WATER REFLECTIONS

[beana51]

Water and the reflection of sun ,moon,lights on the Sim is a hit or miss thing in FS9,..for me at least...Question is..is there a program for this that gives realistic results?..This dramatic natural effect often eludes me...Any advice??...Thanx much!....Vin!!

[windrunner]

There's nothing we can do about that; if you already tried everything (different sets of water and weather environment; right settings in the sim allowing water reflections; a newer graphic card with the right settings), and nothing convinces you, it means the FS2004 graphic engine does not have the deepness and sharpness of the water world you can see in FSX.

I don't care too much to the world outside my cockpit since I'm more into flight management and the plane itself, but I'm satisfied with what I see in FS2004. Zinertek Ultimate water set is on the active and doesn't looks that bad.

Some useful suggestions were done at another thread down here (the one Slide started).

[beana51]

Thanx Damien...Yes of course FSX water maxed out is fine...never to be seen in FS9...However in the context of FS9,some improvements are achievable...The Lyons programs do help...As far as the type of flying one does,its true,in Big iron ,IFR,conditions...your "Glass" cockpit is everything.But for an open cockpit, or CUB like machines of some early time,I like just "LOOKING"....Swivel heading is instintive...."Check six".....looking for landmarks,..a simpler time......Thanx my friend!.........Vin



this is about what I got now Damien,!...I guess I'll live with it!

[robert4368]

Not sure if there is a realistic reflection atmosphere for FS9. Tried many and have settled with Bill's GW3 reflections.

[Dan]

I've tried just about all that's out there for the past five years, as well, and compared to FSX and/or some recent textures I've seen for Xplane, they all 'stink' for FS9.

That being said, I rarely fly below 10,000' - (to many things get in my way ) - so water in any sim or the real world, for that matter, looks the same at that altitude or higher. Therefore, I'm typically only interested in the correct colors.

But, I'm always interested anything that I hear about or new and as recently as Friday, I tried some interesting ones that someone mentioned over at SOH - 'ofx20sa'. While they were the best I've ever seen for wave action - you can even select the direction of the waves in relationship to how you setup your wind direction - they are dependent on two other files, one of which is the water 'color' textures - and the water color was way off from what I'm used to and/or like. After 3 hours or so, in the trash they went. Sad really, since the wave action was very impressive!!

The only ones I've found that do the best job of both wave action and water color at all altitudes is Flight One's Water Environment, which used to be sold separately, but I believe now are sold with the complete Flight One 'Flight Environment' package. I don't use the clouds or sky environments, since the new freeware ones recently released, but still use the water environment - sometimes with wave action, sometimes not.

www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=fe2004

Hopefully, when Real Environment Xtreme (REX) comes out with their new package for FS9, they'll be something to look at, but they'll be expensive - so who knows . . .

Bummer really, that there still isn't a good water solution for FS9 . Something I don't understand, as it's still the same ol' 0s and 1s that every other sim uses - code is code!!

Maybe sometime in the future . . .

Dan

…it’s great being a kid again – without the glue! ;D