"Extend" autumn season?

[disco79stu 15]

Hi there,

I was wondering, is there a way to "extend" the autumn season? I'm already getting snow textures in Middle-Europe right now which isn't exactly true to life.
Can I tell the sim to use autumn-textures until mid December or so? (Just using a different date isn't doing it for me as I always (re)fly real flights with correct times and dates...)

Thanks,

Stu

  

[Afterburner 374]

Hi Stu,

I know this problem, which is related to the low temporal resolution of the seasons.bgl scenery file that only changes seasonal information once a month. Up until October 30th, you had mostly autumn textures in mid-Europe, but from November 1st on, the file dictates to use winter or even hard winter textures as the "average" of November in this region.

There is a solution to this problem, which costs a little money: SimElite Season manager

https://simelite.com/seasonmanager.php

This add-on provides real-time seasons around the world, and it generates patches of snow in regions that have them reported in the real-world. You should know that this add-on uses a subscription model. If you subscribe for 1 month, you pay $4. Subscribing for as long as 12 months costs $2 per month.

In my opinion, it is a little expensive for the fact that it just updates seasons, but it also has a "historic seasons" function, meaning that you can download seasons for past dates and have them injected into the sim. What you could do is to download the seasons for some dates in the past, save them in separate folders and use them (by copying the files) when you fly during a specific month. For example, download and save a few files for October, November and December, etc. last year and activate the respective folder in the scenery library when it's the respective month. You can do it after the subscription has expired (one month is more than enough). With this add-on, you have still autumn textures in most of mid-Europe right now. The support is very responsive.

[JesC 88]

19 minutes ago, Afterburner said:

There is a solution to this problem...

This looks very interesting. Do you know if it will work with ORBX. I assume that ORBX just reads the current season from the season manager files and applies the appropriate textures. The other thing I am wondering is if there is any performance impact. Again, I assume not. And one other if you don't mind. Is this also compatible with P3Dv5?

Thanks for any help you can provide while I will continue to research a bit more.

Thank you,

Jesse

EDIT: Found the answer to P3Dv5 compatibility. And, Yes it is. I just overlooked it before.

 

Edited November 2, 2021 by JesC

[disco79stu 15]

Thanks for all the detailed info, Burner!

I actually checked out simelite's tool a while ago but I didn't want to invest in in.
First of all - as you pointed out - it's a bit expensive (and subscription based, which I hate) for a tool that is just changing textures that are already there. Second, it's doing a bit more than I need. I just want the sim to dial back on the snow, or at least move it into december or january. I don't need 100% accuracy of snowy areas for my IRF flights.

I just thought there might be a ways to "trick" the sim into moving the trigger for snow textures by a month or two. Similar to the day/night threshold that you can set in the CFG to avoid the runway and apron lights (and airport night textures) getting turned off while it's still pretty dark... 🙂

 

[Afterburner 374]

23 minutes ago, JesC said:

This looks very interesting. Do you know if it will work with ORBX. I assume that ORBX just reads the current season from the season manager files and applies the appropriate textures. The other thing I am wondering is if there is any performance impact. Again, I assume not. And one other if you don't mind. Is this also compatible with P3Dv5?

Yes, it does work with ORBX global textures and OpenLC, since - as you assumed - it just reads the season, and the textures and tree colors are provided by ORBX. There is no performance impact that I have noticed

[JesC 88]

2 minutes ago, Afterburner said:

Yes, it does work with ORBX global textures and OpenLC, since - as you assumed - it just reads the season, and the textures and tree colors are provided by ORBX. There is no performance impact that I have noticed

Thank you very much. I think I will give this a try as soon as I get a chance. It may fit very well with my desire for more "live" realism.

Jesse

[Afterburner 374]

The Season Manager also does more than what I need. I just want to have an updated seasons.bgl file that provides a better representation of real seasons and not necessarily live conditions with the snow patches.

On the other hand, the seasons file can be problematic in that there can be a big difference between the beginning and the end of November in mid-Europe, but the low temporal resolution of the file does not allow these differences to be reflected. In my experience, you can use the default seasons file from May to October, since the seasons are quite accurate then. I personally have used the Season Manager to downloaded historic files for September 1, September 15, October 1 ... up to April 15, which I inject during the respected month.

