Flight Environment For FS2004

By Andrew Herd (5 August 2005)

ne of the first Flight Simulator addons I bought was a package called FS Clouds, largely on the basis of a review I read on this website nearly eight years ago. It was so far back that I was probably still using Mosaic as a web browser and running FS5, which had gotten no further than displaying flat, repetitive cloud textures that jets climbed through in an instant. FS Clouds quickly became everybody's favorite addon, because it did away with the repetition, but the layers were still very thin, and our reviewer speculated that '3D puffy clouds' were still years away, due to lack of computer processing power.

Writing at a time when single chip dual processor Pentiums are just around the corner, the idea of a lack of processing power seems incredible, but in those days you had to buy a new PC every time a new version of Flight Simulator came out - the sim was seen as a benchmark application and it only ran properly on the latest kit. Our reviewer wrote the truth, but three years later, there was enough processor power in the form of 500 MHz Pentiums and we all went out and bought FS Clouds 2000 along with our new systems. Microsoft had improved their clouds in FS2000, but they still weren't as convincing as the ones in Fly! - or real clouds, for that matter. At the time, Fly! was the simulator all the afficionados ran and a realistic sky was one of its strong points, which perhaps was one of the things that spurred Microsoft on to develop better clouds for FS2002. After all, one of the reasons why people learn to fly is so that they can get to look at the clouds from the wrong side.

Now FS2002 had great clouds but were coupled to frustratingly simple weather which meant you could be flying into a warm front one minute and find yourself in clear skies the next. I was half expecting a new version of FS Clouds to appear, but as far as I can recall, it never did and I had kind of given up on the idea of ever seeing its like again, although there have been various downloadable cloud texture packages over the past few years, responding to the widely perceived need for something better.

FS Clouds never did return, but in its place Flight1 have published Flight Environment, which is goes beyond anything the original product ever did, thanks to a particularly neat interface and FS2004's sophisticated weather engine. Flight Environment works such a transformation on Flight Simulator that I can virtually guarantee that once you have bought it, you will never willingly go back to Microsoft's old cloud, sky, or water textures. Let's take a look at how it works.

I reviewed Flight Environment with Update 2 installed, the package being available either as a 95 Mb download, or as a boxed product. The installation is protected using Flight 1's key system, which worked fine for me, as it always has done. When the program is done unpacking itself, you will find a trio of icons on the desktop and a new program group under the Flight 1 banner with a link to a 32 page manual.

At the heart of Flight Environment is a control panel that lets you choose which cloud and water textures you want to use. This is a very neat little applet that lets you scroll through the various different combinations of cloud types and then rotate around the different layers, with an option to choose variants of each cloud type - but that is not the end of it, because you can also choose the color of sky and water you want to use. Into flaming sunsets? Fine, you can have 'em. Enjoy subtle shades of dawn? They are only a couple of clicks away - and once you have chosen a set, all you have to do is click OK and Flight Environment copies the textures over to FS2004 and you are ready to fly. Needless to say, Flight Environment is compatible with most third party weather downloaders, such as FS Meteo, FS Metar and Active Sky, since all these do is specify what type of weather FS2004 should display, not which cloud texture set it should use. And if you want to revert to the original FS textures, doing so is no problem, because Flight Environment carefully backs them up.

Most users will start with the main screen of the applet. This gives you total control over the cloud, sky and water options, as well as allowing you to select between 'lower resolution', DXT3 and 32 bit cloud sets. Other options include one for using a replacement sun and extended contrails, while the left hand side of the main screen has a stack of icons let you into the works of the addon and start mixing and matching your own textures.

Flight 1 suggest a minimum configuration of a 1.6 Ghz Pentium with 512 Mb of system RAM and a 128 Mb video card and this appears to be correct as long as you are using the DXT3 texture clouds. The control panel offers a choice between these and full 32 bit clouds, the latter set being the ones featured in the screenshots. Interestingly, although the manual states that there isn't a performance hit using the cloud sets, the low res/DXT3/32 bit option in Flight Enviroment's control panel suggests otherwise and although the 32 bit clouds are completely mind-blowing, I would have said that there is some kind of performance penalty associated with loading them, because I had the very occasional hesitation on a 3.0 Ghz Pentium with 2 Mb of system RAM and a 128 Mb video card, something I don't normally get. However, if there is any comparative frame rate loss, it must be pretty slight and I couldn't measure it, thanks to FS2004's habit of loading random cloudscapes. At a guess, the 32 bit clouds probably require a 2.4 Ghz Pentium or better to run comfortably using a complex addon aircraft, but your mileage may vary. As you can see, the Flight 1 PC12 looks very well with Flight Environment and I had no problems running the two together.

If that is what counts as the bad news, imagine the grin on my face as I am writing this...

