to say I'm starting to get a bit annoyed here: with all this other great water can anyone tell me exactly WHY REX can get away with charging almost $50.00?? I've owned it for a few months now and I'm seeing people chip away at the various pieces REX is supposed to enhance with other, more specialized add-ons. Throw in the fact that it's got an inferior real world weather engine and flight planner and all you're left with is the clouds? $50.00 for the clouds??? Thanks for any insight here.

Hello ChuckFor me it is all about choice, add up the cost of all the seperate addons you would need to purchasein order to have as many cloud sets, water sets, taxi and runway textures to choose from.And then take into account the fact that non of those other addons are going to give you 9.9GB of textures gratis months after the original release.Based on current simmarket prices this is what you would pay from Zinertek excl local taxesUltimate Water Advanced $14.45 (two water sets)Ultimate Weather FX $24.31 (one set of clouds)Ultimate Airport Environment $17.07 (one set of airport textures)Those prices for that amount of limited content makes REX look like a bargain.

[Chuck_B 2]

. . . I've got HDEv2 for Clouds.

Which came out 6 or 8 weeks AFTER Real Environment Extreme. Before either one of those there were no real good high res, frame rate friendly clouds. I'm the opposite, though -- I like trying just about EVERYTHING that comes out in my FS9. But I do very frequent disk imaging back ups so I can always go back no matter what happens. I don't really mind the money (FS9 is still cheaper than golf) and REX is REALLY impressive, but I find myself overwriting more and more little pieces of it with other addons -- and now I'm looking at overwriting water textures too?! I'm not sure what that would leave me, except for maybe an unnecessary frame rates loss. :(

Those prices for that amount of limited content makes REX look like a bargain.

Thanks for the reassurance, Maddog. Your points are well taken, as always!

[Capt. Windh 3]

I also agree on REX... Actually, I bought it only to get the great "haze" effect it has.. combined with its´great sky textures.. (and better default airport textures)..This is what dusk should look like! :(

[Chuck_B 2]

I also agree on REX... Actually, I bought it only to get the great "haze" effect it has.. combined with its´great sky textures.. (and better default airport textures).

Capt. Windh - That looks beautiful! How did you get your horizon to look like that in REX?? I couldn't get that, and I was VERY surprised! I still have to install my freeware "Soft Horizon" textures AFTER I configure and install my REX texturesv to get FS9's horizons to look like that. :(

[Mike... 7]

But even these are not free of the "blocky" problem (see screenshot). Is this purely a texture issue?

No! Thought I'd join and touch on a subject that gets overlooked.The real issue isn't a texture issue, you have all kinds, some better than others. Some textures deal better with the texture cross than others, when FS falls back on default water colors. The issue in your capture is an issue of waterclass...Just like landclass there's waterclass to tell FS what kind of textures to show. In that shot, the waterclass is not of a good quality (default most likely). Unfortunately, there are no real waterclass packages out there, let alone one that provides global coverage. Fortunately, you can tackle specific areas, like I've done a couple of times. Wc_lake_michigan.zip and wc_lake_ontario.zip in the Avsim Library, ZipDive to see before and after screenshots and in the readme I mention the utility I used. I just checked the files again and especially the Lake Michigan one contains a before and after shot that wraps up this entire discussion.:(

[windycloud 30]

Thank you, Mike. That was very informative.

[Mike... 7]

No problem.:(

[3Green 80]

I really like these water textures:mywaterprojectv1_1.zip (installer exe)mywaterprojectv1.0.zip (manual install)http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=root&Name=water&FileName=&Author=Sacha&DLID=&Sort=Added&ScanMode=0&Go=Change+ViewNot sure why the pictures don't display, but if you click on them then it works?RJ

[3Green 80]

Here are two more on final to CYYT (Ocean water) Again, not sure why the pictures are not showing up? Just click on them then it works.RJ

[Bill A 68]

WOW, that first screenshot, the water looks amazing!

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

No! Thought I'd join and touch on a subject that gets overlooked.The real issue isn't a texture issue, you have all kinds, some better than others. Some textures deal better with the texture cross than others, when FS falls back on default water colors. The issue in your capture is an issue of waterclass...Just like landclass there's waterclass to tell FS what kind of textures to show. In that shot, the waterclass is not of a good quality (default most likely). Unfortunately, there are no real waterclass packages out there, let alone one that provides global coverage. Fortunately, you can tackle specific areas, like I've done a couple of times. Wc_lake_michigan.zip and wc_lake_ontario.zip in the Avsim Library, ZipDive to see before and after screenshots and in the readme I mention the utility I used. I just checked the files again and especially the Lake Michigan one contains a before and after shot that wraps up this entire discussion.:(

I'm was wondering if anyone was going to mention WC, lol.Mike is right, it doesn't matter what water textures you have installed if the waterclass is messed up. It's the same in FS9 as it is in FSX. There are places where the waterclass calls for tropical water, where in real life the water is not to so tropical looking. Also when the waterclass textures are placed in a symetrical order like the ones in the first screen shot of the OP's post, then they tend to look real blocky.If you want to dail in the waterclass for a specific area you can use a freeware tool like SBuilder to make a custom waterclass for the area you want to improve. For example I would use Rio de Janerio as an example. If I remember correctly in FS9, Rio's waterclass area calls for the light blue tropical water textures, same as it does in FSX. However, if you have ever been to Rio and stood on top of Corcovado or Sugar Loaf and looked at the water it's no where as "tropical" looking as what the FS9/FSX waterclass calls for. All you need to do is open Sbuilder, pan down to the area you want to fix and open the waterclass tool. Then select the waterclass textures from the menu you want to be call for in that area and them start clicking on the map to place them. It's best to mix them a little with some other waterclass textures near the same color so that it provides a little variation and looks a little more mixed and not so blocky.Here's an example of a before and after in Rio. The shots are from FSX, but the same thing applies to FS9 as well when it comes to waterclass, I just don't have any comparison shots to show for FS9.Here's what the stock waterclass looks like in Rio, similar to what the waterclass looks like in FS9 for the same area.Overhead view of the waterclass and its arrangment.This is after fixing the waterclass.Overhead improvement.So, as you can see even with having the same water textures installed, just changing the waterclass assignment to call for different textures makes a huge difference. I have had to fix a lot of areas like this, Miami is another good example where its messed up in both FS9 and FSX.If were you I would try Sbuilder or another waterclass editor and get at it, lol. For me Sbuilder is probably the easiest way to do it, but there maybe other ways as well.Good luck.