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HELLO EVERYONE ! I need your help. I am searching for instructions and or a manual on how to create a blendmask for use in FS2004. Thank you for your attention.
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Hot To Create Custom Aerial Scenery In MSFS 2020 By Augustin Winther Introduction This guide will show you how to create an aerial scenery in MSFS. Please do note that this tutorial will not show you how to install the prerequisites. It is also pretty much necessary to already have some knowledge of scenery development in MSFS. The remainder of the tutorial is actually a PDF which you can either read inline here or download. AW_MSFS_scenery_tutorial.pdf Augustin Winther
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How To Create Custom Aerial Scenery In MSFS 2020 By Augustin Winther Introduction This guide will show you how to create an aerial scenery in MSFS. Please do note that this tutorial will not show you how to install the prerequisites. It is also pretty much necessary to already have some knowledge of scenery development in MSFS. The remainder of the tutorial is actually a PDF which you can either read inline here or download. Augustin Winther Download PDF version of this article AW_MSFS_scenery_tutorial.pdf -
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G2XPL Tutorial By James Lambe Congratulations on downloading G2XPL. This wonderful program will allow you to create photo-scenery titles for you to enjoy whilst flying X-Plane. The author of the program and myself hope you get many hours of enjoyment from it. G2XPL is a very powerful program and one that is very easy to use. Following the outlines in this tutorial, you will soon be proficient in the making of your very own photo scenery files. Note: The use of a fast unrestricted broadband service provider is highly recommended as any tiles over LOD15 zoom will be of considerable size (the higher you go, the larger the size). So let's get started. Installing G2XPL After you have downloaded G2XPL you will need to unzip the files. From your downloads folder, copy and paste the zipped G2XPL file onto your desktop. Right click on the G2XPL zip folder and select extract from the drop down list or use your zip manager (if installed). The unzipped folder will appear on your desktop. I recommend you place the zipped folder into your recycle bin so you do not use the wrong folder. Right click on the G2XPL folder and select Cut: Open your X-Plane folder and select: C:\X-Plane 11\Resources Then select the plugins folder and paste the file into it: It will look like this: Now please follow the next step closely. Open the G2XPL folder and copy the named file g2xpl.xpl and paste it to the plugins folder, it will end up like this: That's it, G2XPL is now installed into X-Plane. First Use Open X-Plane. You will be greeted by an open box with some files in it. You must click on the bottom file named g2xpl. When clicked the box will automatically close. X-Plane will continue, then select an airport of you choice. Making Tiles G2XPL Inside X-Plane 11 We will now learn how to use G2XPL inside X-Plane while the simulator is live (running). After you have selected the airport and the sim opens to that airport, you will notice an LUA file with a message stating G2XPL has loaded successfully. You can press the Esc button on your keyboard to close the dialog box or use your mouse and left click on the magenta X. Next you will need to set the preferences that you will use to make a photo tile. Go to the top left side of the screen and select Plugins/g2xpllauncher/G2xpl general settings. The settings menu will allow you to set the size of the tile you wish to make. The default setting is LOD=17 and the radius 7000 meters. The screen shot shows the decrease of LOD to 16 using the down arrow tab and also the increase to 10000 (m) using the up arrow tab. If you have an Nvidia card that uses CUDA then tick the box. Tick the Pause X-Plane icon to allow the tile to load faster. Then click the apply data and close button. You will need to visit the settings menu each time you wish to alter the sizes of your tile selection. Now it's time to make your first photo tile. First pause the sim at the location you wish to use. Now go up to the left top of the monitor menu bar and select \plugins\g2xpl launcher\G2xpl Internet Services settings. The launcher window will now show on the screen. From here you can choose which map provider you wish to use by ticking the box next to the ISP. To make the selection, select the upper bottom left button-bar (Apply data and launch G2xpl exe). If you wish to cancel, select the bottom left button-bar. Once you have selected the launcher button-bar, the screen will open to a DOS menu and begin its work creating a list. This may take some time and will be dependent on your connection speed. When the DOS window eventually closes, your sim screen will stay in the pause state until the tile is generated into X-Plane. You may have to restart X-Plane if you have chosen a high LOD setting and the scenery has not changed. By the way, it is possible to create a photo tile on the fly. You simply do the above procedure while flying over an area. This can be achieved from either the inside or outside of the aircraft; just remember to pause the sim first! Once you have completed the first method of creating a photo tile, there