Hello people, Because of the desert like textures during the fall season I shifted my flying towards Australia. Since it is spring there at the moment I figured I would encounter nice and fresh green texturing. This was correct, up untill December 1st. See the two shots below and you'll understand the unpleasant surprise I encountered; the first is taken on the last day of November. And what a different world I see in the second shot, taken the first day of December. Australia dried up overnight! This is with a fresh FSX installation with SP1, not a single addon installed. Why is there such a dramatic texture change within a single season, since November 30th and December 1st are both within the season spring? And is there something that I can do about it?http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/181502.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/181503.jpg

Hello Bert,seasonal changes in FSX are based on a file that uses the twelve months of a year to assign a specific season to a specific location. Changes always occur on the first day of a month, which explains why something changed on Dec 1.What is odd, however, is that FSX uses a very convoluted system of assigning seasons in the southern hemisphere. While the seasons file itself shows the proper reversal of seasons (in comparison to the northern hemishpere) the texture variants called aren't actually those for the season specified. For example, during the Australian summer FSX displays the fall textures, which are those very dry looking variants in your second screenshot. Summer textures are shown in spring and winter, etc. I assume this has to do with the fact that not all textures are unique to Australia (some are from Region B, North America) so they had to match northern with southern hemisperic textures. Solutions? Don't use real time but rather select a month that better fits your expectations. Or switch around (rename) ground textures using one of the available land class spreadsheets (probably not easy to do given the mix-and-match of different regions mentioned above). Or wait for FT-X, which will provide Australian regions with custom textures and seasons files.Cheers, Holger

Being in the midst of one of the worst droughts in history, I'd say that looks pretty correct, however we did get some rain in Melbourne yesterday!David

You should call the folks out in Seattle and get them to send you some rain, they are having a flood at the moment :->

Hi Tim,Wow that would be nice. I heard somewhere that it rains 300 days/yr in Seattle - is that true? (Sorry for getting off topic a bit)David

In theory you could create 365 season files, and submit the desired one prior to starting FSX to get desired coverage. You could also connect to some data source and update the season files based on rw current data. The US national snow & ice data center provides snow coverage for the northern hemisphere, with a couple day lag. Beyond that you would need some sort of climate/weather model that would predict drought/rainy or mean temps and swap seasons accordingly. scott s..

Here is a shot ...

Thanx for your replies folks!Holger, that's a plain and clear explanation. So now, if I fly with the actual date, I'll have fall textures in Europe, the United States and even in Australia. Bummer. One thing I don't understand however. The first day of December is still spring according to the 'time and season' menu. That doesn't add up to your statement seasonal changes occur on the first day of a month. The time and season menu switches to summer on December 21st. How come?For now I'll leave the date to November 30th, because like so many others I really dislike the fall textures. And yes, I'm eagerly awaiting the release of the first Flight Terrain X pack ;)

Well, I'm sitting in NSW Oz and the first day of Summer is December 1st (although it has rained this week). :)

In real life, seasons are defined (datewise) slightly differently in different parts of the world. It will be almost impossible to get seasonal textures 100% unless we start using something like daily updated photo real scenery. Where I live in OZ we are getting heaps of rain right now so everything is green but 100 miles away it's dry & looks much browner. In the intrim for those who like flying in Australia go & grab VOZ scenery which will make OZ look a lot better, it's free. Be advised that VOZ is a FS9 product & the FSX version is yet to be released. In my opinion the Australian seasonal changes in default FSX are a bit excessive, with too much of that yellowish stuff, but once VOZ release their new textures & scenery I'm sure things will look more real.Oh, in Australia our summer officially starts December 1st, so maybe FSX does know when our downunder seasons change.DP1

When I was in Vancouver BC ( not far from Seattle ) last winter it had been raining for 34 days strait!I would also say those Australian Textures for summer are really close. I'm from the Geelong area and summers turns everything a dry brown!

Hi DPI,"In the intrim for those who like flying in Australia go & grab VOZ scenery which will make OZ look a lot better, it's free."Any chance of a link to the VOZ free download site? I still use my FS9, which now flies beautifully with this updated rig for FSX.The terrain around Mount Mee here, is the greenest I've seen in ages but until http://orbxsystems.com/ release their new QLD scenery in 2008, there is no choice in FSX but to manually select Spring.