ANSWERED PNW Changes Columbia River Color?

[Howellerman]

Greetings,

First off, LOVE my new Orbx stuff - went and purchased the whole NA series (except Alaska - haven't made it that far North yet).

Only problem I have encountered is that my PNW install changes the color of the Columbia River. My favorite airport is KTTD (Portland Troutdale), as it is the gateway to the Columbia River gorge, Bonneville Dam, and is a good departure spot for touring Mt Hood and Mt St Helens.

First, a picture of default FSX. Not the best blue, but I have been fighting this for a while...

Now, after PNW has been installed. The river goes to kind of grey, and if I mess with the textures in REX, and the colors in FSWC, that grey can get really ugly!

The Columbia is a big river and in certain times may tend to sediment, but most of the times I have seen it, it is a nice deep blue. Google Maps agrees with me:

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=kttd&aq=f&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wl

Anyway, thanks for the help. I just spot checked Jackson Hole (Orbx CRM) and the water colors are okay - just seems to be the Columbia?

JKH

[Holger Sandmann]

Hello JKH,

welcome to Orbx and thanks for the kind words; glad to hear you're enjoying our NA regions.

As you've indicated in your post the color of water is very tricky to "get right" in FSX, primarily because the base textures are so strongly influenced by reflection settings (= water effects slider), wave pattern overlays, sky textures, cloud layers, and time of day. Most of what you see during flights is not the base water textures but rather sky and cloud reflections modified by your REX and FSWC choices.

All we do in our NA regions is to change the base texture/color (termed waterclass) since the default files are generally too blue or plain wrong. For the lower Columbia River we used our "muddy river" class since it seemed more appropriate than our "blue river" class. I'm not saying that's the best choice but I was primarily going by oblique airphotos such as http://www.aerolistp...ast/2008/0073/2 . Mind you, other photos from the same area but with a different viewing angle show more blue, such as http://www.aerolistp...ast/2008/0077/2 or http://www.aerolistp...all/2002/0011/2

Also, my own screenshot (no FSWC, with REX sky/cloud/wave sets, water effects High 2.x) shows less grey and blue than yours, again emphasizing that other parameters and files have a big influence on visuals. I've also added a top-down screenshot because in that display mode all water effects get deactivated and one gets to see the actual base color.

In any case, if you (and others) believe that the water color isn't correct we can certainly change the local waterclass from muddy river to blue river in a future PNW service pack. Note that while it is theoretically possible to deactivate our waterclass files and textures, doing so also interferes with the automated "freezing" of high-elevation lakes and rivers during winter months.

Cheers, Holger

[tuisong]

Hi Holger, thanks for that explanation. While this question has never worried me, I love learning more about the mysteries of FSX.