BirdsEyeView

I have tacked on Terrain Mesh enhancements, Scenery Addons, and a few Airport Addons, but this is the first Texture enhancement that I have used and reviewed and I'm here to say that I'm glad the folks at BirdsEyeView allowed me the opportunity to check out their product. The textures that are default are fine, and once again, hats off to the developers at MS for the work on their product, MSFS2004, but once you see the "greener" side of the texture fence, you'll see that things can look even more real than what you thought possible. It's like having a perfectly fine bucket seat in your car, but someone gives you a nice seat cover for your birthday, and all of a sudden you realize what you've been missing out on! In the case of the car, no more ice cold seats on those cold mornings! With the textures of MSFS 2004, it's as if your world has been transformed and given more perspective.

The product, which at the time of this review comes in two volumes, Vol. 1 - USA/Canada Summer Textures and Vol. 2 - USA/Canada Fall Textures. Texture enhancement is the art of developing autogen objects, which include trees, buildings, grass, rock, etc., into more realistic looking objects. This does not change the way the terrain is laid out in a physical, geographical manner, but rather makes the objects that appear in your sim look as real as possible. The most striking differences that I had noticed was the fuller looking trees, better looking buildings of all types, and the textures of rock, such as sheer cliffs, or mountains of granite. I was most impressed with how the various trees were rendered. They looked fuller and rounder, whereas the default textures sort of looked like two flat, tree shaped cards, fitted together at right angles. In the figure at right is a shot of the fall textures in Vermont.

was stationed on the east coast for a period of time, and remember the explosion of colors when fall came around! The yellows, oranges and reds of the trees were simply fantastic. Almost too much for the senses to take in at once! BirdsEyeView does a great job in bringing those colors to life for your sim world. Summer textures bring the various greens that you would find throughout wooded areas, with trees being varied in a realistic way, so as not to give you the same tree variety in all environments. Outstanding job on the trees! The term "cruising along at treetop level" has a very different meaning now! It was also very realistic looking coming up on a mountain ridge with the trees silhouetted against the sky line. Enough on the trees! You're going to think I'm a tree hugger, which I am!

With BEV, the focus is on a realistic looking environment overall. Rather than exact placement, BEV goes for a more general placement of the buildings and objects, with more detail than the default textures in MSFS 2004, and to be honest, unless you�re flying over your own hometown, I really don't think you're going notice anything different! You'll be too busy gawking out the windscreen, taking in the more realistic landscape than what you've been accustomed too!

You can probably break flight simmers into a few groups. There are those that like the challenges of flying large commercial airliners, and are more into the technical aspects of the sim, utilizing avionics more and flying much higher than conditions would permit for sightseeing. There are those that like the fast and furious flying, in military or civilian jet aircraft, and there are those that like to stick there nose out of the cockpit and into the fresh air to see what there is to see.

I was pleasantly surprised when I went from one aircraft to another, and found that the textures looked great no matter what the speed! Your particular system may have different capabilities, but on my system the graphics looked great at various speeds and altitudes. Whereas you might have problems with photorealistic scenery if you fly too high or too low and fast, that isn't a problem with the BEV texture enhancement. They have boasted that the frame rates of the sim will not be impacted, and from what I can see while flying different aircraft at various speeds and altitudes, everything looked and behaved smooth as silk! These are great textures for the low and slow, high and fast, and anything in between!

When it comes to how your virtual world looks, can you have too many choices? I don't think so! with the BirdsEyeView Configurator II, you're able to easily change the way the textures are displayed within MSFS 2004. In the figure to the right you can see the drop down menu of the areas that you�re able to make texture adjustments to. Some of the categories will have ten or so different choices, some maybe just two or three. You're able to get a peek at what your choice looks like if you choose it and then click the zoom button (see the figure below). You're able to choose the default MSFS 2004 textures, the bev default textures, or a texture of your choice.

When I first opened up the Configurator, I was a bit overwhelmed by all the choices that were available, but I methodically went through each one, looking at each and every option available, and once I save the settings and loaded MSFS 2004, which you can do right from the utility, I was glad that I spent the time picking and choosing! What a difference!

The utility also enables you to save various "themes" that you can configure for different areas that you may be flying in. This enables you to tailor the environment to what you think it should look like and not have the Pacific Northwest have the same textures as the Southeast.

The folks at BirdsEyeView are also very receptive to suggestions for textures that you would like to see. I think I may ask them to look into the hay bales in the fields come harvest time! Both the rolled bales and the square! What the heck! They also have a forum that is friendly and helpful. You can also download other simmers "themes" and save yourself a little time from going through the configurator yourself. there's a lot of imagination out there, may as well take advantage of it!

They didn't stop with just the buildings and trees with this texture enhancement. River textures, power lines, and rural farmland textures have been enhanced and really make the virtual flight more enjoyable. Runway textures can be altered using the options available to you in the Configurator. The optional Water Textures were OK and were better than the default textures used in MSFS 2004, but I preferred another utility to manage my water textures. Still, very nice looking nonetheless! If you want to buzz the golf courses and ruin someone�s swing, the ninth hole looks more realistic than the

The product, BirdsEyeView, is compatible with other environmental addons, including FE2004 and ASV. Other existing addons are fine to use with bev as well. I had a little problem with one of my areas that are loaded with a Mesh add on, and I posted to the bev forum. An answer was prompt and to the point, although my question as to where they got those wild and crazy emoticons for their forum went unanswered! The problem, I discovered, was not with the product, but with some settings that I had made and had not changed back to my normal operating configuration.

When you order the product, you choose Volumes that cover specific continents and seasons. Presently, summer and fall for the USA and Canada are available, but the textures for winter and hard winter are in the beta testing phase. All Volumes correspond to a season within MSFS 2004; Vol. 1 - Summer; Vol. 2 - Fall; Vol. 3 - Winter; Vol. 4 - Hard Winter; & Vol. 5 - Spring.

I don't think you can beat the price for this addon at $12.00 USD per volume. With every fourth volume purchased, you receive a fifth volume free. So overall, the cost for a complete season texture makeover would run you $48.00 USD. You can pick and choose what you want, or get them all as they come out. Future regions that include Europe, Oceania, Middle East, South America, etc. will be sold in the same manner. They also guarantee that their product will work with future releases of MSFS as it is or through free upgrades.

Download was easy and the configurator is pretty self explanatory. A manual covering all aspects of bev is included in your bev folder. I noted that there were some topics in the forum where folks were having some problems with getting things to display correctly, but these were mostly user end issues and easily resolved.

These days, for a new company to make an impression, they've got to jump into the game with a big splash, and in my opinion, the developers at BirdsEyeView have done a collective cannonball! If you haven't delved into the world of Texture addons yet, I'd have to say give this product a try, and purchase a season that you would do most of your virtual flying in, see if you like it, and go from there! I'm eagerly anticipating the release of the winter textures, for if there as good as the summer/fall volumes, I may have to put on some electric socks!

Check out their site for more information at flightsim-bevs.com.