is also a second method of creating larger areas outside of X-Plane. This is achieved by using Google Earth. By using this method, there is no need for the simulator to be running. Tips And Tricks Navigate to your X-Plane plugins folder and create a desktop shortcut by right clicking on the G2XPL folder and selecting send to desktop shortcut. Open your G2XPL folder and you will see a KMZ file exe called 1x1 deg mesh. Select it and Google Earth will open with a red tile generator covering the entire globe. Remove the tick in the Temporary Places folder above (null). With the red gone, our normal Earth will now appear. Zoom into the country, state or region that you wish to create the tile for. Replace the tick in Temporary Places and the 1x1 tiles will reappear. Also ensure that you highlight the (null) sub folder under Temporary Places (failure to do this will cause problems). Zoom into the area you wish to make the tile for and select from the menu bar: Add/Polygon. Now draw a polygon around the tile area that you wish to make. It may cover up to 4 tiles. When complete, click the OK button in the polybox. After you click the OK button there will be a lag while the polygon and tile are built by Google Earth. You will also notice a long list of polygons appearing in the left side window. Here you will need to highlight the bottom of the list named 'Untitled Polygon', right click and select Save to my Places. The Untitled Polygon will now appear above Temporary Places. Highlight the Untitled Polygon, right click and select Save Place As. Next a window will appear of your G2XPL folder. Give your Untitled Polygon a name (say, poly1.kmz) and press save. Once you have saved the file, close Google Earth (press the Discard button) do not save. You will now be returned to G2XPL, where you will see your saved KMZ file. Now you need to tell G2XPL what tile in Google Earth to use/download. You do this by opening the configuration setting in the G2XPL folder. Look for the line plane_long= there maybe some numbers after the =. Overwrite the numbers with the name of your KMZ file (poly1.kmz) shown here. Next, you need to tell G2XPL what zoom level (LOD) to use in the download. The default is set to zoom=17 Delta=3, but you can change it if you wish by altering the IS_zoom_level= and the IS_zoom_level_low_res_delta= lines. Now save the configuration file. You are now ready to download the Google Earth tile. In the G2XPL folder look for the file named g2xpl, this is the application's exe file. Click on it. The DOS window (as in section 1) will open and write the files and download. When the DOS window closes, the downloaded tile will be found in X-Plane -> Custom Scenery -> and then a sub folder named z_g2xpl X-Plane saves all downloaded G2XPL tiles to this z_g2xpl folder in three sub folders. Congratulations. That's it, you have now made your tile using G2XPL outside of X-Plane. Making Large Batch Files, Such As Countries, States Or Regions Using G2XPL You can create sceneries of countries, states or regions using G2XPL by using multiple tiles for a specific area. However, because X-Plane uses just the one z_g2xpl folder for all the tiles, you will need to follow the instructions given below. These instructions will show you how to make a state of the USA, but the same procedure can be used to create a country or region. First you have to empty the z_g2xpl folder in X-Plane's Custom Scenery folder. You do this by making a folder on your desktop called Holding folder. This is to copy any files that you have already made and wish to save for future use. When making large batch files for the state, you should not make any other files from within X-Plane at the same time. Delete the three files inside the z_g2xpl folder, to look like this. Open your G2XPL folder and select the 1x1deg mesh file. When Google Earth opens, un-tick the Temporary Place folder to hide the red mesh. Zoom into the state (area) you wish to use; in this case, Arizona has been selected. Then re-tick the Temporary Place folder to re-establish the mesh. Now count the number of tiles that are required to cover the state, border to border, on all sides. Then in a text editor, make a rough drawing of the state adding squares to represent the tiles and number them. This is important as it keeps a record of what has been downloaded. Now, just as you did when creating your first GE tile, you are going to use the polygon method, but this time with a little difference. First select your number one tile of the mesh, now add the polygon by keeping it inside the tile and making it small. Then save as normal, for example, az1.kmz and then proceed to the next tile, az2.kmz. This is repeated as necessary. Complete this method until you have covered the entire state. Remember all your download files will now be inside the main X-Plane Custom Scenery Folder named z_g2xpl and will be contained within the three sub folders. Create a folder on your desktop and name it, xx_arizona. Then copy the three sub-folders shown above into the desktop xx_arizona folder. Place the desktop xx_arizona folder into your X-Plane custom Scenery folder. Next. empty the g2xpl folder in the Custom Scenery, so as not to confuse X-Plane. Now run X-Plane as normal so as to read the new scenery folder. If the scenery does not show, close X-Plane and go to your main X-Plane folder/Custom Scenery scenery_packs.ini and make sure the xx_arizona file is placed in the stack as shown below. This is the method for making all large batch files. However, always remember to clear your z_g2xpl folder each time before making your next batch area. The best way of using G2XPL is by making named folders for the custom scenery folder and keeping the z_g2xpl folder empty, ready for your next shots. If you keep your z_g2xpl folder empty, then X-Plane (while running) will tell you there is a problem loading z_g2xpl and will not load the scenery. This is correct as there is nothing in it. Just press the UNDERSTOOD button. I hope this tutorial serves you well. The tutorial was composed with Windows10 and X-Plane 11. James Lambe Download G2XPL here (donationware). -
