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Review - Flight One Ground Environment Pro

Thu, 10/26/2006 - 00:03 — Luke Harvest
The latest release of Ground Environment Pro by Peter Wilding and Anthony Vos has got the FlightSim community in some craze. With the gradual release of screenshots and BETA reviews we we're all astounded with the sheer quality and realism the product bought to FS2004. As soon as starting a flight after installing these new textures the amazement hit me, the visual improvement was immediately apparent. I was amazed at how the autogen lied in the right place and how the buildings looks so crisp and smooth. The development team designed Ground Environment Pro in such a way that blurries we're almost impeded but of course the simulation has a limit, and I think that the product hits that limit, where blurries are sometimes still apparent.

The installation takes place after downloading the 75MB installation file off the FlightOne website. As soon as you have required the installation file and ran it you are faced with a Wrapper by which you have to either insert your Credit Card details, or if you have a key from a previous purchase. Nonetheless the cost of the product is so small its worth it. Once everything has processed successfully you are now entering the installation process which can take anything between 3-5 minutes depending on your system. Once you have installed Ground Environment Pro the only thing left to do is install the textures.

    After installing the base installers (these are mandatory) there is an option to install a few different texture sets for the following:
  • Clear Skies
  • Mostly Clear
  • Partly Cloudy
  • Mostly Cloudy
  • Fully Overcast

In my opinion these automatic textures are a waste of time and hard drive space. I much prefer designing my own and tweaking the Contrast and saturation. The default installation inserts a partly cloudy, so when flying with bad weather the ground is too bright. Please note that installing over five sets will take over one hour so make sure that when creating textures that your occupied with something else. Once all of the textures have been created insert the ICAO and go and fly. Of course if you can't be bothered with this (Like Me!) just colourize the textures to your satisfaction then install them permanently. Beware that installing many sets will take up a lot of hard drive space, or even a whole hard drive.