FSX | FSX-SE Scenery Design Forum - How To

Hi all,I implemented Richards algorithm in a standalone commandline tool.It should appear soon in the CFS scenery filesection. The archive is called "cfs2conv.zip".Regards,Edgar

Hi Bruno, two ways to make transparent windows that I know of. The way I generally do it is to make a texture for the entire building wall, and use a utility like DXTbmp by Martin Wright to add an alpha channel in shades of grey over the windows..saving the two together as a DXT3.The other way is to make and apply a "mulit-material" to the model, making sure when you model to have a polygon exist everywhere there is a window. Then you assign a material id to the building, like material 1, and material 2 to the windows. Make the material for the building be your texture, most likely, and material for the window can be a semi-transparent grey material...you'll see an opa…

You can change it - I've seen quite a bit of stuff on regional water characteristics.I think you have to get into changing flags on the LOD8 cells in your region or something - it's a bit complicated. Dick (rhumbaflappy) or Arno or someone with more knowledge than me will know I'm sure.Roger

Now that I have updated my scenery with a better mesh, I have discovered that the runways on Tinian sloped upwards from west to east by about 50 feet. Not much on an 8,500 foot runway, but when I raise the runway high enough to clear the east side, the west side is now 50 feet higher than it should be.If possible, I would like to simply lay the whole airport on top of the existing terrain, including the runways. I have tried several methods and none seems to work. Lowering the runways causes them to plow through the scenery and the ground detail seems to disappear.Appreciate any thoughts,Phil

How can I get the GMax "View Distance" greater than 60000 meters?I have been successfully working with GMax for quite a while. During the export phase I have found that I have not been able to exceed a "view distance" of around 60000 meters--approximately 37 miles.I am presently working on a project that covers as much as a 20 mile radius and I need to be able to see it from well beyond that distance--preferably from 60 miles or more.The project is to graphically represent the inbound and outbound traffic patterns surrounding KATL--the flight paths which ATC uses to move aircraft safely in and out of the congested KATL area.I have been able to create these, but so far, I …

Hi!Could anybody post an example of SCASM animation table? The documentation is quite unclear for a beginner like me.

Need some basic information to get autogen working. The SDK tutorial is very clear and explicit in using the annotation tool with the Niagara Falls sample. However it does not explain how to obtain the necessary bitmap for any other world location. Have searched the forums with no success. Also can't find anything close to the neccesary file in any FS2002 texture folders. I have definitely missed something in the instructions! Where do I look for this location .bmp or how do I create it. Thanks, Ken W.

I just bought this program to do buildings and things in scenery and to put some animation in them. I had a problem getting the animation to work and sent a note to support at Abacus. This their reply.The bottom line is.... If you bought this program to animate scenery.... don't.Hi Joe,I can't do a 50% refund - I can do all or nothing. I am confident Louis willinclude scenery animation in an upcoming release (free update), but I alsocan't say when it will be.The ad regarding the animation was designed to focus on the improvement overthe older version which required a separate program, Aircraft Animator, todo the animation.Adam----- Original Message -----From: "Joe Watson"…

I am using FSDS2.11 to create API objects to place using the latest version and build from Airport. Its worked well but recently I have developed a building that while not very complex causes an error when Airport trys to compile it. The problem seems to center around cupolos I am placing on the top of the high rise. When I remove the cupolo objects Airport will compile it fine. I will attach appropriate files. Error message I get in Airport is : Error in macro file C:Airport for WindowsAdditional APIsTransAmerica.api line 1628 -> EndA -> destination ":Exit" out of range (34114), source line 55Line 1462: longitude switchedScasm compilation status: error(s)…

HiI just want to know if there is a scenery for FS2002 available for Calgary airport (CYYC, Alberta, Canada)? If not, could someone make a realistic scenery for this airport? That would really make my day! I flew out of there last year and it was a great experience, especially with the Rockies in the background. Loads of WestJet - Calgary is WestJet's HQ I think - and of course Air Canada, as well as Northwest to KMSP, Alaska Airlines and United.Thanks!Chris

When in annotator the ownerships of the are defined "building" there is a combobox where possible to choose is "default" or using the button "Browse" you should be been able to choose the texture to use. I have tried...... but....... if she is not used "default" in FS he is not seen nothing. Does someone have a solution?????? THANKSAntonio

HelloOK, i don't know if its just me doing something stupid, or something else. The problem is that i've just bought FSDS2, but can't compile anything at all (I have quite a few projects from FSDS1). When I click to compile, nothing happens at all. Does anyone have any ideas?Sergs

Hi all,Based on a previous post about installing Landclass as part of the scenery directory I would like some information about the following.I have downloaded the NOVA, VOD textures and the Trees file from Gerrish Gray. All textures should be installed into the FS2002/Textures folder.However, I was able to install another 3rd party Landclass file into the Scenery/Landclass folder and define it in the scenery.cfg file. Is the same also valid for NOVA, VOD and Trees?If this could be possible I would like to setup three directories in the scenery directory: NOVA, VOD and Trees with the two subdirectories Scenery and Texture. The files I would then place in either subdirecto…