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Overlay Editor Tutorial Part Seven By Paul Mort Hello and welcome to Part 7 of my series of Overlay Editor tutorials. This time around, we will focus on the more advanced features of Overlay Editor and how we can use these features to build even more convincing sceneries. Ground Texture Library For the purpose of this tutorial, we are going to have to use my new Ground Textures Library, which you can find in the FlightSim.Com file library. This library was created as I found it necessary to create additional textured polygons. In all, I created over 60 of them and packaged it up as a library. Once you have downloaded and unzipped the library, go and place it in your X-Plane Custom Scenery folder. When done, open Overlay Editor and in the right hand pane, you should see that the Ground Texture Library is now available. Curved Bezier And Polygons Well...that's a mouthful to start with! Don't worry though, as all will be explained. In a nutshell we will be looking at how to use curved ground textures and how to border them with the appropriate boundaries. Boundaries can come in the shape of fences, walls or even hedges. Ground Textured Polygons When it comes to being creative with your scenery design, the ground textured polygon is a very handy tool to use. Imagine a person lying in their bed and then having a thin patterned sheet thrown over them. The sheet, because of gravity, will shape itself to the contours of that person. Well, applying a textured polygon to the ground works in pretty much the same way, it will hug the contours of hills and valleys alike. Right, let's go and cover the ground with some large pebbles. Later on in the tutorial we will border this area with a hedge (Figure 1). Figure 1 Selecting the 'Pebbleslarge' polygon and pressing enter will place the item in your main scenery development window. Remember that from altitude, the patterns will be invisible and just appear as colored (reddish). As you zoom in however, the textures will become visible. Polygons Situated around the polygon at each corner you will notice four grab handles (nodes). These can be moved (left click and hold) in order to manipulate the shape of the polygon. To create more nodes so as to refine your shape as needed, click on a node and then select the icon in the top menu. This will create a new node in an anticlockwise position (Figure 2). Figure 2 If we so desired, we could simply drag this new node to the right and create a pointed shape, however, for the purpose of this tutorial, a curved section will be created. This is done by using a bezier curve. Bezier Curves It is possible to create primitive looking curves by using numerous nodes in short succession, but this is time consuming and the results are nowhere near as pleasing as when the bezier tool is used. This is done by selecting our new node, dragging it to the right (Figure 3) and then, while the node is still selected (will be white), click the 'Add Curve Control Handle' . Figure 3 Adding A String Object For Borders String objects in Overlay Editor, as you may recall, are objects such as taxi lines, fences and hedges. Many of these can be manipulated by bezier curve option but in cases where the bezier curve is not an option, another way must be found. One possible solution is to create many nodes in short succession, as shown below (Figure 4). Whilst this method lacks the 'smooth' finish when the bezier curve option is used, it is nevertheless plausible. Figure 4 Making Your Own Ground Textures Producing fine ground textures of your own is quite a simple task as long as a few mandatory rules are adhered to. Firstly, a suitable texture must be obtained. Your best bet here is to use either Google or Bing image search. Look for things like 'Brick Texture' etc. Secondly, make sure that the image you use is not copyrighted. Once a suitable image has been found, create a white.png canvas (Gimp, Photoshop, etc) which is exactly 1024x1024 in dimension. I say exactly because you can't afford to be even one pixel out. Depending on the size of your original image (mine were 256 pixels squares), paste these images onto your white canvas so that they fill it. In my case it took sixteen of my images. Figure 5 Make doubly sure that each square image lines up perfectly with its adjacent image by zooming in and checking. When you're happy with the result, save the image as a .png file and with a relevant name, such as 'GrassStriped.png'. Load the image back up again and make certain it is actually 1024_1024 pixels square. If it's not then you'll have to crop it to that dimension. That's part one done! Each ground texture contains two files (the