Making FS9 Look Great For Free Version 2

Your 'two pence' is worth a mint...

"May I suggest a sub-forum for this, freeware gems and other nugets/goldmines of information, hence they won't get lost in the depths. FSX forum has 3 sub forums for looks/tweaking." Jamie (JDTinballs)

"Just my two pence, but I think this needs to be a permanent sticky. Too much good info in here to let it slide back to page 7 (where I found it) or farther." Willy

Couple of the most profound recommendations I've heard here lately, fellas. Willy, Being Senior Admin here, use your influence. This is all major stuff for any new and notsonewbies joining SOH!

Same could be said of Tom Clayton's 'freeware gems' thread; spiral dive to page five...

Good show Willy. :salute:
 
'roll your own'

T Square said:
Got a question that for you Guys and Gals can anyone recommend a good Envmap file or explain how to tweak it, in particular one that would make the aircraft reflections a bit more realistic ?
Click to expand...

T Square - making your own envmap file is a cinche! And its more fun if your using your own work!
Simply jump into FS, set up a nice piece of scenery, make a screenshot and convert this to a 512 x 512 - 32 bitmap . Pop it into main FS texture folder and you're in business. Don't worry about DXT-ing etc. - no need to! Leave it as is.
Experiment until you come up with something that really puts the polish on your bare metal aicraft.
And get up there real close in FS to check out what happens to that metal.

Hint: Desert shots can have a hot effect (often used by airbrush illustrators on metal bike chrome and soforth). Try and get the sun in there somewhere too!

Here's a bit of messing around I was doing a couple of days ago...

View attachment 32889

Hope it helps...:salute:
 
I just asked the powers-that-be for our very own sub-forum to keep the Freeware Gems thread and this one in.

OBIO
 
Obio,

that's a great idea, wish I'd thought of that, lol.

I saw you'd posted and wondered if the next tip was to 'get a honking stonking rig', job done as they say. :d

Jamie
 
OBIO said:
I just asked the powers-that-be for our very own sub-forum to keep the Freeware Gems thread and this one in.

OBIO
Click to expand...


:wiggle:

Good work Obio! All these HU's can then stay upfront, where they belong.

If they're in a 'generous' mode...oops mood, reckon they'd agree to a 'loony's corner', 'wind-up page' or 'crazy column' where wacos like me could spend all day writing about night camouflage, 'special ops' Chinooks and the like?
 
Now, more on envirmaps...

View attachment 32944View attachment 32945View attachment 32946View attachment 32947

As there's probably some pretty heavy metal on your aircraft list, give them the justice they truly deserve...even 'improperliners'!
I cooked up the above 'desert' envirmap for these shots. Hope it gets you guys 'rollin your own'...


Obio's idea on multiple FS installs makes sense. Rolled my sleeves up today on a second install and now have one for civil, one for military. And now I also have different sets of clouds, water and autogen. Just love having the variety. All my addon scenery is on my slave disk, so all i had to do was the 'add area' part. Cinche!
It seems like I'm getting better frame rates now, too. Can't be bad!
Obio, that's a few kegs of the good stuff I owe you. Thanks!

I think it was Willy who mentioned tall autogen trees...well you can simply reduce them in size e.g. if the're 512x512bits, simply reduce them to 256x256bits! (just don't forget to reduce the masks too, then DXT). A second benefit will be seen next time you fly over forest.
Now give yourself a pat on the back. you've just tricked FS into giving you twice as many trees! :wiggle: But you cleverdicks knew that, didn't you?
 
I think it was Willy who mentioned tall autogen trees...well you can simply reduce them in size e.g. if the're 512x512bits, simply reduce them to 256x256bits! (just don't forget to reduce the masks too, then DXT). A second benefit will be seen next time you fly over forest. You've just tricked FS into giving you twice as many trees! :wiggle: But you cleverdicks knew that, didn't you?
Click to expand...

Lately, I've came to the conclusion that into every life a few Mexican Jumping Redwoods must come and one should just learn to deal with them.
 
No new packages to suggest yet...

But, I took two sceen shots to show Deb the difference between Box Stock FS9 and my Modified FS9. The difference is quite striking....and to think that this modification has cost me nothing but time. Alpnach, August 7, 12 noon, cold fronts, Cessna 172 in both pics. Same sim place, same sim time. Totally different results.

OBIO
 
something I lke the looks off

http://www.fs2000.org/index.php/download/doc_details/8619--fs2004-more-waves-ii



View attachment 51178



Also like the changes to the night skys with this


MyFsStars increases the number of stars shown at night in Flight Simulator 2004 and also gives a more realistic view with adjusted brightness values. Optionally and "just for fun", constellation lines can be drawn as well.
Click to expand...


View attachment 51179





found about half way down here

http://www.elbiah.de/flusi/
 
Here's one that I have to add to this thread:

realterr.zip by Sascha Peiger over at Flightsim.com. Total replacement for those butt ugly stock airport grass surrounds. This package is well worth the download time...which is not long at all.

OBIO
 
Just found another free enhancement that is worth adding to our installs. It is a revamped set of VC Rain textures by Joe Binka. Found them on Flightsim.com. Really makes the VC rain effect more visible and more realistic. The rain drops are the same size, just more visible.

vcrain.zip is the name of the package.

OBIO
 
A couple posts up, norab recommends a package called MyFSStars. It is well worth downloading and installing....and it's a very easy install. Just one file to copy into your installs. And the results are amazing. The night sky has never looked better. I just completed a flight from Columbus, Indiana to Mansfield, Ohio in the freeware CLS Piper PA-28 and really enjoyed looking out at the star filled sky. Not sure how much you can see in these screen shots......I know that they did not show all the stars that were visible on my monitor.

View attachment 53711

And in the post above I mentioned the tweaked VC rain effects package by Joe Binka. It rocks!

View attachment 53712

Was a great flight...one of my first longish night flights (nearly 1 hour and 45 minutes). And I actually pulled off a successful landing and taxi to parking at KMFD (Mansfield Lahm Regional...my home airport).

OBIO
 
making fs9 look good

I've found this post but can't see a link to the article..I had it before and it worked great could someone post a link to this article Thank You
 
Great document.

Late starter here, only just picked up fs9, but it seems like the right choice for my low end laptop! The addons described here are a great starting point for someone late to the game like myself, the shear volume of files available after all of these years is pretty overwhelming, which is not a bad thing ;)

Thanks for the good work!
 
Tom Clayton said:
Since you're new to FS9, I'm guessing you might not have the 9.1 update. It was released by MS to correct a number of issues involving both performance and missing scenery. Run this installer as soon as you can before you go adding too much to your sim:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=9727
Click to expand...

Great, thanks Tom, I've gone and done that. Still haven't added things, doing my reading before I go and get confused.

Just a quick questions however. I understand scenery can be added from an outside location (ie. I have a separate partition I'd like to keep all of that stuff on, however with addons such as mesh, clouds and sun etc, it seems I have no choice but to overwrite the stock files. Would this be a correct statement?

I've already made a backup of the stock installation folder in case I mess things up, but seens as I'm new to the game I can see myself experimenting with various textures and addons and was wondering if there is a simpler more non destructive way of say, using 3rd party mesh replacements. Maybe I'm over thinking.
 
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