When is Winter and when does it snow?

falcon409

falcon409

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Staff member
I have a dilemma. Yesterday I spent the entire day making a snow covered seasonal texture for every scenery I've done in the last 8 months (about 10 or so). I always shied away from winter textures (snow covered) because I could never figure out a technique that looked convincing and as usual no one seems to want to give up the ghost so-to-speak to suggest how it's done. Anyway, I found a technique that looks ok in the sim and went with it. So yesterday everything was snow covered using the months of January and February and I was able to easily see how my work fit in with the default snow season. Late last night I ran the "hotfix" for 2.5 and since that time I have "No Snow Seasons". . . .December thru March and I get nothing. . .just dead trees. . .no snow. According to the SDK and the ini file for SbuilderX the winter months are "December, February, March" and Hard Winter is "January". So what's going on here? When is Winter (snow)?. . . .or what did the hotfix do to winter?
 
I see snow in January (P3Dv2.5.12943.0_Hotfix, Orbx FTX EU England). The other winter months do not have snow.
 
hschuit said:
I see snow in January (P3Dv2.5.12943.0_Hotfix, Orbx FTX EU England). The other winter months do not have snow.
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Yea, that's what I always thought too. . .January is hard winter and so I figured that was when the snow would show up. Yesterday I had snow in February, after the hotfix, now I have nothing regardless of what month I go to.
 
I believe the "hard winter" season varies from a region to another in the sim.
You won't get snow just because you set the time to January.

However, if you set the time to winter, and you select a meteo theme with snow, then the terrain will switch to snowy terrain. At least in FSX that was the case: I would set a theme like "winter wonderland" and then the terrain was white. And when the snow stops, the terrain switches back to normal winter textures. I haven't tried in P3D though...
 
Ditto what Daube said. In 2.4 I get a snowy landscape when I set the met conditions to snow (or FS Global Real Weather injects it).

Cheers,
Mark
 
Ok, I hear what ya'll are saying so here's the question:
In SBX, Hard Winter is January, so in the properties for "Seasons" I load the winter texture in that spot, I don't have a "Winter" (dead trees, dead ground) texture. Great. . .if it snows in March does the sim grab that hard winter texture and load it even though it was only loaded for January?
 
Most likely it will.
Have you tried creating a flight over there, selecting January or March, and a snowy weather theme ?
 
Hard winter textures will load when it snows but photo scenery will not. Photo scenery tiles can not be dynamic, they will only show during the month you will tell them to show when you compile the bgl. If for example it is March and the weather is snowy, all textures around your photo scenery will be white and yours will still be green. The autogen trees however, if you have annotated, will change to hard winter style.

Btw Ed I shared your sentiments about making snowy photo scenery and have also developed some techniques of my own in Photoshop. We can share them if you wish.
 
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