texture and polygon (.pol) file.) Part two is simple. In a text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit, create a text file as shown below, substituting your file names as required. A 850 DRAPED_POLYGON TEXTURE Grassstriped.png SCALE 12 12 LAYER_GROUP taxiways 1 SURFACE Grassstriped Then save this as 'GrassStriped.pol' The 'Scale' parameters adjust the size of the image, so if the texture looks too big to be natural when viewed, decrease this value (make sure both are the same value). The Layer Group configuration ensures that 'Runways and Roads' have a higher priority to the polygon. This means that our new polygon will not draw over them. Keep both files together, as as one file won't work without the other. And that's it. That's how to create custom ground textures. When you get used to the procedure above, it's actually really good fun! That's all for now. I'll be back next time with more Overlay Editor tips and tricks. Paul Mort pmort76@gmail.com Read other articles in this series -
Overlay Editor Tutorial Part Six By Paul Mort Hello and welcome to part six of my series of tutorials covering Overlay Editor. If you've followed my tutorials from the beginning of the series, I think you now have enough knowledge and artistic talent to make a start on creating a modest airport. To run through this process, let's have a look at an airport I created a while back, VT15 Savage Island Airport in Vermont, USA. I've chosen this airport as it's not a particularly complex scenery. Savage Island was created by using a combination of overlaid images (in Overlay Editor) and Google Earth. Figure 1 below shows Savage Island in all its glory. Figure 1 When viewed in Overlay Editor, the airport looks like this (Figure 2). Figure 2 The first thing to note is the red box surrounding the island. This, as we've learned from previous tutorials, is called an Exclusion Zone and should ALWAYS be the first thing you add to your scenery. In this case, the exclusion used is a 'forest exclusion zone'. By applying this, it will prevent any unwanted tree objects (be it from freeware/payware packages) from interfering with our own custom scenery. Next we check to see if there are any suspicious buildings, inappropriately placed roads, power lines or railway lines that might interfere with our scenery. If there are, then we apply the appropriate exclusion zone. In the case of Savage Island, none were required so the only one used was the forest exclusion zone. Before attempting to add any buildings to a scenery, I always find it good practice to sort out any vegetation requirements. This is personal preference, and you may decide to do it differently, but for myself, I find it works well. Figure 3 shown below shows where the custom forests for the scenery are to be placed. As you can see the from the image, the green polygons are areas assigned to forests, with the one selected, being highlighted in pink. The great thing about the Forest Polygon is that rather than place all the trees individually (a highly laborious task), the polygon automatically places the right quantity of trees in the selected area. The forest type used for this particularly area comes the MisterX_Library and is the temperate wet/mixed forest type. Figure 3 Background Imagery Function To aid us in the placement of forests, we can use the Background Imagery function from the Overlay Editor menu. This allows us to superimpose an aerial photograph under our scenery allowing us to see exactly where forests (if needed) should be situated (Figure 4). Figure 4 By adjusting the forest polygons to match the map we can now, in effect, draw around the wooded areas. Once done, we can zoom in and see the result (Figure 5). Figure 5 By looking at the X-Plane version of Savage Island we can see that it's made of two separate built-up areas, with each one containing many different types of buildings. If you've ever been to the real Savage Island, or seen it on maps, you'll know that in reality it's pretty much devoid of any buildings. Yes, there's a house and small hangar but that's really all there is. In comparison, our X-Plane rendition looks rather built-up and dare I say it...fictional...and to all extent and purposes it is. Now, there will be some who would say that this is wrong, it's not accurate, but I'm more of the opinion of...let it be fun, let it be enjoyable. The great thing about Overlay Editor and its many object libraries (3D People, The Handy Object Library, etc.) is that they give you control over how much realism or fantasy you wish to apply. So for all those traditionalists out there...this is OUR Savage Island (Figures 6 and 7)! Figure 6 So much is going on at Savage island these days... basketball, a hot tub party, cars and even animals! Figure 7 Object placement within Overlay Editor has been covered in previous tutorials, so there's no need to go over it again. If you're unsure of how this is done, then I recommend having another read of tutorials 1 to 5. One thing I will mention however, and one that relates to large structures, such as hangars, terminal buildings, etc., is, place them on concrete polygon. By doing so, they look far more realistic (Figure 8). Figure 8 As you can see, creating scenery in X-Plane is not especially difficult, it's just more time consuming. In fact, because of the tools available, scenery creation is relatively easy (compared to some other simulators I've used). The most important thing to remember is that creating scenery should always be fun. Mistakes? Yes, we've all made them, but you know what, making them means you can enjoy the learning process just that little bit longer! See you next time and have fun with scenery design. Paul Mort pmort76@gmail.com Read other articles in this series -
