water textures location FSX

[oktorn777 0]

Hi all!This is my first post in this forum and I'm really looking forward to start with scenery design myself. The first thing I'd like to do is to make a new set of water textures for FSX. To start off I need to know the location and file names of the current water texture set, which I couldn't dig up. They don't seem to have the same name as in FS9. Any help is much appreciated.best regards,C.G.

[Guest JohnC]

I don't like the colors much , and I can't find them either. I suspect the water textures are folded into a bgl somewhere, so they can't be changed.

[oktorn777 0]

Thanks, I didn't think about that. If its compiled into a bgl-file is there a way to open it and than recompile? I wouldn't understand why they don't want us to change those textures. The tropical water looks very cartoonish and the inland water has very strange colours at times, than are the to main things I'd like to improve.cheers,C.G.

[Guest JohnC]

Look on scruffyduckscenery.com. There is a decompiler there (I think ) but I don't know much about it. Keep us posted. Also some discussion about it on scenerydesign.com. Now....... if you are interested in changing the colors of land locked water and close in shorelines, there is a mention of how to do this using photoreal water and a blend mask. One applica5tion would be whether muddy water from a ribver mouth runs into a blue lake....From the FSX SDK....Example 5: Multiple Source and Blend ChannelsThis example shows how to read the land/water mask and/or blend mask from separate files from the main color channels. The land/water mask only controls the location of water effects (such as reflections, specular highlights and animated swells) and has no effect on the base color of the texture. This enables the color of the source image to be preserved while still applying the water effects to it.You put down a photoreal image with water color you like, use an alpha mask to make landable wavy water, and a blend mask to make it more or less transparent. The more transparent, the more your color shows through....then you use the blend mask to fade your color into generic Microsoft colors.Don't try to remake the Pacific though.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

All ground and water textures are in the same directory as they were in previous versions: SceneryWorldTexture.Here are the water class values with their corresponding texture name:1

[oktorn777 0]

Thanks Luis!I will look into it.cheers,C.G.

[oktorn777 0]

Well I'm here with my first results for inland water (waterclass: 7,8,9,12).The location is somewhere in the middle of florida.fsx original 1xlow:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/175412.jpgnew textures 1xlow:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/175413.jpgfsx original 1xhigh:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/175415.jpgnew textures 1xhigh:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/175416.jpgfsx original 2xlow:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/175418.jpgnew textures 2xlow:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/175419.jpgAs Luis pointed out the different water effect settings, really make a big difference. I ran fsx without water effects for some time because of performance and was very annoyed how bad muddy inland water looked (much too green). But if you throw the water effects into the equation things look very different! With the 2x water effect (low, med or high doesn't matter here) muddy water looks even quite good. I didn't realise this before I started with this textures. So the question is, for which effect do I want to make a texture set? I think I'll stick with the 2x water effect setting, because on the 2xlow setting the performance drop ain't that big. What do you guys think?cheers,C.G.

[Guest JohnC]

I assume that you want to distribute this scenery? If you don't, and you want to run water effects at a lower number, perhaps you could consider archiving the (green) textures you don't like and swapping in the colors you think are more natural. I live in Central Florida in the winter and I vote for the second image as the one most like the ones I see. Up close, river waters are very, very clear (I think because of lime in the soil) but the bottom is covered with a green moss,). BTW, I think the waves are too big (last 2 images) for fresh water lakes and are more suitable for open ocean. I saw the German language on the screen so I assume you are not there to guess which ones are most realistic.I keep out of fresh water in Florida though unless I've lost a new 4 $ Titleist. Alligators are unpredictable.

[GaryGB 10]

Hi All:I have spent a good amount of time flying in amphibious aircraft and would like to pass on a suggestion about how to make all inland and shallower coastal waves look more realistic in FSX. ;) IMHO, the effect achieved by using Gerrit Kranenbarg's excellent "2x Water Effect small waves" (fsx2xwater.zip at AVSIM) is the most realistic wave and (associated light scatter) pattern I have seen in any version of FS yet; highly recommended!I haven't tested it with different water colors outside my usual flying areas yet, but I would be curious what others here could report about the effect when used in other areas and water classes such as are under discussion here?http://library.avsim.net/search.php?Search...=root&Go=Searchhttp://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=92813Hope this proves interesting to others as a base for further experimentation, so someone might come up with additional wave heights and specular effects we could use in combination with water class changes! :-sun1GaryGB

[oktorn777 0]

Thanks for your inputs guys!To get a realistic depiction of a specific lake, river or ocean there are three things that have to come together: correct water classification for a given area, good water textures that represent a certain class as good as possible (foremost the colour) and an appropriate wave effect.One of the biggest realism killer for me is that ms only provided one wave effect with the sim. The effect looks quite good for oceans, but is much too big for lakes and rivers.It would be very nice if there was a way to have at least 3 different kind of water surface effects for oceans, lakes and rivers. I don't know if it is possible in fsx.The other major problem for me is that the wave effect changes the colour of the water surface quite dramatically. The colour gets much, much more blue and light. So there is no way to produce a texture set which works for all effect settings (off, 1x, 2x).So I thought to stick with the 2x setting which probably most fsx users are using. But after some experimentation with different colours I must say that there seams to be no way to get the muddy colour of tropical rivers for example right, when the current 2x water effect is applied.I don't know how to alter the water effect. I have to look into that.And yes, I would like to make a free package available.best regards,C.G.