Really dumb weather question

[_486_Col_Wolf]

Does anyone know if there's a D/L for ETO winter ground textures. And is there a way to make CFS2 recognize the date either in campaigns, single missions and/or Mission Builder to automatically put snow on the ground in the winter and green in the summer?

 

[msfossey]

Stiz has done a set of textures for CFS2. Also, Simonu has a winter texture set done for CFS2. They should be here at the SOH. Not sure if they are for a stock version or if they were done for a modified landclass version of Europe. I don't believe there has been a utility to change the ground textures per season automatically. However, once you have a set of textures you like they can be changed out by cut/paste in about 10 seconds.

Hope this helps,

msfossey

 

[_486_Col_Wolf]

Thanks MS. I checked and I do have the winter textures that came with cfs2_eurw_LC_su_BETA4. I guess you have to manually change them. Would be nice though if CFS2 would recognize the date set in the missions or campaigns and set them for you.

 

[Rami]

Reply...

486_Col_Wolf,

CFS2 does not recognize the date and adjust accordingly, but remember that CFS2 was originally designed as more-or-less a tropical Pacific sim, I don't think they ever thought we'd push the envelope like this. In addition to the lack of seasonal recognition with textures, I've also recognized that CFS2 does not associate the time of year with the changing amount of daylight and darkness, AND the difference in daylight length with relation to latitude.

In the "Blitz" missions that I'm doing, I'm having to do the missions much later in the evening than they should be, just so I can achieve the darkness required to make the missions work.

 

[_486_Col_Wolf]

I hadn't even thought of the daylight change in seasons! Probably wouldn't change temperature either in seasons. But at least that you can do manually in mission builder. As I recall, CFS1 didn't change the ground tes=xture for snow either in winter. But I thought I remembered there being someting called CFOWeather utility for it. Maybe it can be adapted.... Anyone got any ideas?

 

[Jagdflieger]

Seasonal Textures by Rhumbaflappy

You can replace the rain with snow in CFS 2, but it doesn't stick to the planes or the ground. You've got to use textur files for that.

Rhumbaflappy made a great set of seasonal textures with instructions on how to turn each season on an off through the scenery library so that you can have five seasonal textures available to you in one installation.

Works a treat! Search for: dvs2fa, cfs2hw; cfs2sp, cfs2su; and cfs2wi.zip

Some Screen shots:

 

[Robert John]

Hi I have use these textures often and used a .bat file to change file names.
We need a snow artist to cover our airports with snow and put snow on leafless trees.
I use .bat files alo,t but I do belive the loading times are longer, but looking on how to keep them out of the game folder.
Robert John.

 

[_486_Col_Wolf]

Jagd,

I think I have most of those textures in my install. But I was hoping to find a way to make them change automatically from one mission in a campaign to the next based on date. But here's a crazy thought. Once you install the ETO, Mission Builder adds the ETO to it's dropdown list for area of operations when writing a new mission. What if you made a duplicate ETO area of operations called ETO/winter with only winter textures and selected it as the area of operations for specific winter month missions. Then put your missions together in a campaign in date order with summer month missions and winter month missions but each written in its appropriate area of operations, either ETO/summer or ETO/winter. Someting in my mind says this is oversimplified and will not work but hey, you never know.

 

[Robert John]

Hi
If you downlod the second cfs2 magazine, it has informtion on how to have many cfg files and force diffrent gsl files, in the first issue it talkes about bat files and how thy can be used.

http://thefreeflightsite.com/CFS2_Magazine.htm.

hope this helps.
RJ

 

[sc7500]

Ah HA !!!

See Colonel ?

There really ISN'T any such thing as a Dumb Question.

Just answers waiting to be discovered....
SC

 

[Robert John]

Hi
It may be in issue 1, I think I need to make indexes in each issues.
RJ

 

[Cody Coyote]

What if you made a duplicate ETO area of operations called ETO/winter with only winter textures and selected it as the area of operations for specific winter month missions. Then put your missions together in a campaign in date order with summer month missions and winter month missions but each written in its appropriate area of operations, either ETO/summer or ETO/winter.

That sounds great, but I think the problem with it is that an operating area is just a set of coordinates, a grid of sorts, that defines an area of the CFS2 world, kind of like drawing a box on a paper map. It isn't linked to scenery or any other files. It's real purpose seems to be to help you organize the CFS2 world within Mission Builder. I think for what you want to work, you would need something in the mission file itself that somehow activated and deactivated sceneries. I don't know that that has ever been tried and doubt CFS2 could work like that.

 

[_486_Col_Wolf]

I guess it's something one of the scenery wizards may one day find or write a utility for. Thanks guys. And SC, with all those willing to help here at SOH, you're right!! No one here ever makes you feel like you have a dumb question.

 

[kdriver]

In the case of Sander de Cocq's European West scenery, rather than having the ground textures in the SCENEDB\world folder, you are instructed to install the ground textures in the EurW Landclass layer as well as the main TEXTURE folder. Sander's scenery only covers southern Norway to the north. This means you won't be able to have a snowbound landscape for operations in northern Norway.

Once again, the problem can be solved by turning scenery layers on and off or using batch files.

 

[Jagdflieger]

With multiple installations, I generally keep the "Ostfront" in Russia textured with winter textures, the European theater set with summer textures and the Spanish Civil War installation covered in the fall textures to replicate the more arid climate there.

This approach takes up a lot of hard drive space, but most newer computers have enough of that now.