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Overlay Editor Tutorial Part Five By Paul Mort Hello and welcome to Part 5 in my series of tutorials on Overlay Editor. In this tutorial we are going to look at an essential part of Overlay Editor, one that isn't always used but one that should always be included in virtually created scenery; that being the mysterious 'Exclusion Zone.' So What Exactly Is An Exclusion Zone? Well, as you're no doubt aware, there are many X-Plane sceneries available which enhance the look of the default X-Plane terrain. These include regional, country and world improvements and come in both freeware and payware guises. These enhancements really do make a tremendous difference to the often sparse world of X-Plane, but they do have one caveat...they tend to invade your workspace. If that space happens to be your custom scenery, then sorry, you'll just have to make room for that new industrial estate! Let me give you an example. One of the most impressive scenery enhancements an X-Plane user can have (apart from HD Mesh) is the World2XPlane add-on which uses Open Street Map (OSM) data to populate a particular area. These areas include most of Europe and the US and are available to download at the World2XPlane web site. As mentioned above though, as much as I consider World2XPlane a must have add-on, it does on occasion like to 'paint' or rather, intrude into your work area and because of this, this is where our wonderful exclusion zones come into play! Upon opening Overlay Editor and navigating to the library pane (right hand panel) we can search for available libraries. By default, the Exclusions library is included with X-Plane and once located, you'll see that it contains eight types of exclusion zones, each one performing a particular function (Figure 1). Figure 1 When creating a new scenery, I've found that adding exclusions to your area is a good starting point. I would suggest a minimum of one object and one forest exclusion zone. In the example below (Figure 2), you can see that we have created a single object exclusion box which will act as a 'no go' area for any buildings or objects. This will prevent any unwanted objects from springing up and wrecking our day. We can do the same thing with a forest exclusion box, which prevents any trees or vegetation from appearing in the selected area. If you need to also exclude roads, rail networks or power lines from the area, then you simply use the Roads, Railways & Powerlines' Exclusion option. One feature sorely missing from the exclusion zones option, is the ability to create a custom exclusion shape (no node or rotation option) as you are limited to pretty much squares and rectangles. To create an exclusion in the shape of an 'L' would mean creating two rectangles, which if we had nodes, would be far simpler and versatile. An easy way to think of exclusion zones is as forcefields; they keep out the...undesirables (Figure 2). Very Star Wars! Figure 2 When adding exclusion zones, make them a little larger than necessary. Remember the wise words of Confucius: 'It is better to have a slightly bald landscape, than trees growing out of buildings.' Er...yeah! Remember, any exclusion zone created will have zero impact on any objects or forests you add yourself. In our never ending quest for scenery perfection, a good practice to get into is to fire up X-Plane and check your new scenery. Whatever you do, don't wait until it's finished! Like any good artist, constant checking is vital. When checking, if something looks out of place or not quite right, ask yourself 'Would this happen in real life?' If the answer is no, then it's back to the drawing board you go. Figure 3 below, shows a magnified view of our runway. As you can see, there are roads leading directly towards it. Now, I don't know about you, but I'd be a tad bit concerned if I was coming into land and saw numerous vehicles approaching the runway (have I paid my car tax?). Apart from this, having vehicles this close to the runway looks unrealistic...especially when they suddenly just disappear! Figure 3 As you can see in Figure 4, a Roads, Railways & Powerlines exclusion zone has been placed where we think the roads should end. This is great in that it cuts back on the roads but unfortunately it leaves lots of roads with dead ends. What we need to do here is to join them up so that they look more believable. There are two ways in which we can do this. The first is to draw a tarmac polygon between the roads, but this has the disadvantage of being devoid of AI traffic. A far better solution to the problem would be to use Overlay Editor's Roads, Railways & Powerlines library (not to be confused with the Exclusion Library). Roads are string objects, which mean they can be lengthened and new nodes added. By doing this, our roads can now be joined together (Figure 4). Figure 4 Now we have something approaching reality! Well, there you have it...exclusion zones. I know we've spent a whole tutorial on them but I think it's a worthy topic. Remember, as mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial...every new custom scenery SHOULD contain at least one exclusion zone. By utilizing this feature, you are, in effect, future proofing your scenery for whatever changes might occur to that particular area. See you next time and have fun with scenery design. Paul Mort pmort76@gmail.com Read other articles in this series -
