Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
Guest JonP01

No seasonal variation in FS9 apart from sky and lighting!

Recommended Posts

Guest JonP01

So far I've been happy to fly the sim in the default season for this time of year - Winter where I am in Australia. I have tried other times of year but haven't taken too much notice of any differences in texture appearance from one season to another. That was until I started to wonder why, bang in the middle of winter, I have yet to see ONE single solitary tree that is anything but perfectly "summer" green - with all of it's leaves on. I have searched every corner of the Australian continent and all I see anywhere are "summer" trees 12 months of the year! Then I started to seriously play around with different seasons. The differences in the seasons were so subtle, that I had to take screenshots and compare them side by side at the same time in order to detect any differences. In the end, I decided the only differences I could tell between 4 screenshots of Australia in 4 different seasons was a difference in the lighting balance and the sky. The textures and trees all appear exactly the same from season to season!I then tried other countries and had no problems there - the textures and trees obviously and clearly reflect the different seasons. Having lived in Australia for 37 years, I can definitely attest to the fact that the country looks different in each season of the year, and that there are far more varieties of tree than evergreens. I thought this might have been something wierd with my install,so I re-installed the sim but got the same results.And I missing something fundamental here? The sim should not look precisely the same in Winter as it does in Summer, save for the differences in sky and lighting?!?!! If MS thinks the seasonal variation in Australia is what I am seeing on my monitor, they are terribly mistaken. I'm hoping someone will say there is a very obvious thing I am missing here, but this topic does not seem to have been raised yet so far as I can see.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest SlimDady

temp settings.. put it at say -15, you will see snow falling, snow on the ground, snow on the trees

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest christian

You are correct. Microsoft has changed the seasons in FS2004 to summer all year in Australia. You can load the seasons.bgl with TMFviewer to see the difference in FS2002 amd FS2004. You can make your own seasons bgl to change that though. Read my terrain manual for an explanation how to.Cheers, Christian

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest JonP01

>You are correct. Microsoft has changed the seasons in FS2004>to summer all year in Australia. You can load the seasons.bgl>with TMFviewer to see the difference in FS2002 amd FS2004. You>can make your own seasons bgl to change that though. Read my>terrain manual for an explanation how to.>>Cheers, Christian>Hi Christian,What would we do without you? :-) I'm downloading the manual now. I hope I can work out what I need to do. You give the impression that MS knowingly made Australia Summer all year round. Am I correct here? If so, I don't understand it. Do you have any idea what the reasoning was? Sure, the seasonal variations were always a little overdone when it came to Oz, but if I had a choice between nothing at all and a bit too much, I'd take the latter every time!!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest christian

>You give the>impression that MS knowingly made Australia Summer all year>round. Am I correct here? right.>If so, I don't understand it. Do you>have any idea what the reasoning was? ??? I don't know what drives Microsoft to the things they do :)I assume they reasoned that temperature wise it's quite warm in winter in some places (not really here in Melbourne though). Probably they should have divided Australia into regions, like Port Douglas and Townsville summer all year round, but Melbourne more autumn like.Strangly enough, they haven't changed New Zealand, which still has brown winter textures, although NZ mostly is green all year round.Cheers, Christian

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest JonP01

>>You give the>>impression that MS knowingly made Australia Summer all year>>round. Am I correct here? >>right.>>>If so, I don't understand it. Do you>>have any idea what the reasoning was? >>??? I don't know what drives Microsoft to the things they do>:)>>I assume they reasoned that temperature wise it's quite warm>in winter in some places (not really here in Melbourne>though). Probably they should have divided Australia into>regions, like Port Douglas and Townsville summer all year>round, but Melbourne more autumn like.>>Strangly enough, they haven't changed New Zealand, which still>has brown winter textures, although NZ mostly is green all>year round.>>Cheers, Christian>Hello Microsoft. If you are reading this, you are in *serious* need of more Aussie beta testers! You have my email address and I expect to hear from you in 16 months time! That said, if any of you would like to come to Oz in the meantime, I'll personally take you up to Mount Hotham in July. Don't forget to pack your summer T-shirts, thongs, shorts and towelling hats and 30+ Sunblock, because according to you, life over here is 365 days of Summer every year. Oh, I nearly forgot. Don't forget to bring along a lot of plastic bags to pack your fingers in after they turn blue and start dropping off :-lol I won't even mention the colour the place has in Autumn (sorry, Fall). Or the 46 degree temps we had last summer. Or the drought. Or the lush greenery in Spring and the deathly white-green of the landscape in a frost bitten country Winter!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest freequest

not to mention during winter because of the harsh frosts everything looks brown and dead... esp where i live the only green seasons are spring and autumn the rest is a hot brown during summer and a frost scorched brown during winter...O well it lucky i do most of my virtual flying in washington state in the USA :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest Jimbofly

I live in Canberra, and I was hoping at least SOME of the Canberran landmarks would be available in FS9, such as Telstra tower and Parliament House. Surprise, surprise, Canberra in FS9 looks NOTHING like Canberra, even though it happens to be the capital city of Australia!!!Oh well, I can always live in hope. I'm hoping I will still be here when Canberra actually looks like Canberra in a flightsim, and the Australian landscape actually reflects seasonal changes aswell.I have to admit, though, that in general I've found this sim to be the best ever! I can't get enough of flying around parts of Europe and the US with their spectacular scenery! The SF.260 is fantastic and I seriously can't wait for the update!Happy simming!James Gallagher

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest JonP01

James,I think I saw some Canberra improvements on Ian Thatcher's site today.http://www.tassim.com/Well, it's the airport and it includes Telstra Tower.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Having read all this, I wonder...Have you tried backing up FS2004's seasons.bgl, and pasting FS2002's over it? I'd be curious if that restores the seasons... I know FS2002's worldlc.bgl (landclass) can be ported over.-John

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest JonP01

Hi John,Yes, actually I did try to paste in the old seasons.bgl file, but it didn't work (although now I understand how to create seasonal variations thanks to Christian's document, I really think it should have worked). Actually, it's probably better that it didn't work, because my copy of FS2002 was just sold today on eBay, so I cannot use any files from FS2002 from now on.I actually started to re-do the seasons for Oz last night, but as you know, all season files are currently at LOD2, so I actually have to start from the equator and I get a bit of New Zealand as well! I don't know that I'll want to upload it though unless people are really really keen (desperate more likely), because it efects everything between 0 and 67.5 degrees south and 90 and 180 degrees east - that's a very big area.It would be nice to get Winter right. I could just get away with normal Spring, Summer and Autumns for the whole country, but Winter in reality is more restricted in area. Come to think of it, I've never knowingly flown flight sim in an area where the seasonal texture actually changes from one texture tile to another. I'm interested to see how well it would work, or whether the change would be too obvious.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest christian

Strange, I also think that should have worked...You'll probably notice the season borders if you look for them. I saw some screenshots once and it looked quite bizarre.Christian

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest JonP01

>Strange, I also think that should have worked...>>You'll probably notice the season borders if you look for>them. I saw some screenshots once and it looked quite>bizarre.>>ChristianI thought it might. I think it would be wierd flying out from Bankstown airport in a fairly green environment and then just as you get further out west everything turns into frozen winter.What do you reckon then Christian? Will I just upload a default "4 seasons" a-la FS2002 and then everyone can take their pick - 4 seasons or just Summer? I'd love to do something esoteric (based on the BOM climate maps) but other scenery projects are beckoning...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...