• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

MSFS20 [GUIDE] How to create custom aerial scenery

Augustin Winther

Augustin Winther

Messages
55
Country
norway
First draft of Here's my guide (Basically my workflow) on how to create an aerial scenery in MSFS.

Please feel free to comment on the guide if you find errors, or have any other input! I know the PDF looks kinda wonky right now. It's been alot of testing and writing and little formatting

The guide is inspired by this thread https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/finally-aerial-imagery.448513/ So huge thank you to everyone in that thread that supplied vital information!

Hope it comes to good use :D

Version Update 1.0 (2020-08-30)
- Improved the formatting and design of the guide so it's a bit easier to go through
- Fixed some typos
- Added some details here and there

Version Update 1.1 (2020-08-31)
- Had to remove certain text do to legal reason

See attached pdf file for guide
 

Attachments

  • AW MSFS GUIDE - How to create a custom aerial scenery v1.1.pdf
    3.7 MB · Views: 5,944
Last edited:
Thanks for this, Just what I need to obliterate the racetracks that people have put over my old airfields! I'll give this a go tonight when the kids are in bed. :)
 
Just a heads up, for anyone who has never used orthoXP before.... don’t follow the installation txt file. There’s an exe file in the Binaries folder
 
This is just what I needed. The aerial bing imagery in my area is so outdated the airport is not even built yet. I was using google maps coordinates for every single point to match those I built in the sim. With this I can save hours. Thanks so much!
 
Just another note. If using GIMP, you will likely need to go to EDIT>Preferences>Maximum new image size and change this from the default value of 130Mb to something larger than the size of your project. My image size was going to be 3.2GB so I set this value to 4GB
 
@Augustin Winther - I know this is a Gimp question, but I figured you might know the answer quickly.

I have the Tiff images all in the grid in Gimpand it all looks good. However, I cant do anything on the images... erase, paint, clone, I cant edit the image. I know this is something stupid, but I can't for the life of me do anything with the image. Any ideas?

[EDIT] - Forgot to merge the layers :rolleyes: :p
 
Last edited:
For time saving I recommend using Sbuilder515 to generate a single image file containing the whole airport.
Here is the process I used and didn't need to spend as much on GIMP
1- Open Sbuilder ignore the paths warning for FSX and its sdk tools by clicking OK. Just ignore everything until you get to the main screen.
2- Click on View show Background and navigate to your desired location. To move faster you may need to go to Edit > Tile Servers and choose Google_api3_Basic Map until you get your desire position then revert back to google satellite server (Google_api3_Satellite)
3- Navigate to your airport location then zoom enough to show everything you want to capture
4- Go to File > Add Map > From Background
5 -Choose the zoom level you want. Left Click on top left and drag to the bottom right to encompass the area you want with a red rectangle. Then you wilI see Number of Tiles and size to the right. I would recommend something with less than 1000 tiles as the size can be very large, so may need to make several captures. My computer can handle about a 1000.
5 - Click OK and it will process the tiles, it may crash or get stuck. I'll show you how to handle that.
6 - It will show a notification box that says xxx tiles are being downloaded at this moment. Please repeat this operation when downloading is complete! Click OK. Then Click OK again. If Everything is good it will have generated a .BMP image file and a .TXT text files with coordinates for it in the following folder: SBX315\Tools\Work
7 - You can now open this single image in GIMP and add a selection using the Free Select Tool for instance or Fuzzy Select tool around the area you want to keep, invert the selection (CTRL + I) then go to Layer > Transparency > Color to Alpha
Make sure you have the image into a new layer and that you can see only see the area you want everything else having been erased.
8 - Export your image (Shift+Ctrl+E) as a PNG and continue the rest of the tutorial.
 
Thanks for the tutorial, really nice. I did everything, and got some error at the end.

I'm using Steam version here, and I could not compile the rest of the scenery either. The sim just freezes. This time, it did not freeze, but I got some errors.
If someone could just compile my scenery for me, it would be really nice: https://mega.nz/file/cN9lxJQL#oqIwG9kSkQnvuYwp0fZPnI3siv4ABTIvsgZQ0VwTKFA
 

Attachments

  • Console.png
    Console.png
    1.3 MB · Views: 505
Last edited:
Guilherme Farias said:
Thanks for the tutorial, really nice. I did everything, and got some error at the end.
Click to expand...

Looking at the console output, it looks like the aerial scenery was compiled correctly.
image.png


I also tested the packages you compiled, and the aerial scenery is in the sim :D
image.png


If you have any other problems regarding your scenery that is not related to this guide, I'd recommend you post it in another thread since this one is for the guide :)

Hope this helps :D
 
Augustin Winther said:
Looking at the console output, it looks like the aerial scenery was compiled correctly.

I also tested the packages you compiled, and the aerial scenery is in the sim :D

If you have any other problems regarding your scenery that is not related to this guide, I'd recommend you post it in another thread since this one is for the guide :)

Hope this helps :D
Click to expand...

Oh, thanks! I thought it was errors!
 
I'm still need to do the taxiways and aprons which will cover up some of the other bits, but the modified and edited aerial scenery is in.

2020-08-31.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top