DIY Scenery

[petermcleland]

I build this little Seaplane Base the other day:-



The order of battle was as follows:-

1. Fly to the area, survey and choose a lake and land on it.

2. Use AFCAD to create a new airport there with one runway aligned on the lake as required. The runway to be INITIALLY 6000 feet by 500 feet Concrete.

3. Slew off the end of the runway to the shore where scenery is to be added and continue to a suitable clearing in the trees and using AFCAD add an NDB and a few yards further on a DME.

4. Change the aircraft to a scenery positioning graticule and position it to each corner of the 500 feet wide runway and note the four lat and longs of those corners.

5. Using XML code add a Dolphin with a strobe light on the top to each of those locations.

6. Use ez-scenery to make some pontoons off the beach and then position the aircraft where you would like each pontoon berth. Switch to AFCAD with FS9 padlocked to it and plonk a "Dock" parking at each of those positions.

7. In AFCAD make the taxyways from these Docks out to the runway ends ALL taxyways to be the green apron connector type and with Zero width and NO markings or lights...If you want a "No Pushback" setup, then make a separate TAXY OUT route on one side of the runway and a TAXY BACK route on the other side of the runway...The difference between the two is that the TAXY OUT goes all the way to the runway extremities where as the TAXY BACK route links to turn off from the runway on the return side only and NOT from the extremities (have about 8 turn off points but well short of the ends). Add a hold short point to each connection with the runway and make its circle actually include the centreline of the runway (NOT just the edge because the runway width is to later be reduced).

8. In Ttools make a basic line for each parking dock like this:-

AC#1,N38DD,1%,4Hr,VFR,01:10:00,01:25:00,010,R,0007,M002,03:10:00,03:25:00,010,R,0007,M002
AC#5,NI7546,1%,4Hr,VFR,01:20:00,01:35:00,010,R,0007,M002,03:20:00,03:35:00,010,R,0007,M002
AC#7,N68010,1%,4Hr,VFR,01:25:00,01:40:00,010,R,0007,M002,03:25:00,03:40:00,010,R,0007,M002
AC#6,N54691,1%,4Hr,VFR,01:30:00,01:45:00,010,R,0007,M002,03:30:00,03:45:00,010,R,0007,M002
AC#2,CFBP103,1%,4Hr,VFR,01:35:00,01:50:00,010,R,0007,M002,03:35:00,03:50:00,010,R,0007,M002

That will suit a 5 dock setup and each floatplane will taxy out, take-off, fly locally for a few minutes, join downwind and land just as the next guy is taking off...notice each line has two sequences as it will not work with one.

9. With the Traffic checked the AFCAD work is now finished and the fuel pump, fuel tank, NDB and DME, cabins, cars etc can be added with ez-scenery.

10. Finally add the fuelling trigger with XML code to the same Lat and Long as your fuel pump or the lat and long of a position in the water near the pump...Here is the code for that:-

<!-- Fuel Pump -->
<SceneryObject lat="40.665795" lon="-81.1911524" alt="1.214F"
altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" pitch="0.00" bank="0.00" heading="190.00"
imageComplexity="NORMAL">
<LibraryObject name="621602d5cb690567aeebe4235533c69b" scale="1.00" />
</SceneryObject>

<SceneryObject
lat="40.6657183"
lon="-81.1910933"
alt="1.214F"
altitudeIsAgl="TRUE"
pitch="0"
bank="0"
heading="190.00"
imageComplexity="NORMAL">
<Trigger
type="REFUEL_REPAIR">
<Fuel type="100"/>
<Vertex biasX="-15" biasZ="-15" />
<Vertex biasX="-15" biasZ="15" />
<Vertex biasX="15" biasZ="15" />
<Vertex biasX="15" biasZ="-15" />
</Trigger>
</SceneryObject>

11. I add the wheeling seagulls and other static birds last...The statics with ez-scenery and the wheeling gulls with some code from McLeland Field (I just change the lat and long to the first four decimal places to about the centre of the pontoon and I leave the remaining 3 of four decimal places in the lat and longs as they are, and that gives the same spread to the groups of wheeling gulls as I have at base).

