What Can I do?

[LMerraine]

I would really like to contribute to this, and well, I've been learning the basics of gmax, and enjoying it. But as any New Zealand airports are a tad far away (I live in Perth) it's not easy to get photos etc of the airports.

Are we looking at photoreal? or can I go on the aip files and be creative on the buildings that are there?

I'm not sure what the final plan was.

If anyone has an airport that they think I should have a try at (prefer small) and have some photos etc, I would be keen to give it a shot.

I would also need a gmax guru to help in areas that I may have problems in (still not sure how to do curves etc etc etc.

[Timmo]

Well as part of this I thought it may be useful to create a library of NZ specific objects? Do you have a Bunnings Warehouse or The Warehouse where you live? Perhaps you could start by modelling those in Gmax (ie. a block with textures) and get into into Flightsim as a start....Youll learn heaps just by doing that....Then perhaps move on to harder things?

These could be uploaded and used in other NZ scenery projects.

[Christian]

QUOTE (Timmo @ Apr 6 2008, 10:37 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well as part of this I thought it may be useful to create a library of NZ specific objects? Do you have a Bunnings Warehouse or The Warehouse where you live? Perhaps you could start by modelling those in Gmax (ie. a block with textures) and get into into Flightsim as a start....Youll learn heaps just by doing that....Then perhaps move on to harder things?

These could be uploaded and used in other NZ scenery projects.

That's a good idea. Other objects are airport specific ones, like those concrete markers, maybe lights (runway, taxi & approach lights), etc... Richard mentioned that it would be great to have some superrealistic objects around airports, and I couldn't agree more.

Otherwise, what you could do is get SBuilder and build airport aprons with it. You can get imagery from Google through SBuilder and build really real looking airport aprons (there are tutorials how to do this).

Another task is collecting scenery that has already been created and making it compatible with FSX SP2 (not sure what's involved with that) and start contacting original authors and building a scenery library.

Christian

PS: sorry for my recent silence, this hasn't dropped of my radar and hopefully soon I can contribute some more....

[Timmo]

Are you a FSXer? If so. how about this:

I spent sometime last night updating Whenuapai just using default methods (i.e. making things correct, no actual modelling yet) since the default airport isnt quite right- We will need a good base of Airport XMLs for this project that line up with their real world locations and that match what is actually there (i.e. taxiway names correct)

I think a first step is to update all the airports that arent likely to be photomodelled with better versions using default objects- This should be possible for anyone to do using the tools below

I used four main things:

1) FSX Planner (opened default airport and edited as needed)
FSX Planner

2) A Scenery creation map service im developing for NZFF- This allows you to get locations from google earth imagery in order to update airport data- Its simply a case of dragging a marker to a place on the map and then copying the coordinates that pop up. So, if you can see a a hanger/static aircraft/parking location on the google imagery, youll be able to place that acurately in FSX....previously you have had to guess or have a photoreal background in the sim or FSX planner.

Map is here: Test Scenery Map
3) The online Catalogue of FSX library objects- I used this to get approximations of the hangers at Whenuapai from the default objects.
FSX Objects

4) AIP sheets of the airport- these are avaliable online but I used my book of them from real world flying...
AIP Sheets


Youll need the deluxe version of FSX to get access to the bgl compiler.


Using these tools, your physical location/distance from airports doesnt have to be a hinderance