On 3/21/2023 at 2:56 PM, AnkH said:

What I still do not really understand: it is so much focussed on the northern hemisphere, no? If I now select a spring preset, it tells me that this spring preset is used for northern hemisphere and an autumn preset is used for the southern hemisphere. But which one? Should I not be able to also select which autumn preset is used in the southern hemisphere?

Hi AnkH. Good question. The southern hemisphere receives a ton of focus and has received a lot of comprehensive work. We have created a completely different set of vegetation for Australia and apart from that, a completely different set for New Zealand. This is regional vegetation that contains trees and bushes that are more native to that part of the world and mostly displays seasonal shades of green. Those shades of green do change as in nature throughout Australia/New Zealand's spring, summer, autumn, and winter. It also contains a small percentage of yellow, orange, and red vegetation for similar to what occurs in the real world. For Automated Seasons, foliage changes colors on a weekly basis during Australia/New Zealand's autumn into winter and seasonal coloring exists for Australia/New Zealand's winter, spring, and summer. There is also seasonal coloring for the southern part of South America for that region's winter, spring, and summer and we have also included weekly foliage coloring changes during that region's autumn into winter. If you go and fly in these parts of the world I mentioned, you will see autumn start to emerge.

In regard to presets in the southern hemisphere, you will see the opposite season in the southern hemisphere compared to the northern hemisphere. As to which presets display in the southern hemisphere, this would not be applicable for Australia and New Zealand because as mentioned above, the custom vegetation for that region mirrors nature, which consists mostly of green vegetation throughout the year. Therefore, in Australia/New Zealand's spring, vegetation will be a bit brighter green, in summer the hues are a bit darker, in autumn coloring is a bit darker yet with slight brownish tones with a small amount of yellows, oranges, and reds in towns and cities, and in winter the green tones continue to darken. There is an exception in winter in the northern regions of Australia, which actually get greener due to the wet season in that part of the world in that season.

For presets and the southern part of South America, creating functionality to select all 25 presets (soon to be 27) for that region would have been extremely time and labor intensive and would have resulted in a huge amount of maintenance work, as well as pushed other high priority features to not have been released, so I made the decision to not include that for this limited region of the world. By the way, the maintenance of this application throughout all of the MSFS Sim Updates and World Updates, which hit frequently, requires a fair amount of effort. Sometimes the effort can be very large like SU10 last autumn, which took two months of 60 to 80 hour weeks.

In terms of what preset you see in the southern hemisphere when you select a preset; if you select an autumn preset the spring preset in the southern part of South America would be Serenity, if you select a winter preset, the summer preset would be Peaceful Meadow, if you select a spring preset you will see a mix of custom autumn presets depending on which part of the southern portion of South America you are flying in, and if you select a summer preset, you would see the Winds of Change preset in the southern part of South America.

Also, as a side note most other areas in the southern hemisphere have tropical or temperate climates and, in those regions, where vegetation coloring is green all year long have received a lot of AccuSeason treatment by updating the vegetation species mix giving more natural green hues, both of which give much more natural landscapes. Hope this answer sheds light on the huge amount of work we have put into the southern hemisphere. Below are some images of the work we have done in the Southern Hemisphere.

Australian Autumn

South American Autumn (Southern Region)

Southern Hemisphere Tropical Areas

Temperate Areas

Perfect, thanks for the explanation

@MikeT707Can you please fix the trees on the Italian side of the Alps (including Ticino in Switzerland, i.e. around Lugano) below 1000 meters?

Our trees here are nearly all decideous, not coniferous as wrongly depicted by Accuseason.

Edited March 23, 20233 yr by steve310002

7 hours ago, steve310002 said:

@MikeT707Can you please fix the trees on the Italian side of the Alps (including Ticino in Switzerland, i.e. around Lugano) below 1000 meters?

Our trees here are nearly all decideous, not coniferous as wrongly depicted by Accuseason.

Hi Steve and thanks for your question. The MSFS codebase utilizes geographic areas around the world to designate the vegetation species types/biomes contained within these areas. These geographic areas are known as EcoRegions, of which there are close to 500 globally. EcoRegions are fixed shapes on the map and unfortunately cannot be modified. The Italian  side of the Alps is part of a large EcoRegion that covers the entirety of the Alpls. This is a link to a map that shows all of the EcoRegions globally. https://ecoregions.appspot.com/ 

If you look at the Alps mountain range on the map you will see an EcoRegions called “Alps conifer and mixed forests” (I included a screenshot of that EcoRegion below and it is the darker green shape covering the Alps). Within the MSFS codebase, I am able to specify the mix of species that display in this EcoRegion within AccuSeason, but per the MSFS codebase EcoRegions unfortunately cannot be split. Therefore, only one biome (mix of vegetation species) can display within an EcoRegion. So, if I were to designate a biome of deciduous trees for the Italian side of the Alps, that biome would cover the entirety of the “Alps conifer and mixed forests” biome resulting in only deciduous trees covering the entire Alps mountain range, which would be really inaccurate, so the optimal thing to do is to designate the EcoRegion to contain conifer trees.

