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BirdsEyeView Volumes 3 & 4
By Brian Smith (6 March 2006)
Birds Eye View Volume 4 USA & Canada Hard Winter
have downloaded a
number of mesh programs and some terrain add-ons, but I had never
installed any of the systems of "tiles" available on the web. Bird's
Eye View's Volumes 3 & 4 are my first journeys into what can be
done.
Bird's Eye View is more than just a tile set though. It also has a configurator that allows you to change the look of the trees that autogen produces, and the buildings, roads, power towers...you name it, just about, and you can change the way it looks. You can then mix and match the different sets. Also, the sets for Florida are different from the ones in the Midwest, shown here. There is so much flexibility to the configurator that they have given you the possibility of saving your own setups so you can custom make your own world, or set it back to FS2004 default, or the default BEV or anything in between.
This is a vast improvement over the default winter tiles. To give you a reminder, here is what the default winter tiles look like. On the left is the rural tile, and the right is urban:
Just kind of a repetitive tile. When I look at it now, it looks like someone picked up the world, dropped it, and made a mosaic. This looks NOTHING like rural farmland should. Farms, believe it or not, are not randomly created. Folks in the country have property lines and hedge rows and roads that make sense. Microsoft's default tiles look very strange.
According to the manual that comes with BEV, this is the problem the company set out to correct. First, it started out as a personal project, but became so popular, they decided to go public with their work. The results are dramatic.
Volume 3: Winter
A better title might have been early winter, because it is hard to explain to folks what is meant by winter vs. hard winter. At least I had a hard time explaining it to my wife. Volume 3 produces an early winter setting. Just a cold, wet, and dreary winter. In the rural scene (below, left) the corn has been harvested and some of them have been plowed under. And, as you will notice, it is a lot more realistic.
The fields are squared off, and in various states. You can see stands of trees, fields that have been plowed under and fields of stubble. This is how the world looks. Not like the puzzle of odd shapes Microsoft gave us.
The winter set, or early winter set, comes with one set of trees. The autumn set of trees obviously have the colorful leaves to make them stand out. The deciduous trees are bare branches, and the evergreens are, well, green. They are nicer than the default trees.
Volume 4: Hard Winter
Volume 4 is a hard winter set. It is a heavier snow fall. The fields are clearly covered with a deep blanket of snow. No longer do you have the odd mosaic in the snow. Now you have clearly defined fields. It looks very realistic.
In "hard winter", the outlines of the fields are still clear, but full of snow. This shows what a great improvement BEV is over the Microsoft Default terrain tiles.
In Volume 4, the deep freeze has set in.
The trees are now covered in snow, as are the rooftops. Just looking at it will make you feel a few degrees chillier. In the urban tiles, I didn't see as much of a difference as I did in the rural setting. The tiles are clearer, and more defined, and the autogen is greatly improved, but from up high it kind of looks the same. But let's face it; you don't spend much time flying over cities. Most of the terrain in the U.S. and Canada is rural, and that's where BEV really shines.
Conclusion
I really like this package. And it is selling for just $9 right now for each set. At that price get the whole set as quickly as you can. There is a lot to this package. The default autogen scenery changes in subtle but important ways. The streets are no longer filled with randomly placed streets, but now the boulevards are lined with trees. A very nice touch.How does the package rate? The difference between the default and BEV is clear. It is much more realistic. In fact if you set the configurator back to the MS default textures, you will feel like you stepped down a version or two of MSFS. So that is pretty high praise, and I think fair to say that BEV has advanced the state of technology in rendering terrain textures.
Though there are more attractive systems, Alaska Cinematic is a great example, but it covers only a small area of Alaska, where BEV replaces the terrain textures for the entire U.S. and Canada, and does it with no hit to the frame rates. So comparing it would unfair to both products to compare the two.
There are some issues. At first I ran the configurator without reading the manual and couldn't quite figure out how things worked. Then I read the manual, and I still wasn't quite sure I was doing things right. It turns out this stuff really makes a difference if you take a Bird's Eye View of the situation. In other words, to get the full benefit you have to be up high. For commercial big iron operators that is great news. For people like me who like to fly low to the ground and VFR, it's just OK. The autogen trees, buildings, and electrical pylons are much better, but the ground kind of looks the same. You can't really get the full benefit of the terrain textures until you get to 5000 feet or more.
Also, although the autogen building textures look clearer, it is a lot more obvious that they repeat now.
There is also the fact that I am a complete newbie at this sort of
thing and honestly it took me a while to figure out things some might
find basic, but just aren't explained in the manual. For example, I
didn't realize at first (I'm very embarrassed about this) that it
changed the SEASONAL tiles. I thought when spring came I would need
to change out the tiles...duh. Or that to get Hard Winter I needed
to get rid of Winter. So I couldn't figure out why hard winter
looked the same as winter until I realized it was a seasonal tile.
So hopefully I made that mistake for all the lunk-heads out there like me who hadn't quite figured out the texture thing, and spare you the frustration.
Do I recommend the package? ABSOLUTELY. This is a great way to improve you simming experience, and with the current price, it can't be beat.
Brian Smith
brnsmth@mo-net.com
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