I am getting somewhat confused about what can be and what can

>>I am getting somewhat confused about what can be and what>can

Tony,Thanks. I now feel comfortable installing my BEV over the GE. This would appear a "win win" situation.Carl

I stand corrected guys about BEV over GE... :-hang I was playing around last night with killing everything for BEV except the Hard Winter section. I found that the inner city textures would not return when I chose the default option in the BEV menu. Autogen became the biggest problem because it wouldn't line up with neither BEV nor GE texture on the ground (even when I tried to restore the default GE textures under the BEV config options). It was a big mess. I reloaded all the GE textures from the GE utility and everything returned as it should. I still have BEV's river texture and possibly water texture meshed in with GE. But using the BEV utility to swap textures is not as straight forward as I once thought. There's no way to get the autogen to line up with the BEV ground texture or vise versa (GE textures). Heck you might not even get the GE textures back once you start playing with textures through the BEV options menu.Maybe this is just me but I'm sticking with GE. I like BEV but unless I can get both of them to work together I'm stuck with one (which is not a bad thing).

Nothing like reinventing the wheel. That was exactly what I found. I think I said as much a couple of days ago. Deja vu, or what?The difference in alignment of adjacent grids and the colour hues is enough to completely spoil the illusion. Which is common sense when you realise, again as I said before, that the textures for each may be using the same name, but not all the textures are changed all the time, and some textures are designed to work with unchanged default textures, but not necessarily the same ones in BEV as GE. These products are not designed to work together (no reaosn why they should) but as BEV has yet to complete worldwide textures, they MUST leave default textures that GE chooses to replace.The result may be less severe in some locations and seasons and worse in others, but it is no great surprise. Starting from a default set of textures is the ONLY way to ensure that you haven;t got an awful mishmash of GE and BEV. I agree that certain textures do work quite well with both, but creating some kind of merged texture folder would need a month of Sundays to achieve. And I doubt you'd get any help from the developers.Allcott

Hi there,good summary, Allcott!I must admit that I forgot to consider the autogen placement files. If they don't get replaced by the BEV configurator along with the texture set in question then you'd indeed end up with autogen placement problems for texture sets that have agn files.Moreover, I believe that neither BEV nor GE provide blending mask files (the *m1* bitmaps) that are made to fit their respective texture sets. These masks ensure, among other things, that fields and settlement sections aren't cut in half where two different texture sets meet. Thus, if BEV and GE placed their fields in different locations than the default files but not adjusted the mask files correspondingly, then you'll notice those cut off features, regardless of whether you're using just GE, just BEV, or a combination of both.Cheers, Holger

Allcott,You tried to warn us in a previous post. And Dillon's post was timely since I had just finished reinstalling BEV but did not execute the Confgurator. So I guess I am ok with GE remaiining as default and not proceed with running BEV configurator until all this works out between GE and BEV. Both are very good packages but will stick with GE until BEV and GE can be reconciled. Will be waiting to see the next two BEV packages especially the "world package".Thanks for everyone's input,Carl

Hi Holger,GE does not alter the class of textures (rurals, urbans, cities- fields where there should be fields, etc), which means we tried to keep as much as possible to the same class within the textures as the default FS9 textures and as to per the SDK describes them to be used. That is why with GE there is no need to alter the blending mask files ("m1*" and "900" series). We have gone through great effort achieving this. Cheers,Anthony

Hi Anthony,thanks for the information.Don't want to go into too much detail here but the blending masks were custom designed by the FS team to trace the shape of individual fields and suburban areas within each variant of a specific class. Generic blending would cut across fields, roads, etc., which is why custom masks are necessary for perfect blending.In other words, keeping the type of a class the same as the default won't ensure proper blending unless the position of features in each texture is exactly the same. Usually a couple of top-down shots in areas of mixed farmland/settlement classes will reveal how well the replacement texture set fits with the default blending masks. Mind you, even a poor match is usually not all that obvious unless the adjacent classes differ strongly so I'm not saying this is a major issue. Also, sometimes fields or settlement features get cut off for other reasons, like the automatic switching to different classes on steeper slopes.Cheers, Holger

>Hi Anthony,>>thanks for the information.>>Don't want to go into too much detail here but the blending>masks were custom designed by the FS team to trace the shape>of individual fields and suburban areas within each variant of>a specific class. Generic blending would cut across fields,>roads, etc., which is why custom masks are necessary for>perfect blending.>>In other words, keeping the type of a class the same as the>default won't ensure proper blending unless the position of>features in each texture is exactly the same. >>Usually a couple of top-down shots in areas of mixed>farmland/settlement classes will reveal how well the>replacement texture set fits with the default blending masks.>Mind you, even a poor match is usually not all that obvious>unless the adjacent classes differ strongly so I'm not saying>this is a major issue. Also, sometimes fields or settlement>features get cut off for other reasons, like the automatic>switching to different classes on steeper slopes.>>Cheers, HolgerYou're absoulutely right, Holger. I have GE, and the transition between urban and rural textures can be abrupt. Most of the time though, the effect is not too noticable, but for some nit-pickers out there, it might be. Still, this might be something that the GE guys consider for an upgrade, to make it somewhat more seamless.Overall, I'm happy with the textures, which seem "fresh" and "bright" compared to the default textures.- Martin