active Seasons at ESSA

[WebMaximus]

I asked about this before how come hard winter starts already the 1'st of Nov at ESSA since this isn't anywhere close to what is usual IRL where hard winter (ground covered with snow) normally starts somewhere in Dec and more probably late Dec rather than early. I was back then told by Holder Sandmann here this is due to the global seasons.bgl file.

 

I have now recently been in contact with another developer who was willing to look into this and he was able to come up with a fix that would give the correct textures (fall in this case in November at ESSA) globally in P3D but looking at ESSA it remained covered in snow so looks like ESSA is not following the rest of P3D.

 

Is there any way to force ESSA to not show snow textures in November?

 

I know Dubrovnik has a season switch, maybe such a switch could be implemented for ESSA as well?

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Richard,

 

as far as I know using the FTX Norway option in the ESSA control panel will simply switch out the photoreal ground textures meaning ESSA will only display snow Jan 1 to Mar 31. You don't need to have FTX Norway installed for this to work.

 

There's a general issue here though: if someone creates a seasons control file for a given country or continent, let alone the globe, then it most likely will break compatibility (during certain months) with any airport addon that has seasonal photoreal ground textures. That's because photoreal bgl files have their monthly seasonal progression coded into them by the developer and this cannot be altered by a user or other developer. Good luck with getting all those developers to provide compatibility updates! That's actually the primary reason why we restrict our seasons control files to our Regions. Even then we have had to contact many different third-party developers to request changes to their photoeral files; some have done so and others not, as is detailed in our compatibility lists for the specific Regions.

 

Cheers, Holger

[WebMaximus]

Thanks Holger, will give it a try to configure ESSA to blend with FTX Norway rather than FTX Global even when I don't have it installed and see what happens.

 

If that will solve the issue with snow on the ground already in early November that is great but on the other hand a bit of a pity as well missing out on photo scenery included with ESSA. I think the best solution would be if a season switcher could be included just like with Dubrovnik mentioned above where you're able to choose for yourself when the seasons should change.

 

Maybe Marcus can comment on that.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

please try the fix first before commenting on what you imagine that its effects will be.

[WebMaximus]

Hi there Holger,

 

I did some more testing after following your advice to configure ESSA to blend with FTX Norway rather than FTX Global and below is the result:

With the date set to today Nov 9, everything looks OK with no snow on the ground at ESSA and no snow outside ESSA.

Setting the date to Dec 22 when the winter starts according to P3D, there's still no snow at ESSA but outside ESSA the ground now uses snow-covered textures.

In order to get winter textures also at ESSA, I had to advance the date to Jan 1 and the snow-covered textures at ESSA then remained until Apr 1 where the spring according to P3D starts at March 21.

 

During the testing I've been using BGLs received from this other developer who has been trying to help me and everyone else to get the seasons in the simulator to better match reality. For this first test he has been focusing on Scandinavia.

 

So, to sum up. With ESSA configured to blend with FTX Norway we got rid of the snow in early Nov at ESSA which is all great but still ESSA doesn't follow the seasons in P3D but seems to use it's own logic and dates for when the seasons switch.

 

Considering how hard it seems to be to have the season textures at ESSA match the other ground textures in the simulator, I still think it would have been great with a manual seasons switch for ESSA just like there already is for LDDU. Or do you have any other suggestions how to make the seasons match reality better without having to manually set the date in the simulator to an incorrect one?

 

Thanks in advance for your tips and input on this topic Holger, very much appreciated!!

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Richard,

 

once again, there are no calendar seasons in P3D or FSX: nothing changes on Dec 22 or March 21. Instead, there are the 12 months of the year, each starting on the 1st, and a grid raster of landclass ground tiles (~1.5 sqkm each) for which the seasons control file defines which of the available five seasonal variants are being displayed during which month. As linked to in the previous thread I've made an animated gif to show this for FTX PNW's seasons control file: https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/18695-pnw-textures/?tab=comments#comment-162697

 

The complication is that any scenery add-on with seasonal photoreal ground coverage cannot be influenced by a seasons control file because the monthly progression has to be decided by the developer up-front. While it may be technically feasible to create five separate bgl files, each with a single season for the 12 months of the year, doing so would also mean 5x the amount of HD space required; some of our airport add-ons have photoreal ground files of >1GB. In any case, I highly doubt that most of our customers would want to check each airport's control panel prior to a flight to make sure they have selected the correct seasonal variant.

 

ESSA's change of seasonal variants is not arbitrary but coded to match the monthly progression of the default global seasons control file. In addition, for FTX Norway users the option exists to match it to that FTX Region's custom seasons control file.  

 

Our Dubrovnik add-on does not allow one to manually change the photoreal ground textures. Instead, the control panel offers to manually switch the vegetation placed on the photoreal area to match the current season. The default option is that this gets automatically controlled by ObjectFlow. However, because Objectflow can cause an fps hit when having to deal with many objects at once the control panel allows one to manually make those changes instead. In any case, the seasonal progression of the photoreal ground is coded into the bgl file and cannot be changed, like at ESSA. 

 

I hope the developer you mention understands the complications regarding seasonal photoreal add-ons, otherwise he'll be facing a lot of support question why add-on X doesn't match his choice of seasonal progression.

 

Perhaps advancing or stepping back the date by a month or two isn't such a bad option after all...

 

Cheers, Holger 

 

[WebMaximus]

Thanks Holger for this very thorough reply!

 

After reading what you wrote here I'm tempted to agree, maybe turning the date back/forward to match what seen outside isn't such as bad option...