NZFF

So you want FSX, but you can't afford it or your PC can't handle it?

Look no further, as today I have discovered the ultimate freeware environment enhancer for fs2004, which has truely worked wonders for my sim!


The 27mb file is called 'reprosetup.zip' and can be downloaded off avsim here. I discovered it while browsing through 'This year's hot files'. Ladies and gentlmen, I am or course talking about Real Environment Professional!

It has been downloaded 7197 times in the last 30 days, 30534 times overall and includes:

...extensive environment upgrade package for Microsoft's Flight Simulator 9. This package includes: 1. New sun, sun6, corona1, sunglow and suneffect.cfg 2. New aircraft spotlight 3. New airport lights that simulate a glow onto the surface 4. New Envmap (affects reflections) 5. Revised AquaPro 2006 Bright & Dark versions (base water color, wave animation and environment effects that also simulate cloud reflections in the water) 6. Trees courtesy of Feng Zhu's TreeGen v1.0 7. New runway textures (per selected WX Environment) 8. New asphalt textures (per selected WX Environment) 9. New concrete textures (per selected WX Environment) 10. New tarmac textures (per selected WX Environment) 11. Taxiway markings (per selected WX Environment) 12. Sky & environment textures 13. 3D Environment Bitmap

The cool thing about it is, you don't have to install things you don't want. There is a simple user interface where you can tick checkboxes to load certain textures, suiting everyones preferences:


Here are some screenies I took in an evening flight around Queenstown. I am very impressed with my graphics now






(None of the shots in this post are edited)

Does anyone else have this installed, and not yet piped up about it, or am I the only one?

Yeah man I've got that for fs2004, makes it so much better eh! And barely any frames hit...

i downloaded it once i think, and i didnt like it much, because the water affected my pc heaps (got the graphics card begging me to make water settings low), and I was getting around 4fps anywhere there was water.

Looking good Trolly... and to think they want us to get FSX...

yup i've had a while - the medium water settings are pretty ace.

Yep, had the same problems with the water as brownbox. My solution was to recopy all the original textures back into the texture folders, and then by hand copy the sky textures, sun textures, envmap, etc., into the texture folder. I left out the water, but everything else is smooth.

As long as you don't use their installer (set it up, but don't install any of the textures; use the installer to back up your files though, that's important), everything works a treat!

Yeah Trolly I use it was well I mentioned it in my Orion screenshots I think, sorry I didn't make more of a point of it earlier! It's a great program. I can't use the shimmery water like others have mentioned, but the rest of it is great
The annoying thing with it is as the others have said.. it's got a button to "back up textures" but no button to reinstall them, and no note in the manual as to where it's going to back them up lol
I have a texture folder from the default install saved on my computer for just such occasions

Edit: I take it back, I must have discussed it via email with someone

Yeah it does change the look substantially doesn't it?
Thanks for the pointer.
I've tinkered with Peter Wilder's textures for a long time (Flight Environment, Ground Environment, and latterly, GE Pro) and I haven't managed to work through even 10% of the possible combinations yet.
That's why I reverted to the Real World Weather setting, which comes up with a new set of textures each time, to suit.
My computer has recently started to behave like a slug, and I think I have issues with GE Pro.
It might just be a textures glut - to generate 6 basic ground texture sets took my machine on an overnight setup run!

Probably a very good idea to back up a complete stock set as Alister suggests.

The annoying thing with it is as the others have said.. it's got a button to "back up textures" but no button to reinstall them

I have only just noticed that Like you, I also have a 'virgin' fs2004 on another computer, so if I dislike anything, it is just a simple cut n' paste job to fix.

the medium water settings are pretty ace.

What do you mean by medium? As far as I can see, there is only 'bright' or 'dark'

Cool Post Andrew!!!!!

For freeware, thats very nice software !

Your scrennies look great!

Matthew

Would it work in FS2002 (pro)?

Hi Andrew, I installed this a while back, it certainly changed things dramatically in 2004 and is well worth the install. It keeps me going back to 2004 as well.

thanks for that pointer - Downloading now

Cheers

Paul

andrew, your computer seems to be running it quite well. Whats your system specs?

Trolly wrote:

What do you mean by medium? As far as I can see, there is only 'bright' or 'dark'

i use the bright textures but on a medium setting in fs9 - i'm not too bothered by animated water.

Probably a very good idea to back up a complete stock set as Alister suggests.

Yea, I should have. I have gotten pretty sick of the animated water and extreamly reflective aircraft already, but have no way to restore the originals via the user interface.

Could someone please tell me how I can restore my originals?

I think I need to re-copy my entire texure folder back into fs2004, but I don't know if that will stop my aircraft from being ultra reflective.

Then after that, I will need to reinstall the selected Real Enviroment Pro stuff that I do want (trees, runway textures, sky textures, ground lights etc).

Any tips would be welcome!

andrew, your computer seems to be running it quite well. Whats your system specs?

Yeah it aint bad for an old machine like mine. I get a good 18-25fps on most flights, with my celaron 2.4ghz processor, 1.5gb RAM, AGP GeForce 5600 128mb vid card and 280GB of HDD, (one 200gb hdd for flightsim, and one 80gb hdd for my operating system and other applications ).

I was going to upgrade to a new Intel Duelcore processor and get a new mobo, PCI-e video card and new RAM, but I bought myself a car instead.

Try this first Andrew.
Simply turn down your water detail level in your flight sim display settings. See then if you like the look of the water installed. I've left the Pro textures in, but turned down the detail so I don't get the reflections. Still looks really nice.
Plus, as you've turned off the reflections, you will probably find a sizeable FPS increase. I know I did
Otherwise... You can always get default textures off the MSFS cds themselves. Simply put them in the drive, and use the windows "explore" feature to browse the discs and find the file names you want. You'll need to know what textures the RE Pro program overwrites, but it might be listed in the read me.
If only it mentioned where it backed up the textures lol

Albatross wrote: If only it mentioned where it backed up the textures lol

Well I don't want to tell you stuff you already know but this is what I do:
XP does have a file search function, though it might take a bit of time.
Identify a new texture by looking at its date attribute in Win Explorer in the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Texture" folder (if you have a default install)
Then search (right click the folder, Search...) on that name, firstly in the software's own folder. then on the whole C:\ drive if need be!
It will certainly turn up in the company of all its mates.

Well I found out where it does the backups.It actually does them in 2 places.

Microsoft Games\Flight Simulatator 9\Texture Folder

Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Scenery\World\Texture

You will find a backup folder in each of those Plus one in the root directory.However it only backs up the files that it would normally overwrite,Not the whole thing.It pays to backup your whole files before you apply this upgrade otherwise you may have to reload the texture files back in from the disks.

Well I found out where it does the backups.It actually does them in 2 places.

Microsoft Games\Flight Simulatator 9\Texture Folder

Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Scenery\World\Texture

Thanks Neil, you're a lifesaver!

I restored all my original textures, then went back into Real Environment Pro, and only installed the enhancements I want (sky, lights, airport textures). This is much better:


In fact, the only things I didn't like was the daytime water reflections from low down, and the overly reflective aircraft panels.

Cheers!

and the overly reflective aircraft panels

Argh! It seems like I have not got rid of these yet!




It is proberly not as obvious in these screenshots as when you are moving along in the sim, but it is so OTT that it is annoying. Does anyone know how to get rid of this effect?