Ground Environment 2006 And Ground Environment Pro

By Andrew Herd (15 September 2006)

ack in 1998, Flight Simulator was graced with a single set of ground textures which served to cover everywhere from Barbados to the Back of Beyond, the result being so monotonous that most of us flew as high as we could just to avoid having to look at them. And then, when it seemed as if there would never be a solution for texture fatigue, a few freeware packages began to filter through, which led the way to the release of two freeware world texture sets for FS2000, from Lennart Arvidsson and Ruud Faber. Those sets sowed a seed which grew into a new genre of FS addons, which allow the user to replace almost everything you can see in Flight Simulator, literally from the ground up. Today we are spoiled for choice, with many sets of replacement terrain textures available - the best being from FScene, BirdsEyeView and Ground Environment from Flight1. If you get bored of the way a continent looks, a couple of mouse clicks and you can give it a makeover.

Apart from good old fashioned boredom, there are other reasons for replacing FS2004's ground textures. The first is that the images used date from the middle of Microsoft's grunge period, when Redmond's stylists only approved graphics that looked as if they had been sprayed with horse manure. Second, the default tiles aren't particularly varied, with the result that they have a horrible tendency to form lines that march off into the far distance; and third, they don't make most places look like they ought to look. But apart from being dingy, repetitive and unrepresentative of real terrain, there isn't much wrong with them (-: and you have to hand it to the FS team, because the way texture tiles work is extremely clever, because not only does every continent have its own texture set, but there are different textures for each season for each continent and to crown it all, the type of tile that appears in a particular place is governed by a system called 'landclassing'. Landclassing effectively lays a grid over the landscape and says, 'this bit should be light industrial' and 'this bit is a wood' and 'this bit would be moorland, except it is on a steep slope, so use another texture instead.' The type of tile which appears in a particular spot is controlled by where it is in the world, which season is being used, which landclass the tile inherits and by its elevation - which means that anyone who sets out to develop a global texture set has to paint literally thousands of tiles if they want to match Microsoft's vision.

We have reviewed other replacement texture sets for FS2004 over the past couple of years and there is something to be said for all of them - I feel a particular loyalty towards Ruud Faber's FScene sets, because he has stuck with Flight Simulator through four different versions now and I am sure that FSX won't defeat him, but there is always room for variety in our simulated world, so let's take a look at Ground Environment.

Flight1's product was developed by Peter Wilding and Anthony Vos - Peter is well known for his excellent Flight Environment, which is the market leader for sky, cloud and water texture replacement for FS2004, as well as being one of the best addons of any description that I have ever reviewed. Although it has come late in the FS2004 product cycle, Ground Environment shows every sign of making the same kind of name for itself, not least because the textures in the package have been developed from aerial photographs. If you have tried photosceneries and gotten bored with the blurries, try Ground Environment, because you get nearly all the advantages of photoscenery without the penalty of slow loading times. Why? Because FS2004 treats replacement ground tile photosets no differently to its own - they just go into the cache and are laid as needed. Photoscenery textures have to be placed individually at specific coordinates; sure, if you don't use photoscenery you won't see your home town exactly as it appears, but if you use Ground Environment, you will get close, particularly if you combine it with products like Flight1's Ultimate Terrain series.

The package I reviewed was the download version of Ground Environment 2006, which was a 74 Mb download from the Flight1 website - a CD version is also available. I reviewed it with Flight1's Ultimate Terrain Europe and Ultimate Terrain USA in place, which accounts for the higher than average number of roads visible in many of the screenshots; Ground Environment doesn't add any extra roads to Flight Simulator beyond access roads which are painted onto the urban tiles. You can download the addon at any time from the Flight1 website, but installing it requires the purchase of a key for unlocking purposes. Installation was straight forward, the only additional step being the need to run the Ground Environment applet, which backs up all the default terrain tiles and installs the replacement set, based on the options you select. In the basic product you have the choice of installing global daytime textures, global nighttime textures and maintain compatibility with Ultimate Terrain Europe. The applet comes with a backup manager, which lets you restore the original textures (vital if you uninstall the product) and to create and restore an alternate backup set - which means you can use other developers' texture sets in tandem, which is a nice touch. The ability to manage texture set backup and installation with the applet will be an attraction for newbies, as most of the other texture replacement sets leave the user to handle file management. Apart from the applet and a nine page manual, that is more or less it, but could anyone want more?

