Hi all,I have just persuaded myself to purchase and install Ruud Faber's wonderful European textures.My question relates to the impact these textures have on the rest of the world. I was slewing around Albuquerque, NM admiring the accuracy and detail of another recent wonderful install, USA-Roads, when I became aware of the presence of some of FScene's European ground textures dotted here and there. I'm quite sure the citizens of Albuquerque would give their right arms to see more greenery than they have at present , or are ever likely to see in the future, but sadly this is not their current reality.I am assuming from this observation that certain ground textures are shared globally. If this is the case, can the European and USA/Canada ground textures coexist convincingly in the same SceneryWorldtexture folder or should I create separate texture folders, appropriately named, and containing the world area specific FScene textures, and switch between them as required by renaming the desired folder?Installation of Ruud Faber's textures does have one downside - you will lose Gerrit Kranenbarg's BLUESPHERE PROJECT Modified Ground Textures. I am particularly fond of these textures. However, assuming you backed up the original SceneryWorldtexture folder, you can switch back to them with equal ease by simply renaming the folder, as mentioned above.Mike

Some textures are indeed shared globally, and Ruud has taken care to make sure there are no problems running all his sets together.I have them all installed (and all available seasons) and it looks magnificent outside the coverage areas as well.As to missing Gerrit's textures, of course that will happen. They're both products that do essentially the same: replace the default ground textures with new ones using the same names.

Thanks a lot Jeroen, that's reassuring. I think I'll now go get the USA and Canada ground textures as well!How on earth does Ruud do it when there are only so many texture files and so much of the world to cover convincingly?!Regards,Mike

Hi,Yes, I'm a little curious about this too. I bought the USA & Canada Textures. Vey nice. :) I'm considering buying the European sets. But since Mike apparently saw some European textures in Albuquerque I'm a little worried that I'd be overwriting some of the USA & Canada ones when I paste in the European ones. :-hmmmJim

I have FScene USA&Canada. When flying in Europe, some FScene textures do show up. Those are mainly the forest textures. I'd assume those are the same for the European and North American sets so you shouldn't have to worry about overwriting any files.I keep the default textures in a backup folder, and the FScene textures in another. This way, I can quickly change between FScene and default (the FScene forest textures don't blend together well with the default textures for Europe, for example).Another problem appears when using FScene together with custom landclass.Many landclass sceneries mix texture from several regions to produce a more realistic image. For example, the FS Genesis landclass actually uses a tropic forest texture for some of the forests in WA because it looks "right" (it looks like a small clearing). This texture is not part of the FScene USA&Canada package because with default scenery it only appears in south america. So, you get default forest texture in some places and FScene in others. Not too much of a problem since this texture blends in well with the FScene textures, but something to keep in mind for the perfectionists.

Hi JimmiG,Thanks for that good and informative explanation. Makes sense. I appreciate it!Cheers,Jim

the shared textures are supplied identical with all applicable sets so there is no problem using them side by side.

I have all of Ruud's too..great stuff. The problem lies in CoF, it calls out from "all over" sometimes. (and added landclass does too).And so does auto-gen..I was amazed to find an american farm town in the middle of Russia the other day...looked a LOT like Kansas, haha.

how is the visual quality when flying low and slow like in a helecopter? Do the FS Scene textures look sharp even when flying low?? Thanks!

"Do the FS Scene textures look sharp even when flying low??"In FS2004, the max res (and in fact, the only res) supported is 4.8m/pixel for all ground scenery textures. The actual resolution is therefore the same for FScene and default as well as any other addon textures.However, the FScene textures are hand-painted to look as good as possible and I think they look a bit better than default at low altitude. But really, in FS2004 when flying at 1500 feet or below, it's up to the autogen and scenery features (roads, rivers, railroads) to create the detail.