New and need some advice

[hakiman]

Gday all, my Name is Jack, and I am pretty new to scenery design.
I have been reading through the forums, the last few days, and found some very helpful tips.
I want to make a scenery for NZAA (Auckland) Airport. I started tinkering around with FSDS v3.5 and managed to get part of the terminal done, but I always find something I don't quite find right with it, so I scrap it and start over.
So I ask, what is the best way to approach this project, and where is the best place to start. eg ground, buildings???

I should also add, that I am not familiar with all the jargon used in this field as of yet, I'm still trying to work it out.

Ps: I have FSDS v3.5, AFX, and Afcad 2.21, and also this scenery will be for Fs9
I hope I have made it clear enough of what my intentions are.

Thanks in Advance
Jack

[scruffyduck]

Hi Jack and welcome to FS Developer.

I guess some of the excellent airport designers will step in and answer your question. I might suggest though, if you are new to all this that you start out with a small airport. I realize that Auckland is not large compared to many other major airports but it still has a fair amount of work. Sounds like you plan to create your own buildings from scratch.

Personally I would start with the ground layout and design and work up. But that is just the way I would go.

In any case good luck!

[hakiman]

Hi Jon, thanks for the quick reply and welcome.
I too would like to work from the ground up, but have no idea about how to do it, I am just reading through the forums now on it.
As for doing Auckland, well its my home base, and for years, I've wanted to have a really good scenery for it, and have been waiting patiently, but now that has run out, and I've decided to give it a go myself.

Cheers
Jack

[scruffyduck]

Hi Jon, thanks for the quick reply and welcome.
I too would like to work from the ground up, but have no idea about how to do it, I am just reading through the forums now on it.
As for doing Auckland, well its my home base, and for years, I've wanted to have a really good scenery for it, and have been waiting patiently, but now that has run out, and I've decided to give it a go myself.

Cheers
Jack

Maybe Ray (Glottis) will see this post. He lives in that part of the world and is well known for airport design. He may even have done some work on NZAA.

[adr179]

Two more "must have" tools:

Google Earth to help you with distances and angles - you are lucky here, your area is covered with high resolution image you can use as a backdrop in next tool I'd strongly recommend:

scenery builder- go here:
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15077
and aditional info about scenery builder is here:
http://www.ptsim.com/
It may be a bit complicated to start with, but with help and tutorials, learning curve will be steep - SBuilder is complex but extremelly powerfull tool. You'll be able to do almost everything with it.

[hakiman]

Two more "must have" tools:

Google Earth to help you with distances and angles - you are lucky here, your area is covered with high resolution image you can use as a backdrop in next tool I'd strongly recommend:

scenery builder- go here:
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15077
and aditional info about scenery builder is here:
http://www.ptsim.com/
It may be a bit complicated to start with, but with help and tutorials, learning curve will be steep - SBuilder is complex but extremelly powerfull tool. You'll be able to do almost everything with it.

Thanks for the info.
I have google earth, and have had a look at the sat image of the airport. What I want to know is can I use it for photoreal ground textures and if so how?

Cheers
Jack

[adr179]

Due to copyright you won't be able to use google eart imagery for photoreal ground - try to find other sources for the area that are not restricted by copyright. There are some tutorials on how to use Scenery Builder for ground tiles, as far as I can remember, they were written by Luis Féliz-Tirado, but I couldn't locate them myself for FS2004. Maybe Luis sees this and jumps in with the info.