Well, actually, yes they could, and this is where the more expensive Ground Environment Pro comes in. Misty Fjords brought matters to a head, but long before that rather wonderful addon was released, it had dawned on many FS developers that textures changed their look in different lights and that installing a new set could completely alter the appearance of some third party scenery products. The extra $20 that GE Pro costs brings you an app that downloads the METARs (airside weather actuals) for your home and destination airports and then loads in appropriate texture sets based on that weather before you start FS. This neatly gets around the problem of textures which look great in virtual sunlight looking grungy in virtual fog, GE Pro's response in this situation being to load a lighter set that will look right in the fog. Out of the box, GE Pro installs a single texture set and then creates five additional sets should you require them, covering every situation from clear skies to full overcast; even then, it isn't finished, because assuming you have enough time, patience and hard disk space, you can tweak the textures to your heart's content. As I write this, I can imagine what is going on in Peter's fertile brain and I bet we see a marriage of Flight Environment and Ground Environment for FSX, where downloading METARs not only installs a custom ground texture set, but a custom sky as well, then makes you a cup of espresso.

Enough already. Are the textures good? Do bears crap in the woods? Sure, they are good, at least the equal of FScene and in many respects better, as you can see from the screenshots. No doubt this is going to trigger something of an arms race, as Ruud is a talented artist and very inventive himself, so we will have to see what the future brings, but for now, I'll confine myself to looking at Ground Environment.

I visited just about every continent to see what Ground Environment did and came to the conclusion that it offers a huge improvement over the default textures. If you do a lot of flying over desert areas, the effect is less impressive, largely because of the relatively low definition of FS2004 textures, but everywhere else and particularly over forest and urban tiles, Ground Environment does its level best to make the virtual world look real. Autogen lines up with the roads on the GE tiles and although the product doesn't offer a solution to the problem of the FS2004 (or Ultimate Terrain) road network carelessly overunning buildings, the overall effect is extremely neat. I repeated some of the flights I made when I was reviewing Ultimate Terrain Europe and was struck by how real the landscape looked with the two products installed - I would go as far as to say that someone who hadn't seen a photoscenery installed would think that that was what they were looking at. The faux 3D effects on the woodland and residential tiles are particularly striking - check out the top pair of shots - and the default airports blend into Ground Environment much better than they do into other third party sets. And as you can see, the landscape over cities is transformed at night.

With an air of fin de siècle hanging over FS2004 at the moment, I took the opportunity to test Ground Environment using some of my favorite addons and aircraft. In the top row of screenshots is the default Lockheed Vega, a plane which Microsoft got just right and which is one of the most under-used assets the game has to offer. I am prepared to wager that many users have never used it more than a couple of times and if you haven't, try it again, because it is a cool piece of code. The left hand shot in the middle row features my favorite warbird addon of all time, the RealAir Spitfire XIV, which I hereby give a Gold AAA, because it is also one of the best and most atmospheric aircraft addons ever released - if only they were all like this... Bottom row shows the Wilco 737 PIC, which is my automatic choice when I need an airliner for screenshots, given all the liveries it comes with and the fine 2D panel it has; and next to that is Bill Lyon's freeware Waco Classic (WACO4FRE.ZIP), which is perfect for exploring Hawaii.

Should you buy Ground Environment or Ground Environment Pro? Given the size of most disks these days, the greater texture storage requirements for GE Pro are hardly a problem, but the textures in Ground Environment 2006 should suit most people as they stand. I would agree that they do look a little dark in cloudy weather, but since Flight1 are offering a healthy rebate to GE2006 users who upgrade to the Pro version, there isn't much to lose by starting off with the cheaper version and upgrading later.

If you are looking for a replacement texture set for FS2004, Ground Environment 2006 offers great value for money - the Gold AAA is for both versions and very well deserved. I look forward to seeing the product upgraded and enhanced for FSX!