FScene USA & Canada Winter Textures
By Terblanche Jordaan (16 November 2002)
ell - he did it again! As
promised Ruud Faber delivered his winter textures for FS2002. We all know
that FS2002 will only change to winter scenery on the 22 December but be
sure that you will be ready for the change because these ground textures are
superb.
Let's recap from the previous review on his fall textures: 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 most of us downloaded them and enjoyed many hours of flying over ground textures that looked and felt more realistic than the default textures.
And believe me; I was so impressed 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 files 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 to create something new! It was therefore no surprise to learn that the new set for FS2002 will be payware and worth every cent!
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 founded their way to more than 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 and now FScene-USA & Canada Winter... His advice: FScene-USA & Canada might change some parts of the basic scenery of countries outside the USA & Canada, so use it preferably with FScene-Europe installed.
The winter 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.
Terblanche Jordaan
For more information, visit:
t.blanche@iafrica.com
