Daytime Texture question

Gang, wondering if someone can help here. When I'm flying when it's cloudy, I like to select not only cloud cover but a specific day where the sky texture is grey, and by that I mean totally. There are some dates in the system that are totally grey, you just have to search for them. For example, April 4 and 28th 2018 in the afternoon are grey. So I assume on those days FS9 selects a greyer texture from the main texture folder (e.g. sky_afternoon_4 as an example.) But what I notice is that on April 4th, the grey sky switches from blue to grey at 1:13pm. But on the 28th, it's later in the afternoon. So just how does FS9 pick a texture. And does it blend different afternoon textures (i.e. sky_afternoon has 9 different textures) to create one sky color. Cause what I want to do is find that grey texture in the main texture folder, and copy it to be 5 of the afternoon textures, and have the other 5 be blue. That way I stand a 50/50 chance of getting a deep blue sky or a grey sky, I don't have to hunt and peck for dates. I did try to change the textures using DXTB or whatever that paint program is, but all it does it move the pixels around in the sky texture. It won't let me just paint it all grey (unless I'm doing something wrong)

You need a utility program like Flight Environment, which allows you to select the sky color, cloud type etc., from a menu with preview thumbnails as a guide:

https://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=fe2004

The grey is not a separate textured BMP, its a overlay which means FS first rendering the texture then the overlay which is the reason frame rates drop with weather and clouds which are also a overlaid onto a normal sky back ground. That I feel is the simplest way of explaining it.

With regard to the timings I cant answer that, going back to the days when FS9 SP1 was released I was fly the south Atlantic when the Aura started, it looked great so I changed to a sea plane saved the flight so I could go back to the precise time and place BUT have never managed to see it again, obviously randomly generated, anyone out there can point me in the direction to see it again.

 

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