Introduction
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 left many of us gasping when it first came out. The simulator was not only a massive step up from anything that came before it, but graphically provided an unprecedented level of realism. From the beautiful models, to the PBR textures and the astonishing 3D volumetric clouds, there is no doubt that MSFS still pushes the eye-candy envelope to this day. But there has been one subject that has left many unsatisfied, and that is with its depiction of vegetation and seasons.
Luckily, there are several add-ons which allow you to tailor Mother Nature to your liking, two of which are covered in this article: Orbx’s Global Trees HD and REX AccuSeason Advanced Edition. We will put both add-ons head to head and figure out which one provides the most realistic experience, performs best and is most user-friendly.
Features
AccuSeason Advanced
AccuSeason can provide seasonal updates thanks to its automation system, which updates the tree textures either every time you boot your PC, or at a predetermined time, every day. This automated system then alters the vegetation textures on a weekly basis, ensuring a smooth transition between seasons. The add-on does not replace the stock MSFS vegetation models, but it does allow them to be resized bigger or smaller, according to your taste. AccuSeason also provides seasonal ground textures for both Fall and Winter. This places a color layer over MSFS’s ground textures, creating a more realistic, less vibrant look in those seasons. AccuSeason also offers a whole range of options in textures, should you not like what the automatic system provides you. Every season has multiple options for vegetation coloring, allowing you to completely customize your experience.
The developer has also put some effort into enhancing specific areas, to give them a more detailed and realistic look. You can find these under the “Enhancements” tab in the add-on. For this head-to-head, I’ve decided not to use these enhancements, as I’m specifically interested in auto-generated vegetation only. But it is a very nice feature to have nonetheless.
Global Trees HD
Global Trees HD has to be manually set by the user and can only be set per season. What is nice, however, is that the add-on does differentiate between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, as there are significant seasonal differences. Say you leave from the UK in July, when it is Summer, and fly to Australia, then you’ll arrive there in Winter. Global Trees will provide you with an accurate depiction of this. According to their website, REX AccuSeason should also differentiate between hemispheres, but the tool doesn’t make it clear what season you’re installing for each hemisphere. Global Trees HD informs you better on this front.
The add-on also completely replaces all stock MSFS vegetation with new, higher quality models, and it comes with several options for customizable grass types and colors. Other than that, the add-on is not very customizable. But it doesn’t really need to be, as it simply gives you all the correct vegetation and colors, regardless of where you are in the world.
Installation
Installation for both AccuSeason Advanced and Global Trees HD is a breeze. The instructions are clear, and the programs install quickly. AccuSeason hardly takes up any disk space at all, as it only downloads required files on-demand from a server and doesn’t store everything on your PC by default. Global Trees does store all files on your PC and takes about 5 GB of your disk space.
I did have a slight issue after installing AccuSeason, though. The installation allows you to choose between MSFS Windows Store Edition, MSFS Steam Edition, or it allows you to pick a custom community folder location. I initially selected the Steam Edition option, as that was the edition I use, but this didn’t seem to work. After a reinstallation and selecting a custom community folder path, however, I did get AccuSeason to work just fine.
User Interface and User Experience
Both user interfaces are actually quite similar in use. They are clear and intuitive to use and do exactly what they are supposed to do. With AccuSeason, I specifically enjoyed the automation feature that it has, where you can tell the program to install the correct seasonal stuff upon starting your PC. This ensures that you’ll always have the correct nature colors based on real-life time.
With Global Trees on the other hand, I appreciated that the program is very much “plug and play”. There are not that many options to choose from, besides which grass you want to use. You select the season, and the program makes sure that everything reflects the real-world vegetation and colors, regardless of where in the world you are.
Both programs also allow quick and easy uninstallations of your chosen features, should you want to pick a different seasonal setting. I do recommend to always uninstall one theme, before installing another, just to make sure that no old files are left behind.
Vegetation and Seasons
In the YouTube Video that I have created for this article, you can see the differences between stock MSFS, AccuSeason and Global Trees clearly for yourself. Keep in mind, though, that AccuSeason is very customizable with many options for color themes and that, depending on what you pick, your AccuSeason might look quite different from ours.