[micstatic 4,331]

interesting thread.  Last night flying into MSP I was amazed to see snow on the ground

[blaunarwal 433]

Just yesterday we had first snow images in the news in Switzerland. So it's not that wrong, to show snow in altitudes from 1500 m upwards at these times. The low lands here are at about 400 m to 500 m but with a cold front coming it could mean snow for us. Usually until mid November we get sometimes some milder days called Martini Summer, but that's not realy warm, just mild.

Dan

[disco79stu 15]

2 hours ago, blaunarwal said:

So it's not that wrong, to show snow in altitudes from 1500 m upwards at these times.

I'm totally fine  with snow on top of the mountains. And I'm not saying it's meteorologically impossible to have snow in November, of course there can be snowy patches here and there these days, even below 500m.... Everything's white one day, and "green" again the other. Clearly, the sim has no way of knowing that.

I'm just saying with the sim blindly "switching" to snow textures by date (and not at least by temperature or something) makes it a little odd to approach let's say Frankfurt on a mild sunny November day with 14° OAT and a snow covered fields surrounding the airfield. 🙂

But I think I might give the above suggested tool a try. Thanks

 

 

[Afterburner 374]

The add-on has a 24 hour trial period, so you can test it before buying a subscription.

[spilok 1,139]

17 hours ago, Afterburner said:

Hi Stu,

I know this problem, which is related to the low temporal resolution of the seasons.bgl scenery file that only changes seasonal information once a month. Up until October 30th, you had mostly autumn textures in mid-Europe, but from November 1st on, the file dictates to use winter or even hard winter textures as the "average" of November in this region.

There is a solution to this problem, which costs a little money: SimElite Season manager

https://simelite.com/seasonmanager.php

This add-on provides real-time seasons around the world, and it generates patches of snow in regions that have them reported in the real-world. You should know that this add-on uses a subscription model. If you subscribe for 1 month, you pay $4. Subscribing for as long as 12 months costs $2 per month.

In my opinion, it is a little expensive for the fact that it just updates seasons, but it also has a "historic seasons" function, meaning that you can download seasons for past dates and have them injected into the sim. What you could do is to download the seasons for some dates in the past, save them in separate folders and use them (by copying the files) when you fly during a specific month. For example, download and save a few files for October, November and December, etc. last year and activate the respective folder in the scenery library when it's the respective month. You can do it after the subscription has expired (one month is more than enough). With this add-on, you have still autumn textures in most of mid-Europe right now. The support is very responsive.

I concur.  Season Manager is run BEFORE every flight I make in P3d.  I've been using it for over 2 years, and it is a wonderful program for true season depiction.  The developer is also very receptive to your emails if you feel your area was not represented realistically for the current weather. They will make every attempt to correct it.

Stan

[spilok 1,139]

19 hours ago, disco79stu said:

Thanks for all the detailed info, Burner!

I actually checked out simelite's tool a while ago but I didn't want to invest in in.
First of all - as you pointed out - it's a bit expensive (and subscription based, which I hate) for a tool that is just changing textures that are already there. Second, it's doing a bit more than I need. I just want the sim to dial back on the snow, or at least move it into december or january. I don't need 100% accuracy of snowy areas for my IRF flights.

I just thought there might be a ways to "trick" the sim into moving the trigger for snow textures by a month or two. Similar to the day/night threshold that you can set in the CFG to avoid the runway and apron lights (and airport night textures) getting turned off while it's still pretty dark... 🙂

 

I didn't think that $2.00 a month for accurate seasons was expensive when I subscribed.  I just downloaded a new version (1.6) today.  A little over $.06 per day goes a long way toward "as real as it gets".

[JesC 88]

Really glad that I caught this thread. Purchased a one year subscription to Simelite Season Manager today.

Set up was easy, less than 5 minutes. Just start once a day and you're seasons are current.

Also tested historical. I went back a few weeks to default fall textures of this year in my area. That has always been a problem around here, we just don't get all that color.  But it was absolutely correct with season manager.

For me it is well worth the $2.00 per month. I would recommend this.

Thanks to everyone's input and recommendations. This is one less annoyance in my sim world.

Jesse

[dave2013 1,140]

I like to make flights on the same actual date that they occur, but sometimes the season is all wrong for the location on that date, like Nov 1 in Europe for example. 

In this case what I do is just set the date to Oct 31, then set Nov 1 and the time in Active Sky so I still get the actual weather for the date of the flight.

Dave