nzscenery NZCH

[RNZAF]

about a month ago i downloaded the NZCH scenery because its my hometown... it is quite a large file and takes a month for the 'flying window' to get underway and its a very good file... was intended for fs2004 but still works fine with FSX, comes with the cathedral and moorhouse ave over pass (harvey norman centre) near south city, near wigram has a ring 'o' fire for you to fly through but isnt there in real life. Hagley park is there as well as Garden city helicopters and the real parking for the airport... AI aircraft dont use the original parking, they use the addon scenery parking. many more features that you can look at... http://www.nzscenery.com

[bluebird79]

That Scenery was Originally made for FS2002 and then a very basic upgrade to FS2004 and if you do us it in FSX you are looking at a Resolution of about 4.5 mts which is not very good at all.

Personally I would wait a few days and then have a look at what Mike (Creator) is doing as far as Photoreal Christchurch.

Cheers
Ian

[creator2003]

Sneeky pics of the real FSX version of Christchurch ,this one is not a port to fsx , airports only default ..

[IslandBoy77]

There's only one thing to be said about that...

YOU ROCK!!



Any chance you could fit Napier into your schedule...

[leow5263]

Looking awesome, Mike!

[bluebird79]

From memory Mike has "Abel Tasman National Park, Hamilton, Northland, Napier" and a few others on the go

Cheers
Ian

[NZ255]

Wow, that is very nice resolution, nice and crisp. Whats the area covered....and where did you get that from?

[creator2003]

500 sq mile enclosed is the full area , and sourced from global mapper

[NZ255]

Defiantly payware then

Can't wait!

[creator2003]

Actually donation-ware as is all my scenery from now on ,payware is not for me and have gone for letting people make up there own minds if they want to spend $$ on my scenery ,this includes HamiltonX when ive finished to a standard i feel is me ,free flow is what i want now and im not restricted anymore by 100% perfect payware designing ,there wont be lack of effort on my part, this just helps me let the tiny little things that really dont matter to you the user slide a little if you know what i mean ,and again its upto you as the user if you want to donate to get more scenery ..

[NZ255]

that's great! is it available to download now? Christchurch? I checked your website but just checking

[creator2003]

Yes all scenery is ready to download ,go hard guys

[RNZAF]

amazing... im surprised its freeware... i might delete that original file and replace it with this amazing freeware

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (creator2003 @ Jul 22 2010, 12:16 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes all scenery is ready to download ,go hard guys

Awesome - I've just put my money where my mouth is....

A thought - is there some way to be able to donate more? Yes, more. I reckon $20 per download is still a good price, and I'd like to flick through some extra to you. How can I do that?

Keep up the good work. If you are indeed doing Napier, I am willing to help as I'm able (being self-employed allows both flexibility & being tied to getting jobs done so I can eat...) with local photography of structures or such that you may need.

Cheers!

[NZ255]

Just buy it twice

[RNZAF]

QUOTE (IslandBoy77 @ Jul 22 2010, 08:50 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Awesome - I've just put my money where my mouth is....

A thought - is there some way to be able to donate more? Yes, more. I reckon $20 per download is still a good price, and I'd like to flick through some extra to you. How can I do that?

Keep up the good work. If you are indeed doing Napier, I am willing to help as I'm able (being self-employed allows both flexibility & being tied to getting jobs done so I can eat...) with local photography of structures or such that you may need.

Cheers!

Ive got the napier airport scnery but im not shure where to get the napier scenery from =\

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (RNZAF @ Jul 22 2010, 10:57 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ive got the napier airport scnery but im not shure where to get the napier scenery from =\

I've got the airport also - it's not bad (no insult to the gentlemen who obviously took many hours to create it - it's far, far better than default or nothing at all). The fences don't work properly due to Acceleration Pack, the tarmac textures could do with a change to what they really are, and generally it needs tweaking to match real (again, no insult to the creator - I just like my stuff dead-right). I've thought many, many times about getting out there and taking a load of pics and reworking or building from scratch, but I just don't have the free time to sink what's needed into the project. Plus, I haven't learned how to do the mechanics of actually building the models yet (although I've done a lot of preliminary research into it - even downloaded a bunch of "recommended" tools / programs), which from what I've read is no small thing. I'm very keen to be part of a wider project to get Hawke's Bay done (including Bridge Pa), and would be prepared to donate some time, photos and money to make it come to pass. Sadly, there appears no one willing to spearhead such an effort (although I've read a couple of times that one or two have Napier on the "future drawing board"), and I guess there just aren't enough of us in Napier with the skills, time and will to push things along. Unless you're keen to put your hand up?