12. Oh yes I forgot to say that when you have finished the AFCAD work, you reduce the runway width to .001 (that is POINT 001), but leave it as concrete...The runway will now be invisible on the surface of the water but will still work for the Traffic. The black RUNWAY line that you placed between the end runway nodes can be set with Zero width but the runway itself in AFCAD > List > Runways > Properties, is not permitted to be Zero.


BTW for a new airport when adding and NDB or AFCAD you are asked for the "REGION"...This id a two letter code and you can find what it should be by opening the nearest airport in AFCAD and copying it from there (List > Navaids > Properties). You should also use the same MAGVAR as the nearest airport.

I hope this is of use to people getting into scenery making...BTW for FS9, ez-scenery sees far more libraries that Instant Scenery.

[petermcleland]

Here is one I finished a few moments ago (hate to sound like a "Nigella"!!):-















:flying:

[dswanson]

Hmm,

I've downloaded all the bits for RWY12 and think I'll try this before shelling out cash. If that fails Peter & John's comments suggest I should get E-Z scenery.

Peter, your creations look brilliant but my expertise & available time preclude my doing that.

Like Dave said, I just want to dress up a few local airports - nothing fancy or complex.

[DispatchDragon]

Degsy
As another neophyte scenery builder I can highly recommend the EZ Scenery program - It makes things so much easier to do - like you I was looking for an "all in one" way - but having listened to Peter et al - its obvious there isnt really any such thing - the toughest thing for me was learning about decompiling and recompling bgl files and converting BGls in XML and back again
once your past that its rather like building a model railroad scenery - slow and methodical - it took me three weeks of bodging around to get myself a usuable airfield and now Im having a ball adding bits and pieces of scenery

leif

[DaveB]

I never managed to get anything out of trying to decompile and recompile bgls Leif. I downloaded the prog.. hit the exe and nowt happened.. nothing that I could see anyway. At that point, I considered my position (dumb!) and left well alone! I'd show you the afcad I made for Portsmouth but you'd never stop laughing The best I can say is that it works.. pretty it aint!

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[DispatchDragon]

My first attempts were rather similar Dave

took me awhile to figure out WHERE the little buggers were going - so I created a folder named it "the Scenery labatory" and dumped the decompiler and all the associated bits and pieces in it - lo and behold for some odd reason stuff appears there
when I feed it to the decomplier in nice easy to use xml files



Leif

I learnt alot by down loading a tutorial at avsim on placing xml windsocks and sort of grew from there

[johnhinson]

I've downloaded all the bits for RWY12 and think I'll try this before shelling out cash. If that fails Peter & John's comments suggest I should get E-Z scenery.

Peter, your creations look brilliant but my expertise & available time preclude my doing that.

Like Dave said, I just want to dress up a few local airports - nothing fancy or complex.

Rwy 12 will probably do you nicely - my first "complete" airport was Cam Ranh (VVCR) and done entirely with Rwy12 (apart from the AFCAD of course) - it is a bit basic by the standards I set myself now but there were less libraries in those days. If you want to download it (AVSIM) and temporarily install it, you will see Rwy12 can do quite a lot - where I felt it failed was accurate joins in fencing sections and things like that. I spent a lot of time shuffling them about but was never really satisfied.

But if you aren't going into that kind of detail it should do you fine, but if you want accurate, visual, on-the-fly placement I think you may want to move on to EZ-Scenery in the future.

Good luck with that. Do let us all know how you get on.

John

[petermcleland]

I never managed to get anything out of trying to decompile and recompile bgls Leif. I downloaded the prog.. hit the exe and nowt happened.. nothing that I could see anyway. At that point, I considered my position (dumb!) and left well alone! I'd show you the afcad I made for Portsmouth but you'd never stop laughing The best I can say is that it works.. pretty it aint!

