muddy Mississppi River

[X_eidos2]

A quick question.

I'm getting ready to use FS2k2 to make a little computer movie about my first flight, which was in a DC-7 in 1958.

One of the scenes will involve flying over the Mississippi river.

My question: If I want to change the Mississppi from blue to muddy brown - is that a simple matter of changing a few water textures- or will it be more complex than that ?

[ozzy72]

You have to just alter the river texture in the main textures folder, however it means all your rivers will take on the same interesting glutinous look

Ozzy

[X_eidos2]

Thanks, that's the answer I was hoping for.

[X_eidos2]

I changed every texture file that remotely looked like it had blue water in the main texture file - and no joy with muddy water.

[X_eidos2]

I think I've found the answer to my own problem.

The files I need to change are 003b2wa1 and 002b2wa1 located at FS2002/scenedb/world/texture.

These supposedly change all the inland water textures.

I'd be testing it now but my brand new graphics card isn't being recognized by FS2002. Aaagh.

[JBaymore]

That brand new graphics card wouldn't be a 256 Meg on that uses Nvidea drivers, would it?

best,

....................john

[X_eidos2]

The video card is a Inno3d Nvidia GeForce4 MX PCI video card with 128 MB.

Here's how the muddy Mississippi turned out.



Much more believeable don't you think?

You don't see all the gray hairs I'm getting from uninstalling and reinstalling software do you.

[ozzy72]

That looks pretty realistic

[DanielF]

Yeah, it looks great!  :o   I wonder if there's a way to add a texture so muddy rivers can look muddy like that without changing blue rivers...

[Craig.]

strange question, but where was that pic taken?? looks alot like a section of the mississippi, on the finals for runway 18 in memphis. i am prob wrong but it has that distinct island split
also is this going to be available for download

[X_eidos2]

The screen shot was taken after slewing the aircraft to a spot close to the Mississippi. I didn't take notes so I can't be sure of the exact location. I do remember seeing a big blue pyramid (sp?) along the river and thinking' "I've not seen that before." It's been ages since I last drove through Memphis so it's possible there are a few new landmark there that I don't know about.

I had no plans of making these modified files a download. I thought it was good enough to post where to find them.

[Craig.]

then yes it was memphis:) the pyramid, my fav arena, so that must be the approach to 18 in mem

[MattNW]

Hey, that does look like the Mississippi. I don't think there's a way to change only one river though so all your rivers will look exactly like miniature copies of the Mississippi but if you toned down the muddiness a little bit then I think you'll have a pretty good general river texture. Almost all rivers look a little muddy from the air because if they aren't muddy to begin with then you are looking through clear water at a muddy river bottom. They each have a different tone but the FS rivers have never looked as realistic as they could because of the ultra blue color.

It might be worth playing around with. If you find a color that works for a decent trade off between muddy rivers and clear rivers with muddy bottoms, then I'm sure a lot of people would be interested if you made it available online.

Some green added in would help some to simulate algea (sp).

[rhumbaflappy]

The entire world's water is controlled by worldwc.bgl... the world's waterclass file.

A new waterclass file can be made which will can display custom colors for only the type and area covered. The BGL  is quite similar to landclass and can easily be generated with Ground2K, by Christian Fumey.

The trick to customise the water is to use only one waterclass designation... say value #11 ( with #254 transparent for the rest of the colors ), and then pair that waterclass BGL with a new color for #11. That is accomplished by placing the BGL into a local scenery folder, and the texture into a local texture folder.

Normally, you would NOT have a texture folder with either landclass or waterclass, but it is allowed if ALL the texture colors used in the BGL are present in the texture folder.

If you use 5 waterclass values, then you must have the 5 customised textures in the local texture folder.

This will work in FS2004.... it doesn't seem to work in FS2002 or CFS2 ( but it should work? ).

In this way, a river or lake can be colored quite easily. Here's a pic of some water in FS2004... with reflections off so it can be better seen.







Dick

[X_eidos2]

Thanks for that detailed how-to.
I'll copy that into my folder of scenery tips.

But I only have FS2002 right now, and since the Mississippi scene in the movie is only a few seconds long, it'll be far easier just to swap out texture files.
That's one of the charms about making movies instead of adventures-you can start and stop the action whenever you need to.

But if I ever make a scenery file for FSCOF, this will certainly be good to know. Thanks for taking the time to make the screen shot too.