Controlling when there is snow on the ground

[sho69607 29]

Is there a way to control when there is snow on the ground in P3D or is coded only by date? Perhaps when FSX came out there was more snow this time of year, but its not particularly accurate for the current climate in the Northeast. I still am showing snow in the New York area in P3D right now.

[Mace 1,902]

47 minutes ago, sho69607 said:

Is there a way to control when there is snow on the ground in P3D or is coded only by date? Perhaps when FSX came out there was more snow this time of year, but its not particularly accurate for the current climate in the Northeast. I still am showing snow in the New York area in P3D right now.

Here is a recent thread which explains your options (Simelite seasons manager / change date / make your own bgl):

 

 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

It's that time of year again in the Northern Hemisphere. 🎃❄🌡🌬SimElite Season Manager has been updated for P3d5. So if you want to fly and see Autumn leaf colors and different ground textures, this utility is the way to go. It doesn't impact performance at all as it just replaces ground textures. The tree leaf condition will correspond to the ground:

• Spring - brighter leaf and ground color, flowering bushes and trees.
• Summer- darker green vegetation
• Fall - Yellow, red and orange leaved deciduous trees, drabber ground colors
• Winter - snow covered conifers, leafless deciduous trees, drab ground textures with patchy snow.
• Hard Winter - same as winter with full snow cover.

In P3d5, as in MSFS, no matter what the ground texture is for a given, if it is snowing, patches of snow will accumulate and cover the ground. Season manager works with default billboard trees, ORBX billboard trees and default 3D trees. It obviously does not work with photoreal terrain textures. It does have an option for edge matching its textures to 3rd party airport textures.

The utility has several modes. Live mode corresponds to the RL conditions. There is also an historical mode and a custom mode. The latter mode allows the user to create vegetation conditions on a finer local scale that can be provided by the real time global leaf and snow datasets. The utility also has a revert function that will set the P3d5 seasons back to their normal (cough, cough) dates.

I've been fairly busy flying VFR and testing beta software for MSFS, but I'm now going back to P3d5, because of the realistic conditions provided by Season Manager. I know that MSFS makes it snow and snow accumulates on the ground while it is snowing, but the trees and ground stay the same all year and if it is not snowing, the snowpack disappears. I don't think that Asobo has said much recently about seasons in MSFS, so it's not likely that will see them this Fall or Winter. 

[G-RFRY 1,708]

In MSFS seasons is not on the inprogress list, time they work though the issues and the inprogress list could be 2021 or later.

[d.tsakiris 417]

On 9/15/2020 at 1:03 AM, jabloomf1230 said:

It obviously does not work with photoreal terrain textures.

I'm not so sure about that. Photoreal textures can also, as far as I know, “have“ seasons. In which case they should also adhere to what Season Manager defines.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

True, if they have autogen vegetation, the trees will be affected. The ground textures will not change unless the photorealistic imagery provides seasonally varied versions. Some photorealistic imagery uses filters to create 2 to 5 unique versions of the images. But in general, most imagery is color adjusted for mid-summer conditions.

[G-RFRY 1,708]

According to ORBX the work takes a lot longer and the size of scenery for download, TE Netherlands with seasons was over 70GB download , based on that the UK could be 150GB and they don`t think users would pay the price to cover the work, this is also why i don`t see seasons coming to MSFS any time soon  

And some complained about performance which may put Asobo off bringing it to MSFS. 

Edited September 17, 2020 by G-RFRY