New Sky Textures for our FS9 Users
Mar 10, 2022 2:06:20 GMT -5
chasensfo, cgold, and 1 more like this
Post by FSMuseum on Mar 10, 2022 2:06:20 GMT -5
Hi All,
This is actually version 2 of my sky textures, I don't think I ever posted the first version here. Ah well.
These textures are best used with FSUIPC for visibility rendering and I highly recommend the use of your favorite post-processing (SweetFX, Reshade, ENB, whatever floats your boat) to get the most out of FS9 and these textures.
Here are the highlights:
- Realistic sky colors: No more over-dramatic blues, oranges, purples and other nonsense. These colors have been carefully tuned to be very close to what the human eye sees, as well as being generic enough to be usable for the entire globe.
- Finely tuned shadows and highlights: No more patchwork stratus clouds. Shadows are vibrant and slightly-blue tinged, but not overly dark or with too much contrast
- Realistic low-visibility effects: Low visibility flight is nice and dark, with that unique tinge of blue lighting you get when in deep fog early in the morning or late in the evening.
- Highly-tuned atmospheric scattering: I have tried my best to accurately implement a form of Rayleigh scattering (the effect of objects appearing more blue as they get further in the distance) without causing an unrealistic break in color with clouds, local atmospheric conditions, etc. These textures will accurately represent the atmosphere at most all flight levels and visibility settings.
- New methods chosen for atmospheric rendering: These textures will allow for a more realistic visibility setting and horizon blending. Ideally, using FSUIPC, set your visibility limits to 50 miles (5000 in all four boxes). I also highly recommend using a weather program such as Active Sky or FS Global Real Weather to accurately control your visibility based on weather as these sky textures are designed to change depending on ambient conditions.
- Several variations of sunrise/sunset: This version includes several variations of the sunset and sunrise textures that are slightly different, allowing for a unique sky for every day utilizing the built-in 9-day sky texture calender provided by FS9!
- Adjusted colors for all times of day: I have tweaked the colors of all times of day to be more realistic or interesting. Night time flying has never been so enigmatic!
Much like the first set, these are born out of dozens of real photos and hours spent staring at the sky at different times of day in different conditions to try to give the best rendition of our beautiful atmosphere that I think is possible within FS9.
These textures can be made to work with FSX/P3D if you are familiar with the command line version of imagetool, however, FSX and P3D use a slightly different atmosphere rendering method than FS9 that is not compatible with the specific methods I have used for these textures.
MAKE SURE TO BACKUP YOUR CURRENT SKY TEXTURES BEFORE INSTALLING THESE
DOWNLOAD: www.dropbox.com/s/02543mmim61wsra/Sky%20Textures.zip?dl=0
SCREENSHOTS:
Thanks and enjoy!
Chris
This is actually version 2 of my sky textures, I don't think I ever posted the first version here. Ah well.
These textures are best used with FSUIPC for visibility rendering and I highly recommend the use of your favorite post-processing (SweetFX, Reshade, ENB, whatever floats your boat) to get the most out of FS9 and these textures.
Here are the highlights:
- Realistic sky colors: No more over-dramatic blues, oranges, purples and other nonsense. These colors have been carefully tuned to be very close to what the human eye sees, as well as being generic enough to be usable for the entire globe.
- Finely tuned shadows and highlights: No more patchwork stratus clouds. Shadows are vibrant and slightly-blue tinged, but not overly dark or with too much contrast
- Realistic low-visibility effects: Low visibility flight is nice and dark, with that unique tinge of blue lighting you get when in deep fog early in the morning or late in the evening.
- Highly-tuned atmospheric scattering: I have tried my best to accurately implement a form of Rayleigh scattering (the effect of objects appearing more blue as they get further in the distance) without causing an unrealistic break in color with clouds, local atmospheric conditions, etc. These textures will accurately represent the atmosphere at most all flight levels and visibility settings.
- New methods chosen for atmospheric rendering: These textures will allow for a more realistic visibility setting and horizon blending. Ideally, using FSUIPC, set your visibility limits to 50 miles (5000 in all four boxes). I also highly recommend using a weather program such as Active Sky or FS Global Real Weather to accurately control your visibility based on weather as these sky textures are designed to change depending on ambient conditions.
- Several variations of sunrise/sunset: This version includes several variations of the sunset and sunrise textures that are slightly different, allowing for a unique sky for every day utilizing the built-in 9-day sky texture calender provided by FS9!
- Adjusted colors for all times of day: I have tweaked the colors of all times of day to be more realistic or interesting. Night time flying has never been so enigmatic!
Much like the first set, these are born out of dozens of real photos and hours spent staring at the sky at different times of day in different conditions to try to give the best rendition of our beautiful atmosphere that I think is possible within FS9.
These textures can be made to work with FSX/P3D if you are familiar with the command line version of imagetool, however, FSX and P3D use a slightly different atmosphere rendering method than FS9 that is not compatible with the specific methods I have used for these textures.
MAKE SURE TO BACKUP YOUR CURRENT SKY TEXTURES BEFORE INSTALLING THESE
DOWNLOAD: www.dropbox.com/s/02543mmim61wsra/Sky%20Textures.zip?dl=0
SCREENSHOTS:
Thanks and enjoy!
Chris