Dave,

Let me try to explain it:-

You need the FS2004SDK and in it you will find a folder called BGLCOMP_SDK...On my machine the route in is like this:-

F:\Program Files\FS2004SDK\BGLCOMP_SDK

In that folder you will find the file bglcomp.exe

Now, you don't click on that file at all...What you do is place an xml code text file in that same folder with it and then use a command window to make bglcomp.exe deal with that text file and convert it into a .bgl file...Let us say the text file is called "Test.txt"

For me to convert that file into a .bgl file I would open a cmd.exe window and type as follows:-

F: Enter

That would change the prompt from C:\WINDOWS\system32>
to F:\>

Now we need to get to where our BGLCOMP_SDK folder is...so looking at the address slot at the top of its window stroke the relevant part with the left mouse button held down to select and highlight it...The bit I would highlight is this bit:-

Program Files\FS2004SDK\BGLCOMP_SDK

Now you have that bit highlighted just place your pointer in the highlighted bit and press the RIGHT mouse button...left click on "Copy" in the window that pops up.

Now let us go back to our CMD window sitting there with the F:\> prompt

At the flashing cursor type "CD" and a space (CD means Change Directory)

Now place your mouse pointer at the flashing cursor and RIGHT click...Left click "Paste"...it will now say:-

F:\CD Program Files\FS2004SDK\BGLCOMP_SDK

with a flashing cursor...press Enter

You now have the prompt you require to use the bglcomp.exe file....Assuming you have copied in the Test.txt file to that same folder, all you do now is type this at your new prompt:-

bglcomp Test.txt and press enter

The CMD window will report progress or errors and all being well it should say:-

Parsing document: Test.txt


Parse complete!

F:\CD Program Files\FS2004SDK\BGLCOMP_SDK

Now if you look back in your folder you will see a new file called Test.bgl

To look at your result...Copy that .bgl file to here:-

X:\.......................\Flight Simulator 9\Scenery\Generic\scenery

Now start FS9 at the default flight with the Cessna at Tacoma and on the Cessna's right, on the taxiway you should see the object.

Here is one you can try yourself...Copy and paste this text into NotePad and save it as Test.txt in your BGLCOM_SDK folder:-

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<FSData
version="9.0"
xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd" >
<SceneryObject
lat="N47 25.89"
lon="W122 18.42"
alt="0"
altitudeIsAgl="TRUE"
pitch="0"
bank="0"
heading="0"
imageComplexity="NORMAL">
<LibraryObject
name="4808a0b04d43fc5620867d91fc8c6eb3"
scale="1.0"/>
</SceneryObject>
</FSData>


Now do the above steps with it and you will see an FS9 generic beacon plonked on the taxiway. This is a Library Object with a "GUID" of 4808a0b04d43fc5620867d91fc8c6eb3 and you could change the Lat and Long in that file to place it anywhere in the world.

Dave...I have been a bit basic step by step in this reply so that other, less computer literate chaps can try it too :flying:

BTW Dave... Glacier Bay v2 contains some very nice libraries

[DaveB]

Hi Peter,

Tks very much for that tutorial. It certainly explains why I wasn't seeing anything happening The object of my exercise was to 'simply' remove an animated radar mast from a particular bit of scenery (it's an old dog and does absolutely nothing for my framerates). The project stopped almost as soon as it had started and I moved out of that area into a more friendly one.. eg, downloading or buying scenery instead You really need an interest far and above mine in order to succeed and for those with my level of interest.. EZ Scenery works just fine ;-) I might go back and try removing that radar mast one day and if I do, I'll be back to this page sharpish

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[johnhinson]

[quote="DaveB"]The object of my exercise was to 'simply' remove an animated radar mast from a particular bit of scenery (it's an old dog and does absolutely nothing for my framerates).
[/quote]
Might this be what you need, Dave?
http://library.avsim.net/search.php?Sea ... &Go=Search

John