I do wish we could split EcoRegions or have more flexibility in working with them, but I am really pleased that the MSFS codebase does allow a great degree of flexibility, even with some limitations and compromises. Believe me, if I could designate the southern part of that EcoRegion to contain a different vegetation biome, I would take your suggestion and deploy it. On a side note, the EcoRegion in Italy, directly below the Alps EcoRegion is designated with an EcoRegion that contains mostly deciduous trees. Thanks again and I hope that helps answer your question.

Great thanks to MikeT707 for his above detailing of these limiting default MSFS EcoRegion.

For the first time, this explains to me the why it seems so hard to get realistic Alpine Fall season golden larches to show.

The first versions of MSFS2020 showed yellow conifers (larches) e.g. in the Engadin valley (St. Moritz, LSZS), now I don't get this anymore and missing it sadly.

Quite some time ago I led a long discussion with Bijan on this subject, but also his experiments didn't succeed.

These impressive golden Fall colors at elevations >1500m above sealevel must also be missing all over the Rockies etc.

Hope, default MSFS or Rex AccuSeason can improve that in the near future.

 

Rex Seasons received an update today.   

Quote

• Version 6.0.20230322           March 24, 2023

   

  ADDED – New spring presets Beginnings and Renewal.
  ADDED - Updated all presets with latest improvements to support Microsoft Flight Simulator Sim Update 12.
  FIXED – August automated and manual presets not being installed properly.

28 minutes ago, Waldo Pepper said:

Rex Seasons received an update today.   

We have very recently released Build 6.1.2023.0322, which is a full version of REX AccuSeason. This requires an uninstall of all previous versions of REX AccuSeason before installing the latest update.

 

Here are the INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS: [Important Note: If you purchased from ORBX, the instructions below do not apply, rather, please download the latest update via ORBX Central.]

1.) Uninstall all previous versions of the product.

2.) Remove all left over install folders.

3.) Create a “TEMP” folder on your desktop.

4.) Click the download link below and download the file into the “TEMP” folder you created on your desktop.

5.) Use WinZip or 7Zip (Do not use Windows UnZip) to unzip the installer files.

6.) Right click on the rexinstaller.exe and select “Run As Administrator” to start the installation process.

DOWNLOAD FILE:
https://1955140993.rsc.cdn77.org/zipfiles/6.1.2023.0322/rexaccuseason_20230322.zip

 

The main features included are two new presets for spring called Beginnings and Renewal. We also fixed a bug that was causing August weekly presets to not display, and we updated all presets to be compatible with the latest MSFS Build 1.31.22.0

The New Presets

The description for Beginnings is: New spring vegetation is just beginning to emerge from mostly dormant winter trees.

 

The description for Renewal is: New spring vegetation continues to emerge and overtake dormant winter trees.

Whats about having REX purchased and installed via ORBX? Does their installer take care of everything or do we also need to uninstall and reinstall there?

1 hour ago, AnkH said:

Whats about having REX purchased and installed via ORBX? Does their installer take care of everything or do we also need to uninstall and reinstall there?

Thank you for your question.  The ORBX installer handles everything, so you do not need to use our link provided.

36 minutes ago, rstough said:

Thank you for your question.  The ORBX installer handles everything, so you do not need to use our link provided.

Hmmm.... No update option for me in ORBX Central and my REX Accuseason says that the version 6.1.2022.0614 is the latest and no newer versions available. 

Edited March 24, 20233 yr by Virtpilot

I guess we have to wait some more hours for ORBX to ready up the update

A bit off topic... does this add-on work with photogrammetry tuned OFF? Thx

My version 6.1.2022.0614 said there were no updates yet I installed the downloaded version and now I have the new one. Maybe you should look again tomorrow

2 minutes ago, SN737 said:

A bit off topic... does this add-on work with photogrammetry tuned OFF? Thx

Yes, it does.

1 minute ago, StoneDoor said:

Yes, it does.

thank you. For the ones like me that want to try (buy) this one, it's on sale in orbx.