Scenery design tools for FSX - recommendations?

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TobyV
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Scenery design tools for FSX - recommendations?

Post by TobyV »

Well it's been a long time since I did anything in the flightsim world. A few years ago, as I felt I had the financial means to do it, I investeed in FSX Steam Edition, a decent :S *-) joystick and a payware Fokker 27 and BAe146.... and I never really did anything with it. I had a nice setup back in FS2002 and FS2004 days inside the sim with loads of scenery and planes but when I went from student life to the world of work, I just didn't have time anymore.

Now in the present circumstances, things have changed a bit. Over the years I collected more and more photos and other references of old places I wanted to model as FS scenery, question is now, what tools to use? "Back in the day" as they say, I was using Airport for Windows (which became SceneGenX for FS9 and FSX but died an early death) for vidual stuff and placing objects and creating "flattens" and "excludes" and AFCAD2 and DXTbmp for the bitmaps. I've seen Airport Design Editor, but this seems to have some limitations as does SBuilderX (in terms of custom objects). Does anyone know what people use "nowadays"? *-)

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Re: Scenery design tools for FSX - recommendations?

Post by TSR2 »

Hi Toby,

The first place to go is fsdeveloper and download Modelconverterx. As it’s name suggests it converts models from a myriad of different formats to FSX (or P3D).
I really got into Sketchup years ago and then converted the sketchup models using MCX (ModelConverterX) but I think it also supports Blender now (Blender is Free and incredibly powerful). But the key is finding a tool that your comfortable with. The nice thing about tools like Blender or SketchUp is that the skills you learn aren’t tied to Flightsim.

Also, for airports, you simply must get ADE from scruffy duck (who is also a member on FS Developer forums).
Ben.:tunes:

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TobyV
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Re: Scenery design tools for FSX - recommendations?

Post by TobyV »

Thanks Ben. First problem I have run into is that MS won't allow me to install the FSX SDK with "only" a Steam Edition. Workaround appears to be to download the P3D one from Lockheed. :worried:

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Re: Scenery design tools for FSX - recommendations?

Post by TSR2 »

The LM SDK should do the trick
Ben.:tunes:

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Re: Scenery design tools for FSX - recommendations?

Post by DaveG »

TobyV wrote:
23 May 2020, 19:57
Thanks Ben. First problem I have run into is that MS won't allow me to install the FSX SDK with "only" a Steam Edition. Workaround appears to be to download the P3D one from Lockheed. :worried:
Make sure you get the one for P3d v1. The later ones won't compile FSX compatible models.
Dave G.

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TobyV
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Re: Scenery design tools for FSX - recommendations?

Post by TobyV »

Hmm, There was a V3 and V4 available. Having read the previous stuff, I went for the earliest one, but the folder names still didn't match what's in Steam. *-)

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Re: Scenery design tools for FSX - recommendations?

Post by GHD »

George

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Re: Scenery design tools for FSX - recommendations?

Post by TobyV »

Thanks, George. I think that's worked! :thumbsup:

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