Something new every day!

I have discovered a new bitmap in the FS9 folders - it's called envmap.bmp. Well, it's not new, it's been there all the time, but what I have learnt is that this image is what governs the reflections on shiny surfaces on your planes.

More to the point, you can use different envmap.bmp images to suit your individual flight - although you have to stop and restart FS9 every time you want a different reflection.

So what is this image?

Well, the basic one with FS9 is a stylised landscape texture bitmap 256 pixels square. The lower half is ground and the upper part sky. I have been playing around with freely available ones that can be found on the net and also with some I made myself. It seems you can also use a photograph. The thing to remember is that if you're flying under a cloudy grey sky, you aren't likely to get blue sky reflections or if you're flying over a city, then snow capped mountains are out.

A pity there isn't some detection utility that changes the envmap to suit the environment. You could have a whole library of useable envmaps and have the reflections change according to where you are. Anyway, here's a couple of screenshots - you judge. And if you look closely, you might even recognise the chase plane from which the photos were taken...

Here's one using a summery alpine photo for the envmap:


Here's the "Hawke's Bay Helicopter Rescue Service" Piper Cheyenne over a summery New Zealand - see if you can spot the camera plane.


Here's Dan Knutti's Cheyenne over a sunny, wintry alps - spot the cam-plane again