If this has been covered before, then I apologize up front. That being said, I was wondering how you would go about modeling the lines that appear on the bridge below in gMax? Are they just simply very skinny polygons or something else? I know that FSDS had a specific ability to produce these lines outside of a standard modeling polygon, and I was wondering if gMax has the same ability somewhere.Thanks,Jimhttp://www.pacificnwdigital.com/jpegs/FSBridgeSpan.jpg

Hi is it possible to add a new texture to draw with Line/LakeShore? For new texture I intend a texture it doesn't foresee in terraintexture.cfg.Tank

Hi Guys, just wondering if anyone could help me on this one...up until now I have had no problems with gmax...however (since no changes) I have suddenly started getting a very annoying error.Whenever I try to load the material navigator, I get an error message telling me gmax has to close. Because of this I cannot tetxure anything at all...and I've tried using different render drivers etc...if anyone could help me I would really appreciate it.Oli.

Dear Friends of the Design Forum:I am new on the formum and Im very intrested in starting designing airports in the mostly part im intested in is doing inner views like counters monorails that connect the terminals Departure TVS and the service car moving on grounf with the signals hoew to get to thew termninal well all that kind of stuff. I have GMAX but I have looked for several tutorials and I havent find one that fits with the part that im intrested in. It would be very nice of your part if you could give me a little help.Thanks and GreetingsJan SchroederBogota,ColombiaE-mail:[email protected]

Hi allI'm making an airport and I'm wondering how to make lights. I have tried FSregen, but i can't do it. Ok I can see lights on the lightpoles, but not on the ground and in the air. Can anyone help me with this? It is probably easy to do so please help me!Thomas

Hi,Quite trivial questions, but I'll ask them anyway, as they still have puzzled me for a long time. Has anyone noticed if 16 million colour textures compared to 256 colour ones slow down FS noticably?Question number two. Does DXT-textures automatically mean that they are converted to 256 colours?Thanks...

A couple of years ago Graham Oxtoby created some super little ramp light macros (called ramp1 amd ramp2.api in ramplite.zip). In these he very successfully used color transparency to create the light beam effect. I've created some custom ramp light macros for my current project using EOD and I've tried to emulate Graham without success. I've created a custom object for the light cone but I'm danged if I can make it disappear during the day. Unfortunately Graham didn't give an email address in his zip file so I'm hoping someone here might be able to help.I've checked out Graham's API code and isolated the bit that gives his light beam, as follows.; Part: No Name.2:Part39Db…

Hello all -- I am very new to scenery design, so please bear with me. I am looking to start with something simple (at least I think it is) by adding standard taxi signs to a few airports in FS2002. Unfortunatley, trudging through the "how-to" process is a challenge in itself!. =) I searched this forum for similar topics and found none, so if I've missed something, please point me there.Thus far, I have mapped out the airport (currently working on KPHX) using FSSC and I'm now ready to begin "building" the actual signs. Taxiwaysigns.com seemed to have a neat on-line utility, but it is not working -- I have written to the folks there, but received no reply (anyone from …

Has anyone here attempted to fake a VOT facility? At a local airport here in Halifax, they have a VOR testing facility (VOT). I want to recreate it so that when you tune and ident it's a constant "......" and will only center when on North and South and have full deflection on east and west. Am I making any sense?

I was trying to change an airport or VOR name in a stock afd file. I disassembled it using BGLanalyze 2.0 and 3.0. Both of these output sca files which strip out the name (which ATC uses) for the communications facilities. For example, it would produce:frequency (121.5 8)instead of: frequency (121.5 8 "OHARE")I found another tool, SCDIS 2.2 but it has the same behavior. AFCAD doesn't work for this application. I suppose a hex editor couldbe used directly on the .bgl.Any ideas?scott s..

I am new to scenery design so please hang in there. I'm trying to get some "proper" gates at my home airport (CYVR) Vancouver Intl. Canada. I did download a file that stated that it would add 40 gates to CYVR.When I installed it with the latest version of AFCAD nothing seemed to have changed. When I started up FS2002 and put in YVR the airport ramp looks the same. I did notice on start up, that a database building window did show and seemed to be loading something.Can anyone help me out. If there is another file or program I need I would be happy to get it.Thanks in advance.Brett

Our scenery team has almost finshed are VTP scenery (well, we still need to test it, but we have something that can run almost). We are solving the last crashes we get now and it seems that these crashes are caused by polygons with too many points. We are using the VTP method1 polygons and they cause a crash in FS when we have more then 24 points in them. We haven't got the extended point count working, anybody done this before? :).I searched the forum and couldn't find anything.While searching I found this quote of Dick:The first version of cellgrid was made before much was known about the behavior of VTP method1 polys. In FS2002, VTP method1 polys MUST have a full seaso…