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Enabling / Activating Seasonal Effects (PRO version only)

TerraBuilder's SynthWizard is capable of enabling seasonal version of the scenery, provided you have downloaded and properly installed winter texture packs available from TerraBuilder's web site. In SynthWizard, it is possible at this time to have only 2 seasonal versions: Summer/Spring/Fall (which all look the same) and Winter. TerraBuilder is ready also to display separate and distinct Spring and Fall versions, but this will require colorization of the entire texture set into spring and fall versions. As this is a major undertaking, this project will take some time to be completed.

There are 2 different switches in TerraBuilder that deal with seasonal textures:

View switch - This switch is located on the TerraBuilder Properties Dialog . It is used only to view the seasonal textures, and work in all season modes, depending on the availability of seasonal synthetic textures. Since only default Summer and Winter textures are available at the moment, only winter and summer modes are available.

Season Activator - This switch is located on the Project Properties dialog , and it actually enables season switching in the scenery. By default, only summer mode is enabled. In the PRO version of the TerraBuilder, user can also enable other seasonal modes: Spring, Fall and Winter, depending on the availability of the textures. Since only default summer and winter textures are available at present, only summer and winter mode is available. All the seasonal modes that are NOT selected will be defaulted to summer mode. This means that:

  • If you have only Summer active, the scenery will have summer textures no matter what season is selected in Flight Simulator
  • If you have Winter and  Summer active, the scenery will have summer textures during Spring, Summer and Fall, and Winter textures during winter.

To change a season within TerraBuilder:

  1. Display TerraBuilder Properties Dialog and click on Preferences Tab 1.
  2. From View Season section 2, select either Winter or Summer 3.
  3. Click Apply 4. At this point all old seasonal synthetic textures will be replaced with the new seasonal synthetic textures. If you have any projects open, all textures will be replaced with the new season counterparts.

To enable seasonal texture display in the scenery: (PRO version only)

  1. Within an active project, display Project Properties Dialog .
  2. Select Project Properties Tab 5. In Seasonal effects section 6, Summer mode 7 is activated by default.
  3. Activate Winter mode by clicking on the Winter button 8.
  4. Do not click on the Fall or Spring button, since there are no seasonal textures available for these seasons.
  5. Click Apply 9. When the scenery is compiled into a BGL file, it will include all the necessary code to enable seasonal display according to season set in the Flight Simulator.

 

 

 

 

 


Figure 1: Season view control

 


Figure 2: Season activator