by toprob » Mon Dec 22, 2008 8:11 pm
Yes, it's remarkably easy to make simple changes to default FSX airports, once you have installed and come to terms with one of the very nice tools such as Airport Design Editor or FSX Planner.
By developing your skills with one of these tools, you can also create your own airfields.
Yes, but not so definitely, you can use Sketchup, Timmo did a fabulous job with Whakatane in Sketchup, but I think he needed to use GMAX for some of it, as it is not possible to export to FSX from Sketchup. There are also some issues with texture mapping, and Sketchup's way of building objects as separate planes goes against the way in which FSX objects can be optimised, as well as making them unable to be self-shaded.