Alan_A Posted November 28, 2009 Share Posted November 28, 2009 I just posted about this at AVSIM but thought I'd try here as well. My issue is this: I seem to have lost my seasons in FSX default. No matter what date or season I choose from the Time and Season menu, I get summer textures. The only exception is that I'm able to get winter textures if I chose "winter" from the menu - but not if I pick a date in winter from the calendar. All other choices result in summer. My reason for bringing up the problem here is that it seems to have happened within the past couple of weeks, and the only changes I've made to my system in that time are installations of several of the FTX SP3 payware and freeware airports. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the problem, but since I was doing the installations at the time the season problem appeared, I thought I'd ask. I've tried the following workarounds so far with no luck: disabled FTX in the FTX Central app; disabled and re-enabled UTX USA; re-installed the GEX USA/Canada textures. I haven't yet checked out the different season in FTX to see if they're responding correctly or not. Maybe I should. But before I do -- any suggestions based on what I've found so far? Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolter van der Spoel Posted November 28, 2009 Share Posted November 28, 2009 Hi Alan, just the odd one out, did you try deleting the fsx.cfg and let fsx rebuild it ? I know it sounds daft but ms keeps working in mysterious ways ............ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan_A Posted November 28, 2009 Author Share Posted November 28, 2009 Wolter - That was my first thought after having slept on it. I'll try it this morning and report back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holger Sandmann Posted November 28, 2009 Share Posted November 28, 2009 Hi Alan, the ORBX regions come with their own seasons files but they are local and we don't touch the global default version, which is named seasons.bgl and sits in \Scenery\BASE\Scenery. One thing to be aware of is that the seasons option in the FSX menu is quite misleading as FS actually assigns seasons on a month-to-month basis and in a spatial grid of about 1sqkm. Thus, even if you choose summer that doesn't necessarily mean for the particular location of your aircraft you'll actually see the summer textures. In fact, some locations may skip entire seasons. Thus, your best bet is to go to some mid-latitude location (which tend to have pronounced seasons) and then cycle through the year in two- or three-month steps. Doing so should make the seasonal textures more obvious. And a final tip: the deciduous vegetation autogen (maple, cottonwood, aspen, chestnut, etc.), which is common in the urban classes, responds to the seasons too and thus helps in identifying when FS switches to a different season. Cheers, Holger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan_A Posted November 28, 2009 Author Share Posted November 28, 2009 Thanks for all your suggestions (and Holger, it's always great to get help from the source )... Wolter: to catch up on my last post - I tried deleting and rebuilding the fsx.cfg but that didn't help. Holger: my test locations are KGAI (Gaithersburg, Maryland) and KMTP (Montauk, NY). Both usually show seasonal variations, but don't anymore. I've tried multiple options for changing the seasons - both the menu choices and the calendar itself, with appropriate dates. No success. Again: I'm able to force hard winter by choosing "winter" from the menu, but that's the only seasonal change I can generate. All others result in summer. Using the calendar, even hard winter dates (February 4) don't get the winter textures to load. I tried loading FTX at Lilydale and did the same cycle through the seasons, using both dates and menu choices, but couldn't see any texture changes at all. I'm relying on the trees as the main sign that a season has loaded. In FSX default, I'm getting full green deciduous autogen trees at all times except for the hard winter trees using the "winter" menu item. When they load, I get the winter ground textures as well. For what it's worth, when I ran a Google search I came across this thread from 2007, which reports a similar problem related to GEX. But the thread doesn't come to any resolution. Am still hoping I can get this solved without having to resort to an FSX reinstall, but if it comes to it, I suppose I can think about that. Still open to suggestion, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holger Sandmann Posted November 28, 2009 Share Posted November 28, 2009 Hi Alan, strange that, especially if you don't see any changes at Lilydale either. I know that the Cloud9 land class packages came with a custom seasons file that re-arranged the seasons to get rid of the "sandy" default winter textures etc. but I doubt that's the issue here. If you swicth FTXCentral to Default what is the date stamp of lclookup.bgl in Scenery\Base\scenery? Cheers, Holger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan_A Posted November 28, 2009 Author Share Posted November 28, 2009 Holger - With FSX Central set to default, lclookup.bgl carries a date stamp of 10/1/2008 6:33 a.m. It's listed as a 31kb file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan_A Posted November 29, 2009 Author Share Posted November 29, 2009 Holger - Thanks for the pointer re: Cloud 9. It looks like it's a Cloud 9 problem. Based on your mention, I checked my scenery library and found that the listing for the Cloud 9 US landclass (XClass) had a long string of garbage characters in it. I deselected it, which allowed me to revert to Scenery Tech landclass (I keep the Scenery Tech just below the Cloud 9, in reserve). All the seasons started reading normally - KGAI immediately went to winter (not hard winter), which is right for this time of year. An October date got me fall textures, etc. Since it looked like the Cloud 9 installation was corrupt, I uninstalled and reinstalled it. That corrected the listing in the scenery library. But as soon as I tried to load seasons, I ran into the same problem as before - summer all the time, except when I selected winter from the seasons menu. Since I like the Cloud 9 landclass for my local area better than scenery tech, I decided to experiment a little more. I went to the Cloud 9 folder and renamed seasonsc9.bgl to seasonsc9.bak. Seasons began loading correctly again - this time with the Cloud 9 landclass selected in the scenery library, but with the Cloud 9 seasons file offline. After I removed and reinstalled the Cloud 9 landclass, the lclookup.bgl timestamp changed to 1/25/2009 2:15 a.m. Bottom line: it looks like I've got a workaround. But I still wouldn't mind knowing what happened, and whether it's possible to get the Cloud 9 seasons file working again. If not, it's no big deal, but if you've got any additional insight, I'd be glad to hear it. Thanks again! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holger Sandmann Posted November 29, 2009 Share Posted November 29, 2009 Hi Alan, good to hear you've found the culprit. Indeed, the Cloud9 file is suppressing at least the normal (mild) winter seasons and possibly spring and fall as well. It's by design so you can only choose to use it or not. Obviously, with fully seasonal textures like GEX you want their seasons to show, which is why I'd recommend leaving the Cloud9 seasons bgl files deactivated. Don't know how long you've had the Cloud9 package but as long as it's seasons file was active you wouldn't have been able to see the proper seasonal changes. Cheers, Holger P.S.: Your lclookup.bgl isn't FSX default, which should have a date stamp of 7/30/2006. However, it isn't the FTX Australia version either, which is dated 1/24/2009. I believe SceneryTech offers a lclookup.bgl adjustment regarding steep slopes so I assume you have that active. In any case it's not the cause for the seasons issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan_A Posted November 29, 2009 Author Share Posted November 29, 2009 Holger - I installed Cloud 9 in late spring, so this would have been my first winter with the custom seasons bgl in place. The odd thing is, though, that when September came around, I got the (too early) fall textures. Summer didn't return 'til November - I guess when fall gave way to (mild) winter. And from that point on, I couldn't get the fall textures to display at all. So it seems to be a combination of normal behavior on the part of the Cloud 9 seaons bgl, and some sort of corruption on top of that (the garbage characters in the Cloud 9 listing in the scenery library seem to indicate there was a problem with the file). I suspect that might have happened during defragmentation after I installed one of the FTX updates, but with all these variables in play, I can't be sure. The good news, of course, is that with the custom seasons bgl diabled, everything runs perfectly. So, problem solved. Thanks again for your help with all that - now I can sit back, relax, and wait for winter in the PNW. Best, Alan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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