Hi,

 

I am using REX and AS2012 and even going back to the FSX default water I cant get my water to look normal. It looks terrible. The first pic is water on "slider all the way to the left" or none effects. You can see the inland brown and normal ocean color (although to dark because I kept selecting darker and darker textures with Active Sky to try to get pic 2 to darken). The second pic is what you see when water is in the 2x range. Baby poweder blue, just god awfull. I am at a loss here. This is after a full reinstall of everything, was not the case with the last setup.

 

Any help is much appec.

 

Thanks

You can use FS water configurator to tweak the "look" of the water.

It also comes with a very nice set of presets.

 

http://www.strikings...downloads.shtml

 

i use this, together with Rex, to give me very realistic water.

 

You can also try tweaking the colour/saturation/plankton levels through the REX interface to suit your needs.

 

 

Hope this helps.

What you might want to try for the inland water, is a very pale brown colour, and for the ocean, try a colour which matches the typical weather you fly in and in particular the most apparent colour of the sky, since that is what you'd be seeing a reflection of, albeit it slightly paler because of the colour diffusion which the atmosphere creates and the way waves bounce light around.

 

Also try scaling the waves down with REX, or even going for an almost completely smooth look. The waves in FSX are ridiculously over the top, you can see them from 35,000 feet, which means it'd be like something from The Perfect Storm down at sea level LOL, and even if it was like that, there'd be so much cloud coverage that you would most likely not be able to observe the ocean from that altitude.

 

You actually need a surface wind of approximately 15 knots or more in order for even very tiny white caps to start forming on the surface of open water, and for the kind of waves which FSX likes to portray on most of its settings, you'd need a surface wind of at least 35 mph, that being about Force 7 on the Beaufort Scale, which is only one below Gale Force, so the chances of even being able to actually observe the sea, let alone its waves, when flying at anything over about a thousand feet in those conditions is remote. Thus most of the time, the white peaks and noticable waves of FS water are completely inappropriate for the conditions, and that's the main reason why it looks preposterous most of the time, regardless of the colour.

 

The sea is fairly grey in appearance a lot of the time in the northern hemisphere, since it often reflects a rather leaden overcast sky and a thick band of cloud on the horizon, but of course on a nice summer's day it can be fairly bright and quite blue, so it is the case that one size will not always fit all, but unless you are over the Caribbean flying over a shallow reef, some of the prettier colours are rather impractical for a lot of other places around the world. Thus you should maybe try and tailor stuff for both the season, and the region you fly in most. Those lovely clear blue waters in REX are great for screenshots and to go with sceneries such as Tahiti, but the chances of seeing something like that in, for example, the Irish Sea in December from flight level 350, are non-existent. The Irish Sea is generally the colour of cardboard on most days and fairly depressing in appearance, as is the Atlantic, the North Sea and indeed most oceans if there is any appreciable cloud cover about.

 

Al

What you might want to try for the inland water, is a very pale brown colour, and for the ocean, try a colour which matches the typical weather you fly in and in particular the most apparent colour of the sky, since that is what you'd be seeing a reflection of, albeit it slightly paler because of the colour diffusion which the atmosphere creates and the way waves bounce light around.

 

Also try scaling the waves down with REX, or even going for an almost completely smooth look. The waves in FSX are ridiculously over the top, you can see them from 35,000 feet, which means it'd be like something from The Perfect Storm down at sea level LOL, and even if it was like that, there'd be so much cloud coverage that you would most likely not be able to observe the ocean from that altitude.

 

You actually need a surface wind of approximately 15 knots or more in order for even very tiny white caps to start forming on the surface of open water, and for the kind of waves which FSX likes to portray on most of its settings, you'd need a surface wind of at least 35 mph, that being about Force 7 on the Beaufort Scale, which is only one below Gale Force, so the chances of even being able to actually observe the sea, let alone its waves, when flying at anything over about a thousand feet in those conditions is remote. Thus most of the time, the white peaks and noticable waves of FS water are completely inappropriate for the conditions, and that's the main reason why it looks preposterous most of the time, regardless of the colour.

 

The sea is fairly grey in appearance a lot of the time in the northern hemisphere, since it often reflects a rather leaden overcast sky and a thick band of cloud on the horizon, but of course on a nice summer's day it can be fairly bright and quite blue, so it is the case that one size will not always fit all, but unless you are over the Caribbean flying over a shallow reef, some of the prettier colours are rather impractical for a lot of other places around the world. Thus you should maybe try and tailor stuff for both the season, and the region you fly in most. Those lovely clear blue waters in REX are great for screenshots and to go with sceneries such as Tahiti, but the chances of seeing something like that in, for example, the Irish Sea in December from flight level 350, are non-existent. The Irish Sea is generally the colour of cardboard on most days and fairly depressing in appearance, as is the Atlantic, the North Sea and indeed most oceans if there is any appreciable cloud cover about.

 

Al

Now thats a detailed answer.

I fully agree with Alan's analysis. What makes this thread extra interesting is the relation with the Bufferpools discussion. When you settle for Word Not Allowed's BP=0 approach (which gives me better performance than defining a poolsize) you're stuck with the 2x High watersetting, and therefore with those ridiculous waves. I sincerely hope that with FS Water Configurator (thanks very much Dimi for the link) this problem can be solved.

 

Kind regards

I just installed FSWC and what a difference! I was using Shader 3.0 on my last install and had not put it into this one due to the way it wrecks havoc on lower visibility depictions on my system. So I forgot about FSWC and now that I have it installed what a great thing! Specifically the "Vertical Reflection Intensity" was way over the top, so turning that way down and I now have the look of screenshot 1 but at 2xmed. I am running BP=0 with unlimited frames and 2xmed on the water and everything is running super smooth and fast. BP=0 is critical for me as it increases my performance by 50%. I can officially fly into Imaginesim KLGA with almost full everything and decent levels of AA and only dip to 15fps at the lowest. With a Reject Threshold or a BP I am looking at 9-10fps. My old 460 card would crash with this tweak but the new 580 does just fine.

 

In my experience around Santa Cruz in an airplane the Ocean is very dark from above at all times of day.

 

Kind of off this topic but I know Nich and Word Not Allowed recommend the FPS lock in FSX at 30. When I do that I loose about 50% performance, Like in the above example I would be getting 10fps at KLGA. FSX has allways done this and I think FS9 has as well. So I never understood why to do this. If anything why not use the external lock in Inspector that does not cause the performance hit? Those guys have some really good advise I just do not understand why we would not use the Inspector route to avoid the perf loss. Unlimited seems to work for me pretty good with only occasional flashing and black tiles.

 

Thanks