VLC does it for me.

[Olderndirt]

Now that my ducks appear to be in a reasonable row, I'm finding VLC more fun without airplanes to detract. Here's Manapouri again - sans aeroplane.



This is the float pond at the summit of Ruhapehu.

[Ian Warren]

Come on in Dave , you really love New Zealand , the best scenery , food , airshows and the Flightsim community

[Adamski]

Dave ... or anyone ... please explain to me what FSX does as regards scenery/seasons (!!).

My textures have recently switched to autumn/fall as our NZ summer is now (apparently) over and I have my FSX set to local NZ time/latitude/longitude.

If Dave has his FSX set to *his* local conditions (ie. spring/N. hemisphere <?>), does FSX automatically pick up the autumn textures when he's beamed himself over to NZ for a VLC shoot-out? I ask this, as the pics above look a lot greener than mine, at the moment.

[Ian Warren]

And the skies are bluer ... an edit and next in paradise

[Splitpin]

as ive said before Dave...your a virtual landscape artist.....beautiful

[connor]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Apr 17 2011,3:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

My textures have recently switched to autumn/fall as our NZ summer is now (apparently) . . .

Definitely over in Christchurch, it is raining like there is no tomorrow, (not because Ken Ring has predicted an earthquake tomorrow) and snow is forecast down to 500 meters!

All these VLC screens are making me envious. I know I should just buy it, but I have a mother who is restricting me spending my money on FS, and I have a knack for getting into expensive hobbies (eg; Photography and Archery). Catch 22!

Still I'd rather waist, I mean spend my money on expensive hobbies than all the other money traps out there.

[toprob]

As someone who doesn't always need aircraft cluttering up the shot, it's good to see a convert to landscape photography!
Adamski -- Although when seasonal changes occur can be edited, FSX itself bases our 'Autumn' on the North American spring -- which is the equinox. I think the 'official' NZ autumn starts 1st March, but FSX always shows it as around 22nd March, from memory. However what seasonal textures you see in a particular place will depend on a seasons.bgl file. I think that anyone would see the same season texture choice at a particular time/place, so any differences are due to something else -- in this case, a slightly difference texture set.

[Adamski]

QUOTE (toprob @ Apr 17 2011,6:05 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As someone who doesn't always need aircraft cluttering up the shot, it's good to see a convert to landscape photography!
Adamski -- Although when seasonal changes occur can be edited, FSX itself bases our 'Autumn' on the North American spring -- which is the equinox. I think the 'official' NZ autumn starts 1st March, but FSX always shows it as around 22nd March, from memory. However what seasonal textures you see in a particular place will depend on a seasons.bgl file. I think that anyone would see the same season texture choice at a particular time/place, so any differences are due to something else -- in this case, a slightly difference texture set.

Thanks for the info, Rob. I've often wondered. So basically what you're saying is that Dave will be seeing "Spring" textures when currently in NZ? As his global texture set will be set to N. American Spring?

[Naki]

QUOTE (Olderndirt @ Apr 17 2011,1:33 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is the float pond at the summit of Ruhapehu.

Nice pics...you might be pushing to get a floatplane in there...and even if you did the floats woiuld probbaly melt!..latest temp (its on upwards temp rise again heading for another eruption perhaps) is 40 degree scelcius (100 farenheit)....hmmm now I wonder if I can get my Birddog floater in there!

[toprob]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Apr 17 2011,7:18 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for the info, Rob. I've often wondered. So basically what you're saying is that Dave will be seeing "Spring" textures when currently in NZ? As his global texture set will be set to N. American Spring?

No, he'll be seeing autumn, as this would be controlled by VLC's Seasons file. The difference you see is simply that Dave has non-default textures.

[Adamski]

QUOTE (toprob @ Apr 17 2011,8:18 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No, he'll be seeing autumn, as this would be controlled by VLC's Seasons file. The difference you see is simply that Dave has non-default textures.

OK ... great. Sorry to labour his one, though (I'm senile, don't forget!!) ... is VLC "more advanced" in that respect? I mean if a user in the current N.American timezone goes to a default NZ location (ie. without VLC) they would be seeing the wrong season textures?

[Splitpin]

QUOTE (connor @ Apr 17 2011,5:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Definitely over in Christchurch, it is raining like there is no tomorrow, (not because Ken Ring has predicted an earthquake tomorrow) and snow is forecast down to 500 meters!

All these VLC screens are making me envious. I know I should just buy it, but I have a mother who is restricting me spending my money on FS, and I have a knack for getting into expensive hobbies (eg; Photography and Archery). Catch 22!

Still I'd rather waist, I mean spend my money on expensive hobbies than all the other money traps out there.

