The week before last I had a mechanical failure of my HDD. I lost some stuff, but most of it had been backed-up, so more of an inconvenience than a major tragedy. Biggest pain-in-the-neck was getting everything reinstalled on the new drive. That took the better part of last week, between dealing with real-world responsibilities and sorting out one odd glitch which made reinstalling FS9 a much longer operation than it should have been. I still have a lot of scenery stuff to reinstall, but I was back flying the digital skies this weekend past. The first airplane I put back in the hangar was Manfred Jahn's beautiful C-47, so I decided that the Goony Bird was going to be a component of my indoor weekend recreation. The first flight was a test-hop between Klagenfurt and Ljubljana in the default 172 to check out how the environmental add-ons would interact. Satisfied with that, I then launched on an evening flight from Ljubljana, back over the Austrian Alps to Bratislava in the default DC-3.
Long ago I had downloaded a series of textures called Blue Sphere (I think I snagged it off of Avsim). I remembered liking the way they handled haze and visibility variables, but after I had to wipe my HDD to cure a viral infection some time ago (despite having a well-known anti-viral program installed!), I lost track of it.
I've been using HDEv2 for some time, but rummaging through my saved FS files, I found my copies of Blue Sphere, so I decided to combine elements of the two packages. I've been quite pleased with the resultant computer-rendered skies.
BTW, this is a spectacularly beautiful area of the world, and even with a good terrain mesh, MSFS can only hint at how stunning it can be. When I was based in Europe and flying over this area, I had to constantly pull myself away from the window to accomplish the routine tasks which fill up a flight. It never felt routine.
There's probably some payware stuff out there, but if anyone knows of good freeware scenery for this part of the world (Slovenia/Austria/Hungary/Slovakia), I'd love to hear about it.
A nice image with which to end the day.
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