The editing window of FSwow! showing my first design project in progress; you can see the added building and some of the added aircraft.

Back in the FS4 days I used to do quite a bit of scenery design. It was relatively easy then, as the standard scenery editor allowed you to visually place objects; pretty much anyone could do at least basic scenery design.

Then along came FS5 style scenery (which is the same as used by FSFW95 and FS98) and things changed and got more complicated. The initial design tools required something more like programming skills rather than graphic design skills. While that hasn't been completely eliminated, FSwow! does make it easy enough for anyone to do basic scenery design.

FSwow! should appeal to the guy who likes flying above all else, but would love to add some life to his home airport. Even without any previous design experience this type of flight simmer should be able within a few minutes to liven up the home airstrip.

The basics of FSwow! are fast and easy to learn. The best way to start is with the built-in tutorial. By working through it you will within minutes begin adding scenery to familiar Meigs field, using techniques that can later be applied to other airports. All the basics are covered in the few, short, tutorial lessons.

FSwow! has an extensive help system, including a complete tutorial for first time users.

Adding scenery is basically a two step system. First you must designate a location, which can be done with the Location Wizard. Essentially what you do is create a situation while in FS98 with the plane located at the exact spot and orientation where you want to place a new object. FSwow! will recognize situations with certain file names and easily allow their use as locators. Then with the location set you use the visual point and click object catalog, choose the general type of object and then pick the details like object color.

That's pretty much all that's necessary to add objects to scenery!

Having to go back and forth from Flight Sim to FSwow! to generate location situation file sounds like a bit of a nuisance, but actually it's not so bad since once you pick an initial point you can add more scenery objects in positions relative to that first point. Thus one situation position can be used as the starting point to place all the objects in the entire area.

FSwow! is great for beginners but it can also be a tools for more experienced designers. It offers a fast, easy way to get complex objects into scenery and its built-in scenery object library makes for more interesting scenery than generic objects would. There is also advanced technology like the ability to create rows of objects, silhouettes, near/far views, boundary control, precise relative positioning. FSwow! can handle any custom objects (FABs) created by PreFAB/AF5 too.

A section of the object list. Each object is available in different colors.

Good and bad points:

Good:

• Short learning curve
• Allows addition of complex, interesting objects
• Easily adds on to existing scenery
• Point and click location setting
• Works with FS5, FSFW95 and FS98

• Even with so many objects, you may not find the one you need
• Setting an initial position where object edges align is tricky because situation files record the center rather than an edge position
• Still requires working with text to create the actual scenery source file, though mostly via cutting/pasting from the catalog and wizards

The final results of my first scenery, with added buildings and aircraft at my home airport. The prop on the Cub is even turning!

FSwow! was conceived and written by Laemming Wheeler with some development help from Joe Lincoln of TekMate.