Conner....flight sim is good.....listin to my voice......flight sim is good....you need VLC, man, look at all the work you are doing with NZCH!!!...you need it dude.
Photography and Archery can wait untill you retire.......i really need to talk to your mum

QUOTE (Adamski @ Apr 17 2011,9:03 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OK ... great. Sorry to labour his one, though (I'm seile, don't forget!!) ... is VLC "more advanced" in that respect? I mean if a user in the current N.American timezone goes to a default NZ location (ie. without VLC) they would be seeing the wrong season textures?

Stop asking Rob silly questions....and go to bed....silly old bra guy.

[morrisman1]

speaking of Manapouri, I saw the tower there and it reminded me of a silly bug in FSX. There shouldn't even be a tower there and the FSX ATC (not that I ever use it anymore now I know how daft and unrealistic it is) thinks that Invercargill tower is in command of NZMO. Weird. The runway is also about twice as wide as it is in real life.

[Olderndirt]

QUOTE (morrisman1 @ Apr 17 2011,2:11 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

speaking of Manapouri, I saw the tower there and it reminded me of a silly bug in FSX. There shouldn't even be a tower there and the FSX ATC (not that I ever use it anymore now I know how daft and unrealistic it is) thinks that Invercargill tower is in command of NZMO. Weird. The runway is also about twice as wide as it is in real life.

[Olderndirt]

Hey Adamski
If this helps, my FSX using VLC is seasonally Fall but local time is PDT and, as you well know, there're lots of ways besides rain to make things greener .

[toprob]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Apr 17 2011,9:03 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OK ... great. Sorry to labour his one, though (I'm senile, don't forget!!) ... is VLC "more advanced" in that respect? I mean if a user in the current N.American timezone goes to a default NZ location (ie. without VLC) they would be seeing the wrong season textures?

I think the confusion is down to the way you assume that FSX handles textures. It's difficult to explain because of the different perceptions of how it works, so here's my FSX seasons 101. I'm no expert on seasons, so anyone who knows better feel free to clarify or correct...

FSX has a set of ground textures, some of which have different seasonal variations. These textures normally have a file name made up of a 3 digit number, a world zone, the digit '2' for some reason, then a seasonal code, an lastly a variation number to make up a set.
So a typical ground texture file name might be 040b2fa8.bmp, where:
040 is a set name;
'b' is a zone;
'2' is, um something else;
'fa' is a seasonal variation, in this case 'fall'.
'8' is the eighth texture in the set.

Now I didn't include this to complicate matters, so don't worry about coming to terms with that, it's just there to show what 'choices' FSX has to display a specific texture.

Now all these textures are always available to FSX, FSX doesn't globally 'switch' texture sets at the change of a season, for example. By this, I mean it doesn't wake up on the first day of spring and think 'hey, time to replace all my textures with a different set' and then proceed to shift files around.

If you fly south from the northern hemisphere through the equator, you may -- and probably will -- see the adjacent textures which use the same texture set (because they use the same landclass) change to a different seasonal variation.

So, what determines how FSX knows which season to display for any one texture? This is controlled by a 'seasons' scenery file, which looks a bit like this:

...if you were to visualise the file as a colour-coded bitmap of the world -- which you can handily do using TMFViewer. New Zealand doesn't show clearly, but you can see Australia in the bottom right corner as a red blob.
Now this represents the month of March, and this can change for every other month. For example, here's September:


White represents Hard Winter;
Grey represents Mild Winter;
Red represents Autumn;
Green is Summer;
Yellow is Spring.

As you can see, this doesn't really divide the world into seasons, it divides it into what Microsoft consider an appropriate season texture choice for each month. So when FSX says 'Spring', that's just for your information, it doesn't change much internally, the 'seasons' file does that. And contrary to popular belief, there is no setting in FSX which affects the seasons based on location.
Of course seasonal autogen is a bit different, and we won't get into that here...

Now this is the default global seasons file, you can make your own, and you can make them better and more fine-tuned, and Tim has done this with VLC.

So now you should understand that if you take off on a nice summer's day in the northern hemisphere and fly to New Zealand, it will look and feel like winter -- kind of like today really, even though it's autumn....

[Adamski]

Fantastic, Rob. *Very* interesting!! Thanks for the lengthy explanation - much appreciated!!!

I know there's a tendency to "knock" some of the things we hate about MSFS, but you have to admit - some of this is damn' clever. That's not to say scenery add-on designers like yourself (and the VLC team) aren't clever!!

[Naki]

I got it in...but can't fly it out...the edges of the lake are too tall ..maybe something with more grunt like a Turbo Porter would of worked

[Ian Warren]

Paul .. what were you thinking ... jeezzzz do that ya die Virtually tho