I second that! Plus, my understanding is that the sky and/or environment textures also affect the look of the water. I have tried so many combinations that I have lost track - but I have found some that work for me, and I make sure I always have multiple backups of my favorite textures files! (The new Real H2O seems to give Zinertek a run for "best" textures; IMHO.)Ron

All the waters I've seen, replacers and default, look way too bright. If the water looks as bright as the sky, it's wrong. Water doesn't totally reflect light like a mirror, even at a glancing angle. You will get brilliant blue-green water where it's shallow over pale sand in full sun, but that's light reflected back from the sea-bed, with the longer (redder) wavelengths filtered out by passing through the water...not that I'm saying that getting virtual water to look right is easy :(

This thread got me thinking about how water actually looks, at least in the open sea. I had a look in Google Earth at some actual satellite views (around coasts where it really is photographic, rather than Google's infill between land masses -- see pic attached). It actually looks quite grainy, rather than swirly, from a few hundred feet up, something like rough concrete. Of course that's a static view, but that's the sort of bump, or normal, mapping that would give a fairly convincing effect if animated. In this estuary (Tagus, off Lisbon) the graininess is overlaid with longer, noticeable waves due to reflections from the nearby land.The best implementation of virtual water I've seen in a sim can be seen in the U-boat sim (beta) Danger From The Deep. There's a Youtube clip showing this >>

The Zinertek textures don't look too bad. Does the water colour change for different parts of the world?