Well, I wrote Environment Control. Working right now on a version 2. I'll try to provide an un-biased comparison.Sky Conductor is an extraordinary utility. It makes the MSTS environment (at least the sky part of it) so much more realistic. When I first used it, I simply could not use the default MSTS environments again. Jak Fearon's (the guy that wrote SC) sky textures are absoutely beautiful.Also, it's very easy to use, once you get past the install issues. Changing the Clear Weather sky in SC changes the clear weather sky for all the routes that you've got. Same with Rain and Snow.Then we get to the problems with it, which I tried to work around with Environment Control.The MSTS environment works by looking at the weather and season combination that you've selected for your activity. It then looks up, in the "routename".trk file, in the route folder, the name of the environment file which corresponds to this weather/season combination, and fires it up when you load the activity. That's what activates all the details of sky, sunrise, sunset, moon, water, rain, snow, wind (!), whatever, that comprise your environment.That much is simple enough. In a basic way, if you want a different environment, you could create one with a new name, insert the name into the right spot in the TRK file, and you're cooking.The problem with Sky Conductor is that that's not the way it changes skies. The default MSTS came with default environments written into the TRK file (of course). Instead of changing the TRK file, SC simply copies new versions of the default files into the ENVFILES directories of each route (where the environment files are stored). The new verions use the SC sky textures, and are also altered in other ways.Sounds simple enough. But if you went into that default environment file, and made changes yourself; then you might say to yourself, I'll save a copy of the original somewhere for safe keeping, and use this original name, so I don't have to edit the TRK file. If you did that, the next time you changed SC files, your edited file would get written over, and you'd lose your changes.The basic idea of Environment Control is to make it easy to change the designated environment files in the route's TRK file. Also, to have a simple way to organize alternate environments which you might create, and to install them into the route.There are three things that EC does. (1)It stores sections of environment files, and makes it easy to put those sections together in different combinations to make new environments. (2) It keeps a library of environments you've assembled or you've downloaded, and has an easy way to install them into a route (version 2 will have a way to un-install them from a route). (3) It has a very easy way to select which environments that are installed with a route go with which Season/Weather combinations. (This is the "edit-the-TRK-file procedure).As an aside, what this means is that Sky Conductor and Environment Control are perfectly compatible. With Environment Control one simply loads the default MSTS files into the Season/Weather slots which your activity uses, select your sky in Sky Conductor, and you've got SC skies.But if there's another nice environment that you've got installed for that route, it's just as easy to switch to that one.Bottom line, in my opinion. Sky Conductor has great skies. But, by itself, it leaves you hobbled for really interesting experimentation with different environment combinations. With Environment Control, you get the experimenting-flexibility, and you can still use Sky Conductor!My humble opinion.Jeff Bush
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