As you can see, both programs do look substantially different from each other. Especially once we get closer to vegetation, Global Trees has a noticeable edge over AccuSeason with its completely custom models. This becomes even clearer once we get into different biomes, such as the tropical forests or African savannas. Both stock MSFS and AccuSeason seem to hardly showcase any appropriate tree models in these regions, or even show the wrong trees altogether. With Global Trees on the other hand, we can clearly observe a much more tropical look with palm trees and even some vine-like vegetation here and there in the tropics. Or Acacia trees in the savannas. That is not to imply that the AccuSeason trees look bad, but as far as I could tell, they were of the same quality as stock MSFS trees, just with a customizable size option this time around.
Once we come to more temperate areas, such as Germany or Canada, both AccuSeason and Global Trees look good. I still had a preference for Global Trees, simply because I thought the models had a bit more density and just looked slightly better overall. But you might very well like AccuSeason more, as it is highly customizable, and you are capable of choosing your own color tones. It also allows you to install custom terrain colors/textures for both Fall and Winter. I thought that this feature very much added a nice bit of detail to the sim, making the ground look less vibrant or even a bit brown in these seasons, much like it would in the real world.
Global Trees has no such feature, but it does allow you to pick a grass type, which completely replaces the stock MSFS grass. It looks denser and more vibrant, but it also adds some pleasant ground coloration altogether once you get closer to the ground. It has the same effect as the AccuSeason ground textures, but is only visible in the player’s close vicinity, where-as the AccuSeason textures are visible from any distance and altitude.
I will admit that I find it strange that Global Trees sets all vegetation to reflect real-world settings, without customization options, but then does allow you to choose one grass type to be displayed across the world. In my mind, it would’ve made more sense if grass too was different based on location and season and not a customizable option.
Performance
To make this comparison as fair as possible, both products were tested on a completely fresh installation of Microsoft Flight Simulator Standard Edition, with no other add-ons installed besides AccuSeason or Global Trees.
I first ran with stock MSFS, to set a benchmark. I then installed AccuSeason first, performed the same tests and then completely reinstalled MSFS again before installing Global Trees. I did this to make sure that there would be no old AccuSeason files, that could potentially cause conflicts.
AccuSeason seems to have a minor performance impact here and there, but it’s hardly noticeable, losing roughly 3 FPS over stock MSFS on average. Global Trees on the other hand, seems to have a substantial performance impact, costing us a whopping 10 FPS in some areas over stock MSFS. For example, in Mont Royal, I went from roughly 65 FPS, to roughly 55 FPS. This might not necessarily seem like a lot, but we all know that MSFS is the sort of program where every frame matters. I had my sim running with just the texture add-ons installed. But if you have a sim which is already struggling at say 30 FPS because you have a high-fidelity aircraft, lots of air traffic, and a nicely detailed add-on airport, those last few Global Trees HD trees might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and make your sim look laggy.
Conclusion
Both AccuSeason and Global Trees HD have features which I thoroughly enjoy. With AccuSeason for example, I’m a big fan of the automatism, the ground textures, the high customizability and the fact that it’s not very taxing on performance.
With Global Trees on the other hand, I appreciate that I don’t really need to customize anything, as it just picks the correct color tones for every region. I also really like the custom models, and they do stand out against both stock MSFS and AccuSeason. But it does come at a noticeable performance impact.
One thing that I don’t necessarily like about either add-on is that you have to set them up before you even start your sim. I’ve had several occasions with both add-ons, where I’ll start a flight in Summer, while I still had Fall textures installed, for example. The only way to change this, is by closing the sim entirely, installing the correct seasonal stuff and restarting the sim again. AccuSeason sort of gets around this with its automation feature, but even then, it doesn’t work correctly when my sim time is different from the real-world time. It’s not a big issue, but I would’ve preferred for both add-ons to work based on sim time.
My advice? If you have plenty of performance left in your PC, then go with Global Trees HD. It just has a clear edge visually over AccuSeason in our opinion. But if you do value your MSFS performance, and you don’t mind that tropical forests don’t look all that tropical, then AccuSeason might be the right choice for you.
