Scenery and aircraft design.

[paul26may]

Having used AFCAD and AIFP for a number of years and other stuff like LAGO I am contemplating making my own and adapting existing scenery and aircraft using the more, as I see it, in depth and 'better' software available. Can anyone recommend the best and most up to date programs? FSDS appears to be the software of choice.

[DaveG]

A lot of people seem to like Sketchup for scenery objects these days. Never used it myself though.

[Garry Russell]

Yep

Sketchup is the word nowadays

Much support in many places

[DaveB]

Flightsim.com have been running tutorials on it for a while. I think they're up to part 9 at the mo

ATB
DaveB

[Airspeed]

Hi Paul
Personally, I haven't been able to get my head around Sketchup.
I use Abacus FSDS v3.5, which also handles Aircraft and objects. I guess it's just that I started with Aircraft Factory a couple of decades back, and plodded on from there. [insert dinosaur smilie here]
I also bought "Instant Object Maker" by Flight One, which lets you change the perspective of a given photo, which is then used as a template for building.TBH, I have used it very little, but mainly due to my limitations on learning. I think that it has potential.
Flight One's "Instant Scenery", I bought early, and have used often. A few of our contributors now use it for placing objects more easily,

If price is a consideration, of course, Sketchup wins hands down.

[TSR2]

If you work through the inbuilt tutorials on sketchup irs very straight forward. Certainly the bit I found most difficult to get my head around in FSDS and GMAX / Max (read never got my head around) was texturing. In Sketchup its a doddle. The best thing is millions of people are using it, not for FS but for lots of other purposes. You don't need the paid version for FS development; MCX which is used to convert the dae files from Sketckup to FSX / FS9 format. If you are already familiar with MAX / GMAX then that might be the best way to go. If new or newish to all of it, I'd suggest Sketchup. I used it for all of the buildings in RAE Bedford.

[Garry Russell]

It is a bit like GMax anyways in the fact that it may not be your choice but as you say Ben there are millions of people using it for all things.

FSDS, well it a few using it for a limited reason...go with the masses if a good move in an ever increasing diverse medium.

[paul26may]

Thanks to each and everyone for the replies. It looks like Sketchup then. By the way, will I be able to do stuff like adding ground animations such as stairs to HJG aircraft?

[TSR2]

Sorry, mate, I should have said, I've only used it for static scenery. Animation is something sketchup doesn't do particularly easily. If you're wanting to do aircraft I'd go gmax / max

[GHD]

Apparently Blender is the program of choice.

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/thread ... et.428090/