I was wondering how many of you are aware that the Socal Mega scenery is only for the summer. Has anyone been able to add it to fall, winter, spring yet? I would like to know about this. Any info would be helpful about this.

Having grown up in Socal much of my life (past) -it is always summer.. :-) Living in snow and cold now I wish I could go back!Actually , I think the megascenery must have been taken from winter shots of Southern Ca. therefore there is snow in the higher mountains. I have flown out there in December and the resemblance is very close for that time.I wouldn't worry too much about seasons in So. Calif.-but the next title of the New York area may be a factor-there are for sure 4 seasons out there... :-)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

Hi Kurt,just change the extension of the bitmaps as follows:...su.bmp = summer...fa.bmp = autumn...wi.bmp = winter...hw.bmp = hard winter...sp.bmp = springThis will not change the appearance of the textures, it merely ensures they show up during the designated season.Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

Are you aware as to how many textures MegaScenery has? My guess would be over 10,000 not including the night textures. Jim

Hi Jim,that's quite a few :). In that case it may be quicker to design a little utility that does the job for you. Unfortunately, I can't remember how this is done, but hey, there's still nearly two weeks to go until the beginning of autumn :).Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

or have a search on the internet. there are file renaming utilities out there that can do this for you very easily.

There are over 70,000 files in the package...

Can anyone show some screens to show that coping these files do work? Before I start this huge project, I would like to see some proof of this so I can be somewhat relieved when I am finished with it. Thank you for the advice Gosta. I just need to see it. I started with it but only with the San Clemente and with only 5 to 6 bitmaps. I just didn't see any difference, but maybe that is because I didn't finish it all either.Thank You.

Hi Kurt,it's quite easy to check yourself. Remember the area where you renamed the textures, start up FS in that location, set the season to the one you renamed the textures to, and have a look around. If there are no seasonal textures, only grey or green squares will be displayed. If you can see some ground textures instead, it has worked.Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

Hi Kurt,I quickly renamed the Long Beach area, and made the following observation: There is no autumn in Southern California. It uses Winter textures during autumn and winter, thus you have to rename the textures from ...su.bmp to ...wi.bmp.Here's the screenshots, first the one of how I renamed them to 'fa.bmp' (which didn't work), and then a shot of FS with the Long Beach area renamed to 'Wi.bmp', but not the rest of the scenery and season set to winter/autumn (both look the same, so just one screenshot :)). Note the plain grey textures of the areas in the distance that weren't renamed.Hope this helps.Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/36647.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/36648.jpg

Thanks Gosta. So I will rename them to wi for autumn and winter and Spring is Sp then. What about the hw for hard winter? I guess Socal doesn't get hardwinter so should i forget about the hw suffix? That looks like a very nice utility there for renaming files. Is it payware or freeware and where can I get it? , I think that will help alot. I will start modifying it on my days off from work and see how it comes.Thanks again,

Hi Kurt,even better - the summer textures work in spring as well, so all that's needed is one additional set of 'wi.bmp' textures, it would seem. I'm not sure about hard winter, it may be that those textures are called up once the temperature drops below 0 degres Celsius - I'll have to check that out. I found the utility on Google by searching for 'file renaming utility'. It's shareware, but it comes with a 30-day free trial, which is what I used. I'm sure there are freeware ones as well, but I was too lazy to look, so I just used the one at the top of the list :).Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg EDIT: I had a quick look - 'Hard Winter' doesn't appear to be dependent on temperature or precipitation. I used today's date, set the temperature to -30 degrees Fahrenheit (dewpoint at 5 degrees F), and all the textures showed up. Sorry about the poor picture quality, but there was a bit of a blizzard going on... :).http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/36678.jpg

I set the season to spring and the summer textures didn't load. I'll convert the summer textures to FA WI SP and store all the textures on a dvd(s). Jim

I have tried only one file and it doesn't seem to work either for spring. Are the letters suppose to be case sensitvive or something? I am just curious. Like should it be WI, Wi, or wi for instance because nothing seems to work. Or do I have to do the whole texture area for it to show up at all.