Okaaay, having used the product for a couple of months now, I am in total awe of the developer - although FS2004 has great skies compared to its predecessors, the sim is restricted by the use of a single texture set and perhaps for that reason it doesn't always look as real as it gets. One example of a situation where FS2004 falls down is the sky all GA pilots know, which you see when you fly through an inversion into azure skies, while the earth below is obscured by a milky haze in which fluffly little cumuli float. Much though I hate the summer high pressure which creates the haze in the first place, flying on top of it can only be described as a beautiful experience; and one that you can't have in FS. Another sky that we all know is the dramatic cloudscapes that trail in the wake of a cold front - incredible mixtures of dark cu-nims and brilliantly white fracto-cumulus, interspersed with bits of dirty smashed up stratus and maybe some high cirrus announcing an incoming warm front following on to ruin tomorrow. FS2004 doesn't do justice to this situation either, but with a bit of care Flight Environment can and boy, it surely makes Flight Simulator's skies look a lot more real to this pilot.

One of the few things that Microsoft didn't get quite right in FS2004 was the contrast between one cloud type and another - you don't have to be a pilot to appreciate this, just look up at the skies on anything except a warm sunny day and you will instantly appreciate what I mean. The sim's weather system is a technological marvel, little appreciated by most simmers, but the cloud textures haven't really come on since FS2002 - with Flight Environment, the wait is over. With the addon installed, FS2004's clouds have a definite presence which encourages you to single out a little one and beat it up, just like real GA pilots do when no-one else is looking (I don't recommend trying this in an airliner). The skies look, well... real, there being no other word for it, the only let-downs being Microsoft's slightly crappy haze effect, which Flight Environment doesn't alter - but with real weather turned on you can get remarkably real looking post-cold front skies if you are prepared to do a little work on the options. This, I like.

When I first installed the product, I did a lot of dawn and dusk flying, chiefly because some of the sets make every flight a dramatic event, with dark heavens and backlit clouds. You could say that some of the effects are slightly overdone, but I have shots of once in a lifetime real skies that make 'em look quite tame, so I'm neutral on the subject. What I am is a fully signed up fan of all the 'normal' skies and Flight 1 will have to send at least six guys round to get their product back, should they ever want it.

Flight Environment is the big brother of FS Water (users of which are entitled to a discount), so you get some very sophisticated water texturing, right down to visible corals in some tropical areas. Water color changes with the time of day and different wave heights can be set.

When I first reviewed the package, it was very impressive. Update 2 takes it a stage closer to perfection, with even more sophisticated clouds and a dramatic increase in the number of possible sets, which stands at around 36,000 now and from the sound of it will increase even further with Update 3, which is in progress - unlike the majority of products out there, the updates aren't bug fixes, but significant upgrades, thanks to the developer's continuing interest in the product. The water has also been improved, with more wave animations, more base water sets, and more reflection sets. In response to user feedback, the sky sets have been expanded with a view to creating a more 'worldwide' feel to the product, so update 2 contains more tropical sunsets, together with a variety of options suitable for skies in higher latitudes. The Randomizer has been improved and there are many more "Themed" options to accompany the improved sky sets; for example, there is 'gray' water to suit northern Europe and environments that cleverly the hazy appearance common over populated city and industrial areas.

If choosing the cloud textures before you fly is too predictible for you, Flight Environment comes with a 'Randomizer' - clicking the Randomizer icon installs a random cloud and water set. A good deal of thought has clearly gone into this option because a 'constraints' page lets you uncheck certain cloud, sky and water effects so that you never end up seeing combinations you don't like. However, the real fun lies in designing your own cloud sets, by mixing the different types available in the addon. This is done in Flight Environment's cloud texture options screen, which lets you preview the four different types of cloud that go together to make a set (cumulus, stratus, wispy and cirrus) and alter each one until you have the combination you want - and then you can save it using the 'favorites' button. The same can be done with the sky, where sunrise, day, sunset and night textures can be chosen; and the water, where the base color, wave height and surface reflectivity can be changed at will. Once you have built up some favorite sets, the favorites spinner can be used to recall the 'environment' you want and swap the textures before you launch FS2004 - and you can even send .fef (flight environment favorites) files to your friends so that they can drop them into their favorites folders. I can see .fef trading becoming a big thing over the next couple of months.

It simply isn't possible to dislike this product and Flight Environment is going to get rave reviews all round, but while I was using a way of making it even better came to mind. This would be the option to have some 'real weather' sets built into the app and linked to the favorites: for example, the post-cold front sky I mentioned earlier on in this review; or a Caribbean sunset; or summer thunderheads; or a tropical rainstorm. If these favorites were linked to weather themes in this way, simmers could load up a complete weather system and go, knowing it would look right. As it is, there are endless opportunites for experiment and I daresay that there will be a great deal of discussion about cloud and sky sets in the forums.

Verdict? Looking back, we have had the most incredible run of addons in the past six months, in fact I can't recall a time when there has ever been so many really good Flight Simulator addons being released, but Flight Environment belongs in a class of its own. Flight Environment gets an Armchair Aviator because it really is a 'must have' product, to the extent that if you only intend to buy a single addon this year, this should be the one. I would go further and state that if you have never bought an addon before, I would strongly suggest buying this Flight Environment, because I have such had tremendous fun with it - it will be a very clever developer indeed who comes up with a better environment tool than this.