FS2002 scenery in '04

[JSMR]

Downloaded Naracoorte YNRC. Next leg and trying to avoid more ADE work as fun as that is. 

The airport is all over the shop, as expected. MOst of the objects are showing. No runways etc, It has no BGL so it cant be opened. Onky an xcl file which I have no idea what that is. 

Is there an easy solution to using Fs2002 files? 

[johnhinson]

You can delete the *.xcl file. This is a temporary file created during the build of an "exclude", and serves no purpose in the final product. Over the years I have found quite a few sceneries where temporary files like that haven't been removed. Removing it will have no effect on the scenery, the actual "exclude" should be in a *.bgl as normal.

It surely must have a minimum of one *.bgl file to display the scenery, but you say it has none?

 

John

[chris_eve]

FS2002 sceneries aren't usually a major problem assuming you've got all the recommended texture libraries etc., which may not be included.

If you want an active runway, taxiways etc. in FS2004 you'll need to generate your own using AFCAD2, SceneGenX, ADE or whatever to suit your own requirements.

Pictorial examples of what problems are being experienced may well help further diagnosis ... "all over the shop" is a little too generic to be helpful

 

EDIT :- Having said all that, I see that YNRC is a default airfield in FS2004, so fine tuning may be less of an issue, depending on how accurate the alignment of the scenery is. There does seem to be a bit of an issue with the alpha transparency for some of the tree textures, so that'd need looking into, but mostly it "looks OK". Here's my Skycatcher on the apron

[JSMR]

Ok, xcl doesn’t do anything. I guess I expected a bgl that contained the airfield, as ADE won’t open the two bgl’s in the scenery file. 
 

Trees aside, I do have what’s in your image, Chris. But that big blurry light brown texture covers the whole of the airfield. No runways or taxi ways visible. 
So I’m wondering how to edit it, when I can’t open it in ADE? 

[johnhinson]

The presence of a ground texture throughout the airport may indicate the lack of a flatten switch - check the install instructions which may show an entry to be placed in the scenery.cfg file for this. These days, flattens can be created in ADE etc of course.

 

That should then, hopefully, expose the runways and taxiways. If it is a default FS airport, open that in ADE (or your preferred editor) and simply adjust to suit, saving it as your new AFD file.

The transparency issue with the trees probably indicates the use of "Gerrish's Trees" which are not compatible with FS2004, but you may be happy to put up with them like that.

John

[JSMR]

OK thanks guy's. I'll give it a whirl. 

[chris_eve]

Spent a few more minutes on this ... come up with a couple of factors that may help.

YNRC is also a default field in FS2002.

There's 0.3ft difference between the altitude of the airfields in FS2002 and FS2004, and the positioning is slightly different, so the scenery won't be "perfect" in FS2004.

As it's FS2002 scenery your "usual" FS2004 bgl editing tools won't work.

The scenery will have been assembled using SCASM or similar and will need to be dis-assembled using something like BGL Analyze.

It's a whole different language set with quite a steep learning curve .... maybe only worth the effort if you're anticipating transferring several FS2002 sceneries!

As mentioned by johnhinson, a flatten may help reveal all the original detail, but you'll possibly still need to generate a new layout for runways etc. if the default runways don't line up.

[JSMR]

Yeah I was figuring it may take some effort. Thanks for looking at it though. 

[chris_eve]

Now for the good news ... do away with the ground polygons and runways in the FS2002 bgl (the first 15 items in the file) and the rest of the scenery all fits in reasonably nicely with the default FS2004 airfield

Might want to fiddle around a bit to see exactly which ground polygons does what, some of them may be useful, but in the meantime it looks quite presentable, just for a few minutes work

The faulty tree textures appear to be some of the gum trees included with the download, so that should be easy enough to fix, (once I remember how!), then a background polygon from SBuilder and maybe a fresh exclude and all should be good

 

 

Naracoorte_new.zip

[ViperPilot2]

I have several 2002 'Sceneries' installed in Nine and they work fine; the Dirt may look a middle different in some but it makes them easier to find from the Air!