Night Textures for Cities

These textures are a replacement for the default city night textures of FS2004. They are a revision and, I hope an improvement on the night textures I released some months ago as Night and Winter Textures. This current set of textures are for cities only and, more specifically, only for North American and European cities. Nonetheless they will effect a global change over all parts of the simulated world because, so far as I can tell, these European and North American city textures are used throughout the whole world. With this new set of textures I have tried to correct some of the defects of the previous version, so, for example, I have tried to make some of the city lights less red and I have also tried to make the lights brighter. There remains room for improvement and I should welcome any changes that other people might like to make to make these night textures better. While I am reasonably satisfied with the European textures I am less happy with the North American textures. I have never flown over America at night so I do not have first hand experience of what American cites look like to the unaided eye. Friends in America have told me that the street lighting there is clear unlike street lighting in Europe which is characteristically amber. I have tried to reflect this in the North American textures but I am not certain of the results. Anyone who knows America at night from the air is doubly welcome to make any changes he or she sees fit to give my night textures more verisimilitude.

Installation:
Installation of the textures is easy. In the zip file you will find three files named 032b, 049b and City Night textures. (I will say more about the two additional files in a moment). Unzip all the files to a temporary location and then copy all the files in the City Night Textures folder to the Scenery\World\Texture folder in your main FS2004 folder. As usual it is probably best to make a backup of your original files first if you want to go back to the originals. If you do not, then the original Microsoft files can be found on Disk 4 of the installation disks for Flight Simulator 2004 in the World.CAB. That's it!

I have also included two additional texture sets in the folders called 032b and 049b. These texture sets depart from the original Microsoft textures but for different reasons.

In the original texture set 032b someone at Microsoft made a mistake because the summer city textures do not match the winter city textures. This can be seen if you go to Athens; different types of city textures have been used for winter and for summer. All I have done is to make the textures consistent with one another so that the city looks the same winter or summer albeit reflecting a different appearance appropriate for the different seasons. All the textures I have used are Microsoft's textures, some taken from FS2002. I have included all the textures for this particular set (hw, su, wi) plus the relevant autogen files. To install these textures just follow the procedure outlined in the first paragraph.

The texture set 049b comprises textures for city centres. Now Microsoft has used one set of city centre textures throughout the world but these textures are really only appropriate for America since they display the familiar grid pattern typical of American cites. Unfortunately, these textures don't look very good in, for example, the context of Europe. For this reason I have included a set of textures which seem more suitable for European cities. Again, I have included all the textures and the corresponding autogen files for this texture set (hw, su). To install these textures just follow the procedure outlined in the first paragraph. I should emphasise once more that my texture set 049b is suitable primarily for those people who fly in Europe. I should also qualify my statement that 049b is my texture set. In fact the summer and winter textures are the work of Lennart Arvidsson for his splendid replacement textures for FS2002. I have changed the colours somewhat and I have, of course, added my own night textures.

Enjoy!

These files are freeware and anyone is at liberty to make use of them and modify them as he or she wishes. The only thing that is prohibited is their commercial use.

Adam Mills.


I can be contacted at

apmills@arlington1.freeserve.co.uk