FScene USA & Canada Fall Textures

By Terblanche Jordaan (16 October 2002)

etween getting married the 10th October 2002 and writing a PhD thesis in Theology, there will always be time for flying, especially if you can get your hands on something that changes the whole look of FS2002!

Ruud Faber is a 65 year young flightsimmer from the Netherlands. He recently moved to a small town called Egmond aan Zee and has been a flightsim enthusiast since flightsim was only a few lines and dots on an amber screen. As a computer programmer he had to make a choice between being a painter (artist) or a dedicated computer fanatic. He decided to combine the two.

In the beginning he created ground textures and posted it on the net as freeware (PH_WORLD and EU_WORLD) and everyone downloaded them and enjoyed many hours of flying over ground textures that looked and felt more realistic than the default textures.

Believe me, even then I was surprised that it was freeware because I've tried many (MANY) hours to recreate textures for FS98 (then in r8 and other formats) and later FS2000 (the introduction of bmp formats with much more clearness). It takes hours and hours to create, test, edit, test and recreate those little bmp file that we take so for granted!

But if you are a well established painter like Ruud, it must be a creative challenge to take them one by one and create something new! It was therefore not a surprise to learn when the new set came out for FS2002 that it is now payware and worth every sent.

It is a feast for the eye, especially if you are a VFR flyer like myself. Between 4000 and 5000 feet you have a wonderful new set of textures. No wonder that the textures have already found their way to over 60 countries world wide.

He started of with FScene-Europe textures, studying photographs and carefully recreated them as bmp files for FS2002. And then came FScene-USA summer, followed by FScene-USA & Canada Fall. The difference is simply that the cities in Europe are not that big and the houses are much closer to one another, while in the USA / Canada you have enough space to create cities as big as counties in Europe.

The fall textures are a true representation of the changing seasons in the Northern Hemisphere and if you enjoy flying VFR it is an absolute must. They make absolutely NO difference to your frame rate seeing that they simply replace the default ones. Soon Ruud promises a whole new winter texture set and shortly after that he will follow with the spring texture set. It is only 5.4 Mb to download and for the fanatics in the USA and Canada that have been aching for ground textures in their own area while flying the Europe textures this is your chance; buy it and get in a light plane and test them. You will not regret it.

Terblanche Jordaan
t.blanche@iafrica.com

For more information, visit:

http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/rfaber

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