Simviation Forums

Goodly afternoon all...

Yes...still tweaking...

FSX and Windows 7
FSX Water Configurator...NOT ON
HDE Clouds
3D Lights
Aircraft:  Spartan Executive
Location:  Midland/Huronia Airport "CYEE" Ontario, Canada
Scenery:  Freeware from "Home of Flight Ontario"
Payware:  Ultimate Terrain X Canada
                Ground Environment X USA  Canada  Alaska
From Flight 1 Software
Lots of Great Freeware right here at Simviation Downloads...
Season:  Fall and early evening...

Ready to rumble into the evening sky...


Flaps going up...should be a beautiful evening flight...


Looking for the house...


Trees?  What Trees?  Oh the trees on your side...



Comments and Advice most welcome...

Gorgeous shots. 8-)

Great shots Doug. #2 is absolutely gorgeous and is one of your best ever.

Those shots are on a totally new level !
Very impressive Doug, all of these are looking really good.
And...  I love that plane ! 

Heres my tuppence worth...for what its worth!!!

Your shots are good, your sky and water are superb, you obviously understand how to place the aircraft and use the light properly but the scenery lacks... something.

I notice this in a lot of FSX shots, amazing sky, amazing water, but the scenery just doesnt cut it somehow. Good bits but mixed with some odd bits. obviously this isnt a fault of yours but the limitations of the sim itself.

I look at real world photos and also when im out and about, the view from hills and so on... just what does 'our' world look like?

TBH it looks nothing like it does in the sim, wether its fs9 or FSX. Here in the UK we have the eternal 'haze' and visibility is never more than say 10-15 miles? Are we creating shots that look good in sim world or are we trying to create what may be considered life like and 'real'?

The way scenery shows in FSX puts me off trying to get it to run well. I dont know what it is, but theres these strange blurry bits, even in fly2e's shots, which are usualy brilliant, full of vibrant colour and visually stunning- but they are still there..!

Im not criticising or anything like that, just how i see it.

My rules are simple. If the scenery and the weather conditions 'look' real then i use them, or try to configure them to 'look' as real as i can. If the scenery doesnt, then use your strengths in the sim. Water and clouds. In Fs9, the water is obviously ruled out, as ive yet to find anything that makes it look as good as in FSX....

With a bit of easy fiddling with cloud bases and visibility the sky is easy to get 'real' , a decent aircraft can easily complete the image and fool the mind into thinking what it sees is 'real' and not a 'sim' - thats what i strive for and those odd bits in the scenery in FSX immediately

I see what you are trying to explain there.
Indeed there are some "easy traps" that can ruin the realism of your visuals in the sim. The lack of fog is one of them of course, and there are more examples.

However, there ARE some sceneries and textures that can make the sim look extremely realistic. Not only the photosceneries, but also some "generic" sceneries with excellent landclass (and mesh). Some of them will definitely boost the graphical realism, by giving some credibility/consistency to the scenery (usually ruined by rivers going up the hills, or repetitive ground textures, or out-of-place autogen, etc...).

Doug, I seriously recommend you to download and install the latest version of the OrbX PNW demo. It covers all of the Olympic peninsula which is immediately west of Seattle, and it's free of course It will DEFINITELY offer you some nice places to explore, bush-flying-style, including the terrific Bowerman airport.

Thanks for the Advice and Comments everyone, most appreciated.

Stephane "Daube" thanks again for taking the time to work this out with me through e-mails etc.

Have just downloaded that Free Demo so will see how it works...

beautiful shots though......is there some kind of haze effect in sim or available?

Thanks "yancovitch" much appreciated....

Will have to let someone else answer your question about Haze in the Flight Simulator Programs as I do not know...

beautiful shots though......is there some kind of haze effect in sim or available?

Hi Yancovitch
What do you mean exactely ?

Perhaps you are referring to the lack of "fog" (almost unlimited visibility in the shots above), leading to a visibility distance that might not be that realistic. FSX and FS9 react exactely in the same way when it comes to weather. You can define some visibility layer in the advanced weather settings to limit the view distance to a more realistic value like 64 kms. This would bring some very nice "haze" effect while keeping the sky blue

HDE sky helps aswell.(there is a fsx updated version)
the sky above the horizon looks a bit hazy.
nice shots tough.

Hey this is great...some of us are learning something new here...

Thanks folks...much appreciated...