I've also looked into the scenery itself - there is some real old stuff that is low quality available, but I don't think it has the necessary geo-tags (or whatever their correct technical term is) to be of any use. I approached Aerial Mapping, but they would not have a bar of donating their stuff to a freeware project - and at $20 + GST per tile (and needing over 200 tiles just for the airport & immediate city area), that was the end of that. Someone suggested on another thread that perhaps one might be able to get something useful out of the Napier City Council or Regional Council GIS systems: I've thought about that myself, but again, there's time & skills required.

It's such a nuisance that modding FSX requires such specialist knowledge and tools. It would make life a lot easier and modding a heck of a lot more attractive if there were "layman's" GUI-like tools that only required entry-level knowledge. And if such exist, I didn't find them last time I did a couple of days' research (which, admittedly, was almost 6 months ago now).

[Bazza]

QUOTE (IslandBoy77 @ Jul 22 2010, 12:10 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've got the airport also - it's not bad (no insult to the gentlemen who obviously took many hours to create it - it's far, far better than default or nothing at all). The fences don't work properly due to Acceleration Pack, the tarmac textures could do with a change to what they really are, and generally it needs tweaking to match real (again, no insult to the creator - I just like my stuff dead-right).

I assume you are aware that it was designed for FS9, anything you can get out of it is a bonus and dependent on your working out the obvious problems.

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (Bazza @ Jul 22 2010, 01:30 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I assume you are aware that it was designed for FS9, anything you can get out of it is a bonus and dependent on your working out the obvious problems.

It's been ages since I downloaded it last, but my impression (which could be wrong) was that it is FSX, but only pre-SP1. I have a vague remembrance of there being another Napier that is only FS9, and I thought I'd not downloaded that one.
So, if it is an FS9 port, it's doing okay, but still needs tweaking - even if used in FS9, I would still want it to be more accurate. I'll just have to wait for Mike...

[toprob]

QUOTE (IslandBoy77 @ Jul 22 2010, 12:10 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

...
It's such a nuisance that modding FSX requires such specialist knowledge and tools. It would make life a lot easier and modding a heck of a lot more attractive if there were "layman's" GUI-like tools that only required entry-level knowledge. And if such exist, I didn't find them last time I did a couple of days' research (which, admittedly, was almost 6 months ago now).

Collaborating on NZ scenery has been discussed a lot in the past, there was even asub-forum set up for it, but nothing ever eventuated. However I still think that it is possible, but it will mean starting small, and learning it all one area at a time. I started out modelling in GMAX, and didn't look at anything else for a long time.

I think the only way we'll ever see a tool which does everything is if it is integrated into a future simulator, the way that some games work -- where you can build a 'map' within the game using simple tools. But a one-tool-does-it-all solution isn't really feasible, especially if you are wanting to include photoscenery -- if you wanted to produce a tool which sourced and reprojected NZ mapping imagery to FSX as well as doing everything else, you'd have about 2 customers in NZ, so you'd probably need to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

There are some very nice tools which do a lot for FSX -- ADE, for instance, but there isn't the same interest in photo scenery, so you really just need to learn the SDK tools. Making photo scenery for FSX is the easiest thing you can do, but actually sourcing the images and getting them into the proper format is very very difficult here in NZ.

If anyone can actually talk their local council into supplying images, then you'll always find someone who can help -- I could certainly get you started. However you would need to make it clear to me that the final scenery can be legally distributed, which normally means having a written agreement with the supplier. You will not find anyone who can supply images for free without something in writing.