Howard's Mix at Flightsim, review?

[circleman]

anyone running howard's mix on their machine?
is it good-looking and efficient as claimed?

thx
cman

[pilotgod]

Honestly, I'd never heard of it until you posted, so I downloaded it and messed around with it for an hour or so tonight, below are my takes on it. System specs are as follows: Dell XPS 400, 2.8Ghz Dual Core, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb ATI O/C to 450Mhz, Onboard sound. So lower end, but not dead.

Installation: Straight forward auto-installer, but requires you to defrag your drive after install for best results. Also, for backup, you need to back up your FS9 folder...mine is over 20Gb so this took a while. My complaint about it is how it doesn't have an option to restore files to default like Vista Australis does, I kind of wish it did, just in case I need to revert.

Use: There are two variants you can choose from once installed, green areas and arid areas. The reason is that MS used arid files in tundra regions to cut down on space and simulate dry grass. So...to solve this there are the two variants, however you can only use one at a time, and can not switch them while the sim is running. So pick what you want for your flight and go with it. This is problematic for a flight from Phoenix to Chicago, as one of the places will look really, really, wrong. Also, over 3,000 files get replaced, ranging from scenery stuff to your splash screen, the background for your aircraft window on the setup screen, weather files, weather themes, etc. This is kind of cool, but to some might be more "invasive" then they prefer...so keep that in mind.

How it looks: Definitely better than default, and good overall. I think higher end systems will get the most benefit (as is the usual), but low end systems should run it just fine. I was getting between 18 and 30 FPS consistantly with maybe 15 when loading new textures (switching to outside view). This is about a 10% decrease, but not really terrible. I generally keep my frames locked in the 20's anyway for ease of use in multiplayer.

Conclusion: It is a nice addition, with only a couple of minor things I'd like to see changed, but is not bad enough for me to regret the download and install. If you would like better sunset/sunrise, crisper water and cloud textures, more realistic weather themes, and a seemingly more lush landscape then I recommend it, but it's ability to customize limits it for the average user, however experienced simmers who are comfortable editing files, will have only minor issues tweaking it to their standards.

Screenies:

DC-4 over the Columbia River East of Portland


L-1049G near Ayer's Rock, Australia


L-1049G at Dusk with "Cumulus Layers" weather theme


L-1049G at Sunset over the Grand Canyon, real world weather.

[circleman]

thx for the review.you made it clear.
think I can stay on track with my present install.

Nice screenies.

thx
cman

[Johan Dees]

tried it, but i find them too vibrant, GE Pro looks much beter with own adjusted pale textures.
I cant recommend it..

[jan]

I'll would'nt recommend it ,the 3 D effect looks better but the colors are a little to hefty for me so i have reinstalled the Flight en Ground enviroment from Flight one again ;D
Greetz