Interesting. So there are places where fall colours kick in too early and places where they kick in too late
Natural phenomena has variation in timing due many variables.
It’s like expecting a weather add on to place the exact cloud where you’re seeing it in real life.
wel… usually the more north you are, the more early it starts
its not THAT random
I don’t know what variables are accounted for by the mod, but it appears to be chronological (i.e. start of Fall by solar calendar) and may not account for latitude.
Still, the entire simulation is an approximation, one to one correlation brings in Borjes problem of the map.
To be absolutely accurate it has to be the size of the territory it covers… and therefore unusable.
Thank you! I’m really glad you’re enjoying the addon.
Fall foliage timing is always tricky because it varies wildly depending on the location, microclimate, and tree species—even within the exact same park. For comparison, here is a live webcam shot also taken yesterday at Mount Royal below. As you can see the colors matches to what I have much more that the other location in the same area.
MSFS handles seasons across broader regional zones rather than live street-by-street conditions, it’s impossible to match every individual block or hillside to a specific day in real life.
Also worth noting: in your real-world photo, the trees are hit by direct sunlight, whereas your sim screenshot looks to be under heavy cloud cover or shadow, which naturally mutes the yellows and oranges quite a bit in the sim’s lighting engine!
This is correct. Like the Southeast USA should be showing mostly all green leaves right now and the Northeast should be showing a more fall look. From what I’ve seen, things look pretty close to accurate in the sim using this mod.
I haven’t gone as far as Minneapolis, but I have been flying in northern Iowa and fall colors have seemed accurate to me. I have a window next to my PC, so I’ve been comparing the tree colors IRL and in the simulator as I fly.
Sure but again, Minneapolis should not be all red and orange in mid-late September
Frankly, it’s going to be really hard to pin the color change down with much accuracy as the timing in any given location can vary by several weeks from year to year. It depends on how fast the temps cool off, the soil moisture, etc.
Yes, on average trees at more northerly latitudes will start turning before their southerly counterparts, and perhaps that can be simulated. But in general, without reliable, realtime global data on this (which really doesn’t exist outside of people’s reports), I think we need to be okay with ballparking this in the sim.
With the Bijan mod installed there is something like a forrest on the sandbanks or shore next to the runway. There is aso a note on the install page of the scenery stating compatibility issues with Bijan. I hope they can work together and resolve this, like Bijan and Lisium did for Heraklion.
I did more research on the tree fall colors, initially thinking they were pretty close, but they are surprisingly a month (correction: 25 days) ahead of the real world. This does not change the fact that I will absolutely continue to use and enjoy the Bijan seasons mod (and that it is so much better than the default trees) but I thought this was interesting enough to share.
Yesterday, I went around Des Moines, IA and took pictures of real trees, then compared them to the simulator on the live settings an hour later. These are the sets of three images edited together below, and you can see that they are much more brown in the simulator. I thought that this was just the lighting, but after rewinding the simulator date, I discovered that they were brown trees had already lost their colors from almost exactly a month ago.
Here is how the trees look if you set the MSFS 2024 date to one month in the past, much more accurate to how the real ones look:
This is pretty far off, and based on real photos I took from last October, I don’t think that the real leaf colors are any slower than usual this year. One thing I’m wondering is if this inaccuracy is caused by MSFS’s default behavior, or from the Bijan mod. I know MSFS 2024 has it’s own model for leaf color changing, so this might be related to that default behavior.
I’m investigating this example too, and the original poster was correct. If you look at the colors now, they are all brown from the leaves being dead, but if you set the date to about one month ago, you can see that the colors are more vibrant, like the real photo.
To correct my original theory, I think one week less than a month (or around 25 days) ahead of real life would be a more accurate guess for the North American fall colors.
1 month ago (plus one week from original posting date):
Real time (minus 6 days to account for posting date):
Ok, so I’ll take another look at it and correct my original post if I got it wrong. Perhaps I didn’t take a close enough look at different angles and conditions.
Thanks
I don’t think you were wrong, I was saying that you were correct in that original post.
Ok, sorry for the confusion and I do see what you were referring to. The tress were a lot more colorful in late September then they were when I took my screen shot 6 days ago. So its just a timing thing in that the change should occur a couple weeks later then they do but I think I might be a little too knit picky. The colors are great in this screenshot from Sept 30.
Season Enhanced update 5.2 released
- Updated trees in Israel.
- Added Baobab trees along the Avenue of the Baobabs in Madagascar.
- Improved terrain colors in Austria and reduced green tints around St. Gallen LSZR, Buochs LSZC, Emmen LSME, Saanen LSGK, Luzern LSZO, Buttwil LSZU, Wangen-Lachen LSPV, Lausanne LSGL, Hohenems-Dornbirn LOIH, Friedrichshafen EDNY, Zurich LSZH, and parts of the Alps.
- Improved trees around Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
- Updated trees in parts of Brazil.
Available on Bijanstudio.com and Simmarket.
MarketPlace will be updated by next week.
Looking forward to seeing the latest.
However, I got the email notifying me of the 5.2 update this morning, and there appears to be a SSL issue when clicking on the link to retrieve the update. Something seems to be broken with click.mailchannels.net.
Do you have an alternate distribution method for people who have purchased via your website?
Notice:
Due to a technical issue with our hosting provider, the download link included in the update notification sent on October 20, 2026, is not valid.
To download the latest update, simply use the original download link you received when you placed your order , or use the link from previous update notification.
If you no longer have your original download link, please contact me via email, and I will be happy to send it to you.
Apologize for any inconvenience.
Do your addon affect to grass? Current MSFS grass system is awefull, because it included also higher corn field and they are drawn so close even with ultra setting. I would be happy, if there would no be any higher form of grass exepct basic grass. Could i do something like that with help of AI? Just replace all the other grass element by basic grass worldwide?