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Freeware enhancements...trees and clouds

OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
Are there any freeware enhancements for FSX that improve the clouds and that reduce the size of the stock trees? Those giant trees at the end of the runways are a real kill joy.

OBIO
 
Those giant trees at the end of the runways are a real kill joy.
I don't know if they're any worse than the tiny houses that are the size of a cessna... MS Flight desperately needs to make the scale of things more realistic.
 
For those tree at the ends of the runways, I use Lumberjack. I have read that Pablo Diaz's clouds will work in FSX, but I have not tried them.
 
OBIO, I don't know anything for the autogen trees, but usually people use Lumberjack utility to remove those at the end of a runway.

Concerning the clouds, you have two choices:

- the most famous is the HDE package from Pablo Diaz. It was made for FS9, but the cloud textures will work with FSX. The sky textures will NOT work, but there is an alternative package made by somebody who converted Pablo's sky textures to make them FSX compatible. Search on flightsim.com or avsim.com, using Pablo's name.

- the other alternative for clouds is to use FS SkyWorld 2004, which was also made for FS9. Just like Pablo's package, the sky textures will not work, so don't try to install them. The cumulus textures will work fine, but you'll have to use the FS Skyworld installer, don't try to transfer the texture files directly, they are not in the correct format (the installer modifies them, just tell it to install in a dummy folder). Compared to HDE clouds, the resolution is smaller (and easier with FPS, but still beautiful), but you have much more choice (HDE has only one set of clouds).

Remember, DO NOT INSTALL THE SKY TEXTURES, ONLY THE CLOUDS.
 
I have Pablo Diaz's HDE V2 clouds dropped into FSX and the FSX-tweaked version of his Sky Colors. Mega improvements!

I have tracked down the texture files for the FSX trees...and boy are there a lot of them! I will try (emphasize TRY) to give them the same treatment that FengZ gave to the FS9 autogen trees. I am working on one texture sheet of trees now, making them 20% smaller in each axis. Will take quite a while to get all the tree sheets reworked....and not really sure how well the final result will be...but if they are close to Feng's TreeGen in that they reduce the frame rate hit caused by the autogen trees and reduce the size of the stock GIANT TREES, all will be well.

To give you an idea of what I have ahead of me, FS9 only uses 5 texture sheets to cover all of the autogen trees. FSX uses 181 sheets to cover all the trees and vegetation. Not sure how many of those 181 I have to rework, but I am sure it will be a lot more than 5.

OBIO
 
On second thought.....

I took a look at the 181 tree and vegetation files...and I would have to rework nearly all of them. Too big of a job to dive into. I suppose I will just have to live with the giant trees.

OBIO
 
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