I recommend the sky textures by Nils Danielson. The default FS2004 sky textures colour are ridiculously oversatureated and make the sim look like a cartoon. I live in Australia -- the home of blue skies -- and the only way you see a blue sky as blue as that FS2004 has is in a photo taken with a UV lens - not in real life.Nils new textures tones the blue down to a much more realistic level.Barry

I generally agree however I believe Chris Willis may be working on even a better set, but I am not sure if he still plans to release it to the public.The problem with sky in FS is that unfortunately it is only sensitive to the azimuth over the hrizon, not the heading you are looking at. The saturation of blue in real world greatly depends if you are watching the sky away from sun or towards the sun. For example the blue is more intense always in the northern direction (in Australia it might be the reverse !!) than southern. In FS however the saturation only depends on the height over the horizon - so it is difficult to find the right 'medium' effect. Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

Hows the performance with 'em installed?

>Hows the performance with 'em installed?Fine -- give them a try -- you can always uninstall them.Barry

Michael, this restriction you mention certainly applies to FS2002. But it doesn't apply to FS2004 - assuming I correctly interpret what you're saying! Look at a sunset in FS2004. You can clearly see a realistic circle of light surrounding the sun. This is impossible in FS2002. When you pan around you see the sky colour changing. Crucially, in a given view you can see a gradient in the sky colour horizontally (i.e. in the heading direction) as well as vertically. It's very easy to create your own sky colours. You create a bmp image that is effectively wrapped around the sky (you also set specific pixels to define cloud, land and high elevation colours). Having sky colour graduations both in the horizontal and vertical directions is a major improvement over FS2002. Best regards, Chris

Colours in FS are mostly an issue of your personal graphic card setting and graphic card drivers. I have tested lots of detonator drivers for my GeF3 Ti200 and every driver gave me different colours, not only in FS. So a little tweaking and ajusting of RGB, saturation etc. can do wonders.edited: BTW I rmember, that I have seen some incredibale, deep blue skies in Australia's Outback, in The Kimberley during Australian winter, in the Red Centre etc. I have some great shots of a bright orange Ayers Rock against a deep blue sky, or shots of Sydney's Opera House roof with a contrasting deep blue sky. And this is not because of a filter I used. This is how it was and why I made the photos.Also in my wife's hometown Canberra I have seen some incredible blues during the autumn months.Wolfgang

can we have a link for the new sky textures please !

> Look at a sunset in FS2004. You can clearly see a realistic>circle of light surrounding the sun. This is impossible in>FS2002. When you pan around you see the sky colour changing.Chris, honestly I can't see it. I looked at the typical blue sky during afternoon hours where there should be big difference in intensity of blue when you pan around - sorry, I can't see any.Michael J.

Michael, I had another look today. The default day textures have no horizontal variation so that probably explains what you saw. If you look at the dusk colours there is some variation, particularly in the band just above the horizon. The variation in the upper sky is also there but it's quite subtle. I played around with the textures and produced something with plenty of horizontal variation. Here are two shots of the same flight at different angles. http://www.kline.demon.co.uk/sky_1.jpg http://www.kline.demon.co.uk/sky_2.jpg The second shot, looking away from the sun, is quite a bit darker. These are not particularly realistic, but they do demonstrate that FS2004 supports horizontal variation. You can see horizontal variation in a single view as well, but it is a bit more subtle. If you or anyone else want to try it out, here's the texture: http://www.kline.demon.co.uk/sky_morning_4.bmp To use it, do this:1 In the FS Texture directory, make a backup of the file sky_morning_4.bmp so you can return it to normal.2. Grab the small texture above and save it with its default name of sky_morning_4.bmp into the FS texture directory. (If it doesn't display, left click on the link and grab - or right click on the link and use 'save target as....') If any problems, check that the file you saved into the Texture directury has the right name and is a standard 32*32 24 bit bmp.3. Try it in FS2004. You must use the date as follows: 10th September 2003. Set the time to 6:50 local time. The reason for this is that FS has ten texture sets and it uses a different one for each date. You should see a very noticeable horizontal variation that is quite striking! Remember, this is just a crude test to demonstrate the effect! Best regards, Chris

Chris,I definitely see plenty of variation here. If FS9 supports it then I wonder why Microsoft hasn't done it - I guess one of those items they decided to leave for FS10.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

You can do a search in the library for "fs9skytext.zip".

Michael, no need to wait for FS10. It would be very easy to edit the default textures to create horizontal variation.... Best regards, Chris