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P3D v2 X40 (KINF) Inverness, Florida

JRobinson

JRobinson

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I thought I'd show some pics of my current project which started with a request over at flightsim.com. This is X40 Inverness, Florida, more recently known as KINF. I got some imagery off the nat'l map server and next thing I knew I had a rough photoreal down in the sim. I thought I would do up a quick afcad, put down some generic buildings, maybe some color corrections to the PR and be done with it in a week. ...then I had a look around in google streets, arrgghh! I had a few buildings that just didn't fit... Well anyway, I am drawing the line with the groundpoly, nope, I'm doing afcad runways, taxiways, and aprons. I can bed them into the PR a bit and make them look pretty good, part of the problem is I'm building this for FSX and P3D2 in tandem so since I want to show off P3D2's new shadow system it will be a "shadows on" airport for FSX as well. Object shadows flicker terribly on groundpolys that use the no autogen supression tweak in FSX so I decided to keep it simple and focus on the PR instead. The airport was grossly misplaced in default FSX/P3D2 so I had to move it about a mile, thankfully the airport reference point was in approximately the correct position so I didn't have to fiddle with that, it did however require an elevation adjustment and therefore an ADE stub .bgl in the Scenery\World\Scenery folder. This project commenced on roughly Feb 20th so I've got about 2 months into it so far.

I have automated all the compiling tasks with batch files so I can build for FSX and P3D2 from the same source files at the same time. Whenever I export a .mdl and need to update the LIB .bgl I double click the batch file which compiles P3D models with the P3D compiler and FSX models with the FSX compiler and then sends the respective .bgls to the correct scenery folder. Same with textures, the PR, autogen, I even swapped out the P3D2 version of shp2vec into the SbuilderX/Tools folder to compile the vector airport background and flattens. The P3D2 version of this scenery is 100% P3D2 native,the only compromise (which really isn't a compromise) is I'm using gmax and exporting with the FSX gamepack, I am however using Arno's MCX to export an additional P3D2 version of each .mdl for use in the P3D2 version of the LIB .bgl. Automation rocks when you're old and losing your mind, there's no way in h*ll I'd ever get all this compiling right if I had to do it manually!

This fits into FTX Global with the color matching and all. The autogen tree textures you see in these shots are a set of residual Orbx tree textures from having NA active in FTXCentral, so slightly different than default. I went through my FSX screenshots folder but all I had were top down shots of buildings with occlusions sticking out farther than they should have been (construction screenshots) so these are all from P3D2 so far.

























I believe I'll call it "Donationware", or more correctly "freeware with a donation button" as no donation will be required. If folks spam the donation button moderately I will make more airports like this, if not then I'm happy to spend my free time learning to fly the PMDG 777 instead :) .

Timeline: probably about a month yet.

Thanks for looking!
Jim
 
Thanks guys! Hi Eddy :) . ollyau, you probably don't realize it but you had a hand in this project, I used your geotif2inf utility to generate the .inf for the photoreal! It's perfect, and a permanent addition to my arsenal, thanks! Thanks capt_x, and great work on the Phenom BTW, sorry I never checked it out previously, I just followed the link in your sig, very nice work!

Jim
 
That's an awesome piece of scenery!
Hope you're having more luck than me with donationware ... it somehow does not seem to work with liveries ...
 
Fantastic work Jim - I would be happy if I could do something half that good :)
 
Jim,

This looks excellent. I have a student that has an airplane tied down at X40. I would love to learn how to create an airport. KBKV needs to be updated to this level of detail.

Thanks for posting.

Jose
 
Being from Florida myself, around Orlando, Miami and Tampa areas, it's great to see more sceneries for the state being developed/released :)
 
Jim, that is simply stunning. P3Dv2.2 really lets it shine in its fullest glory! :cool:
 
Wow folks I really appreciate all the nice comments! I hope this doesn't disappoint everyone when it's finally released, honestly the focus has sorta been on simplicity because I lose interest in anything that takes more than about 3 months!

Jose or eurostar350, is there a chance either of you might have, or be able to get, a photo of the north end of this building? I can see there's a sign there but the best photo I've found is in the inset of the screenshot below. I'd hate to release it with the silly sign I came up with as a placeholder :) .

x40_23.jpg




@Jon Masterson: I appreciate the nice comments but I'm afraid ADE is well beyond "half that good", I've gotten into ADE more with this airport than I ever have in the past, it's brilliant piece of highly refined work, thanks!

@adi518: The only thing this has to do with Orbx is that the guy who's developing it has built an Orbx airport. Beyond that there is no Orbx relationship whatsoever.

@n4gix: I'm stoked to see you show up here Bill, thanks for dropping by! I still remember and use all the modeling tips you gave me in my McCall thread every day, and I really enjoyed the conversations we had.

Thanks guys, I'm off to try modeling the fueling installation, wish me luck :) .


Jim
 
Beautiful work, esp. the PR color matching. I don't fly much in Florida, but will be donating just to encourage this kind of effort (and with a small hope that we will see your McCall released at some point) :)

Also, I actually like the sign "as-is" LOL!

Great stuff Jim.
 
Great work as usual Jim. I also grew up in FL, specifically the Tampa Bay area and will be donating for this.

BTW, just picked up Bonners Ferry and will be doing my first flight out of there today. Looks amazing!
 
Thanks gents, much appreciated!

Welcome to my hometown BTW Jon, hope you enjoy the airport. I enjoy a flight over the Selkirks to S23 Ione and 09S Sullivan Lake every once in a while, NDB at Ione is 379 and you should be able to start receiving it just a few miles west of Bonners Ferry. Did you do some repaints for the A2A Skyhawk BTW? I've been using one by Jon Preston which I assumed was you, N4667L? Actually it's been a while and the mechanic is grumbling at me to use some additive in my oil now, but I flew it quite a bit when I first got it.

Jim
 
Some progress on the fuel tanks:

x40_24.jpg


What do you think, did I get 'em right? :)

Seriously, what the heck is this? I popped open GE to measure some stuff, I had 3D buildings turned on from something else I was looking at a few days ago and it seems Inverness has sprouted warts? I don't think someone actually built this mess, if they did it'll be a while till they're ready for a modeling career! You can't click on these "models" and read the 3D warehouse credits like you can with all the 3D buildings I've seen in the past, these are like some kind of auto-generated things, whatever you want to call them. I tried another location and didn't see any of this. They go away if you turn 3D buildings off. Anyone seen these in GE before, and how do they do this? Is this that deal where they photograph the ground from an angle and generate these? I've seen those but the ones I saw in the youtube video were quite impressive, these, well, not so much so, lol.
 
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