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newbie questions

C

chewd

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us-missouri
Ok I havent done any FS scenery editing in AGES (not since like FS5 or so) and maybe im biting off more than I can chew. But i have a really great opportunity here & i'd like to see it come to fruition. So just hear me out if you will (this post will probably end up being pretty long.

I recently landed a job at kansas city downtown airport. Its a very interesting airport scenically, right in the midst of downtown KC, it sees a lot of bizjet & GA traffic & has a HUGE history (it was dedicated by Charles Lindburgh back in the day, Howard Hughes had his office here for a time, & one of the few remaining operational Connies is based here)

Anywho, the default FS2004 scenery for KMKC is horribly lacking, it seems to have been forgotten by the scenery creation scene, & since my job gives me basically unrestricted access to all areas of the airport Id love to start a project to flesh it out.

Problem is, the learning curve on FS scenery design is a bit steep (as im sure you all know) So my first question is this...

Should I try a smaller project first? It seems a large part of this projects difficulties are going to stem from the fact that the airport already exists in default scenery, should i create a few fictional airports first for practice? Are they any easier? Perhaps i should flesh out a smaller local airport first? What was your first project? Where did you start?

Next question deals with excludes. The default scenery has a good representation of the runways, taxiways, & apron areas (AFD) But not so much on the parking areas & fueling points. Furthermore, the airport is surrounded on 3 sides by a 20ft tall dike (the river wraps right around the airport) Which is not in the default scenery at ALL. Should i just exclude the whole area & start from scratch? Or would i be better off being selective about exclusions & only fixing whats broken?

Next, on to ground texturing. Ive read in several places that sattelite pics generally dont have high enough resolution to use for photo-realistic scenery, but google-earth seems to have some pretty high resolution images of this particular area. Good enough to spot tugs, stormdrains & powercarts on the ramp. Wouldnt this be better than nothing? or is it just going to come out fuzzy looking when youre on the ground? We have a large aerial photo at the office, but i dont think its any higher rez than the google earth one, it may even be the same image.

Lastly. would anyone with a bit more experience be interested in getting involved in this project? I know im in wayyy over my head on this, but it'd make an excellent project, & with my unfettered access to the real thing, i can provide detailed info to the nth degree.
 
Hi Chewd,

Welcome to the SceneryDesign.org forum.

To get directly to the point, you are absolutely right that the learning curve for FS Scenery Design is very steep. But don't let it scare you.

Starting a scenery project requires a lot of preparation. The first thing you will have to do is look for as much information as possible, like airport charts, airport pictures, satellite pictures (if available). You can check out the following sites for pictures: www.airliners.net ,www.planepictures.net. For the satellite pictures of EBBR, I consulted www.aerogrid.be (payware), which contained very high resolution pictures of EBBR. But off course if the pictures on Google Earth are sharp enough, I would use those as well ;)

Based on these pictures you will have to 'guess' the dimensions of the different buildings, unless you have building construction plans. So scenery design is all about getting the right information and about 'guessing' ;).

For best performance I hardly recommend Gmax as the program to design your airport. We use Gmax for practically everything (buildings and ground). If you don't know how to install or configure Gmax, you can download the Gmax installation from this website or ours (www.bsprojects.be - download section). It will say that you will also need some SDK's from Microsoft, so you will be able to export your models to Flight Simulator.

The first thing I did was the Scenery Design Tutorial by Microsoft, which is included in the FS2004 Gamepack for Gmax. It will learn you how to make a small house, and that way you will get to know the Gmax-basics. Once you have finished that tutorial, you can practice with doing some buildings on your own...

EBBR2005 is also my first project, which I started in january 2004 with no knowlegde at all of scenery design or Gmax. So I had to learn a lot, which kept me busy for the first 6 months. In the beginning you will have to learn how to work with the Gmax user interface and the different functions available to Flight Simulator. I didn't use any books or so, it's all self-education.

One thing I can say about scenery design: it will look extremely difficult in the beginning, and the hard part then is NOT to give up. I'm already designing for 2 years now and I still have to learn a lot of things. You have to keep up and expermiment a lot with Gmax. Once you get to know Gmax, you'll be designing buildings in no time. Later you will spend more time on designing textures than on 3D buildings.

I hope you will also find some other people that could join you making a scenery. I also started on myself and later on, some people joined the team. Now our team already consists of 11 people, some real pilots as well...

Good luck

Thomas
 
Hey chewd,

Just a couple things i want to add to Thomas's reply.

There are many tools that are available to us as designers for a variety of different needs....creating actually buildings to just editing the default runway and aprons. There is a nice thread over at AVSIM site(go under forums and look for scenery design forum...it will be the first thread) which tells about the different tools available and what you can do with them. I just looked on google earth at that airport and is pretty big not the easiest to start off with but like Thomas said...dont be intimidated...it all takes time and none of us learned everything overnight.
Also, you need to decide how detailed you want your airport as some people just edit the way the runways are. You may want to just add a couple of default objects from FS9 or totally create your own but being that you work there gives u great oppertunities in creating a great projects with photo realistic textures for buildings.

Like I said, it all depends on how much you want to change of the airport. This is a great forum here with alot of people willing to help and give some advice whenever you need it so dont be afraid to ask.

Good Luck
Dave
 
thanks

Thanks for the info & kind words on encouragement guys.

I've been reading up on some of the tutorials, & getting used to creating simple objects in gmax. Its slow going but i think im going to set my sights a bit lower for now. I think what ill do is create a small fictional airport, but do a couple photo-real hangars on it before moving on to MKC.

MKC is a pretty big airport.
 
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