Ooh, these look very interesting and shall be very fun to use! :D

This is awesome! Finally!

I have absolutely no idea how I'd use any of these in my current neighborhood but into my dl folder they go. Thank you! (I thought the same thing about your volcanoes but found a spot for one of those.)

I know exactly how I'm going to use a lot of these. It will save a LOT of time in my video editors! THANK YOU SO MUCH! Ahh!

Very cool and useful! These are going to be awesome for picture-taking, thank you!

This? This is BRILLIANT. Thank you, David! I can't wait to use these for picture-taking!

These are awesome! I am keeping my fingers crossed that the birds work on my lots. Thank you for sharing! :-)

Aw, you beat me to the punch. This is what I was planning on doing. At least they're done though! That's something off my To Do List. They turned out great!

I will be more than happy to share with you the other effects that I know work well and my notes about them. The farm fields are a particularly curious case; they follow the changes in terrain but do not pass through walls, meaning they won't appear inside houses. The NL spotlights are great for Community lots and they automatically start up at night. There's also the lighthouse effect to make "functional" lighthouses that Sims can live inside.

You are amazing. I have just gotten excited to play the sims 2 again! movie makers around, will thank you.

These look awesome! Do the birds actually fly?

This is really, really awesome. Thank you so much for all the effort this must have taken, and for sharing with us

Thank you for the encouragement everyone! Yes, the birds sure do fly - in fact everything in the set moves or changes in some way or other.

Thank you and sorry about that MSD, I had no idea the neighbourhood effects were the ones you were interested in. I was led into this project because I wanted some more impressive effects that would work with my build mode volcanoes. The lighthouse effect is included in this set as the Light Beam. I omitted the fields, flowers, and spotlights because I didn't think the resolution was up to in-lot quality. There were several other effects that I didn't think made the grade - such as the swans and other aquatic things that sadly "swim" through the land, or some others that were too unreliable (hang gliders) or specialized (power plant). That's just my own read on them - but you can decide for yourself how to proceed.

Ooooh I can't wait to try these out in-game. These effects are so useful for moviemakers. Thanks so much for making them! :-)

Ok - I love you! I got a lot of birds and animals, that are just there for decoration and nothing will ever move. That'll make the gameplay so much more fun. Thanks a lot! :lovestruc

Thank you. This is so great. The birds flying around adds something special to the lots. It was disappointing that animated hood effects weren't viewable when playing. There is also Numenor's lost & found water fall. Maybe that would be possible too?

Fantastic, these will be very useful, thank you!

This is so very impressive. I've tried out all of them in my test hood and they work beautifully. I can't tell you how many times I've wished the Maxis hood deco trains would appear in live mode and now they can. All the effects are stunning. They'll be a great asset to both my hoods. Some of them will even work for my medieval hood. Thanks so very much for this. It's brilliant.

I am happy that people are finding these items useful, and I really appreciate the feedback.
Yes, I think the flying birds are among my favourites too. Its too bad that they are suppressed by the later EPs on some machines. Frankly, it felt so wonderful to play StephSim's Breconshire Docks and Beach (at Post #6) with the gulls circling overhead (as shown in the main post's screenshot). I guess I've always been entranced by the seashore.
I did try out the "waterfall" and "waterfall_bounce" effects you are referring to, but at the lot level they were distorted and just didn't come across as convincing at all. However, the companion "waterfall_splash" did make the grade - but not as water but as the "starbursts" of the collection. That a waterfall splash turned into starbursts at the lot level conveys an impression of the kind of distortion that the other waterfall effects had in the lot.
Thank you so much Ray. I don't play a modern hood, but I think it would be great to see the trains running through railway oriented lots such as StephSim's set. It would be fun to have that sort of lot setup where the tracks go from one lot to the next. When I was taking the train pictures for the upload it was rather amusing to see them running across the desert without rails. :D

Those are really awesome! Thanks! :D

Awesome i love light effects mooar.

These will be awesome in my sims stories and for anyone who does that sort of thing. I do have a question though, do sims have problems walking through it at all?

No, Sims will walk through any of these effects just as if they weren't there. The only time they may notice the effects is when they are first placed, at which time they may come over to investigate.

The birdies work on my laptop :-D It's so nice to actually be able to see birds flying around whilst my sims are birdwatching - the fact that there were no actual birds around when they birdwatch never made sense to me. I love having birdies on my lots! :-)

Good to hear the birds do work on your laptop, Laura. Mine is pretty new but graphics don't seem to be its strong point.

Yes, I've always been frustrated with Sims birdwatching invisible birds too. For the longest time I figured I just wasn't waiting long enough to see them, I was so sure that Seasons would come with birds!