FSXA Getting serious

[cscboulder11]

Yes, another thread, but bare with me here.

If you fly out of KCOS, what you should see is a massive military base (Peterson AFB - joint Navy and Marines, with some army buildings) to the immediate east of the airport, with Fort Carson (huge Army base to the south - the default airfield isn't anywhere respectably done), a sprawling city to the west, and the outer reaches of the city and the USAF academy to the north, all with sculpted, grassy hills outside of the city.

The airport itself is also woefully underdone. In short, KCOS and the area needs a major facelift.

Instead what you get is an endless desert and a very small city. I'm aware of the various developing tools out there, but I wanted to get opinions on what were the best ones. I want to release this as freeware in the future, hopefully enticing people to visit it more in the future.

(If my ideas can't be done in FSX, please let me know. I'm not sure what the limits are.)

For KCOS itself, I'm using ADE to reconfigure the runways and taxiways as needed, as well as the various parking spots.

For the airport buildings, I wanted (or rather am being forced to) use gMax as I can't afford 3DS Max. It would be done to show the terminals in a photoreal setting. I also wanted to design jetways that would be more accurate with gMax, eventually coding them to move. Not sure if that can be done.

In regards to other objects, I also wanted to create more accurate tugs than the default one, as well as fuel trucks, coding them to react to user commands. Taxiways would also be another thing.

I'd also want to texture the various aprons to more closely match RW ones. Some of the work I've seen here would give me a very hard time telling if it was real or not.

For scenery, I wanted to place 3D buildings (time isn't an issue) around to more accurately represent the scenery around KCOS. I also wanted to put roads, trees, cars, etc. in. I also wanted to see if there's a good way to texture the mountains as they're well, ugly. They should be an attention getter, not something you forget after 10 seconds.

Thanks for reading if you did and happy developing.

 

[nzeddy]

SBuilderX can texture the mountains, add roads, photoreal etc.

 

[arno]

Hi,

You could also consider SketchUp for the 3D buildings if you find GMax to hard to learn.

But I think if you use ADE, SBuilderX for the surrounding terrain and a 3D modelling tool you should have to main tools to do the job.

 

[cscboulder11]

Thanks guys.

One question about SBuilderX - will it create roads that the AI traffic drives on? Also, can you limit the type of AI traffic on specific roads?

On a releated note, is it possible to design AI cars, trucks, etc.? There's construction going on near the airport that I'd like to design.

As for the buildings, I was thinking of going with Sketchup for the more common ones (houses, apartments, most of the military bases) and try to learn Gmax if it doesn't require too much Advil to learn.

One more question... what programming language(s) is/are the best to learn? And do you have reccomendations for learning them? I'm trying to teach myself C++, but find it quite complicated for me.