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Overlay Editor Tutorial Part Four By Paul Mort Hello and welcome to Part 4 of my series of Overlay Editor Tutorials. If you followed my last tutorial, you will be aware that this time, we will be getting in touch with our artistic side and looking into what turns an average scenery into a good one. It's All In The Detail During our everyday lives the finer details, which make the world more interesting, are usually taken for granted; they are just there...so what. However, where creating scenery is concerned, we need to create these often overlooked details so as to create that added interest. For some reason, we are far more observant of what's being displayed on our screen than we are in real life. As we learn and progress through the different stages of scenery design, our knowledge of what's possible will increase and as such, so will our artist flair. Starting From Scratch In the previous tutorial we mentioned X-Plane's apt.dat file. This, if you remember, contains all the basic information regarding an airport's runways, taxiways, aprons and roads. To load up an airport that has not yet been edited, we click the 'Go to Airport' icon which looks like this ... A selection box, as shown below, will then appear and this is where we can select our airport, either by name or its ICAO code (Figure 1). Figure 1 Once the airport is loaded, a pictorial representation is displayed on the screen. This includes; runways, taxiways, aprons and roads (represented as thin white lines). As you can see, however (Figure 2), the airport is devoid of objects; it is, to all accounts, a blank canvas. Being empty however allows us to populate it with whatever objects we see fit. Figure 2 The Magic Button (Background Image) This 'magic button' is what puts the 'Overlay' in Overlay Editor. By clicking on this icon, we are able to superimpose an exact, real world image of our airport, on top of the pictorial representation as shown in Figure 2. This is extremely useful to a designer as it serves as a guide or stencil for the placement of our chosen objects. Upon clicking on the icon, we are presented with a box (Figure 3) which gives us a choice of which type of 'Overlay' we require, and also how transparent we'd like it to be (opacity). Figure 3 As you can see above, we have chosen to use the Microsoft Bing overlay and have set the opacity at 50%. If we now look at our selected airport, we can see the buildings, roads, trees etc. as they would be in real life (Figure 4). Figure 4 By using the mouse scroll wheel (if available), we can zoom in to reveal more detail. Considering most airports have been around for a few years, it may be a good idea to start with the topic of weathering. Grasslines, Foliage And Textures I have always found that the RuScenery library contains a good source of weathered buildings and vehicles. An example of this is shown in Figure 5 which shows an old man leaving an old and rather weathered WC. To create the effect of weathering, RuScenery's Grassline object has been used. Figure 5 To add a bit more weathering to the scene, we can use the Pavement Cracks polygon from the CDB Library. This removes the freshly laid concrete look and gives the area an even more weathered feel (Figure 6). Figure 6 Why not experiment with various foliage and textured polygons such as gravel to break up those boring ground textures and create pathways (Figure 6). Figure 7 I find experimenting with various textures and objects one of the most exciting parts of scenery design. 3D Characters With the recent introduction of 3D characters (particularly The 3D People Library by David Marshall), we are no longer limited to flat, lifeless 2D caricatures. As good as 2D people were, the need to place them next to a building (anything less destroyed the effect) severely limited their usefulness. Now, with the advent of 3D people, we can finally use them to their full potential and really bring sceneries to life. 3D people can be used to create virtual conversations and used wisely, can greatly add to the atmosphere of a scenery (Figure 7). Figure 8 Well, that's all for this tutorial. I hope it's inspired you to get creative and make a start on a scenery of your own. Don't be afraid of making mistakes, that's how learn. In the next tutorial, we'll be covering more ways to bring credibility to your sceneries. Remember, it's not just a collection of hangars, creating scenery is an art. Paul Mort pmort76@gmail.com Read other articles in this series -
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Overlay Editor Tutorial Part Three By Paul Mort Welcome back to Part 3 in my series of tutorials covering Overlay Editor. In our last tutorial we looked at how to manipulate objects in Overlay Editor. In order to have control over our collection of objects, we first need to know how to find them, how they are structured and importantly, how and where to add new items. Figure 1 The directory structure for a scenery package, in this case EGFP Pembrey, can be seen above (Figure 1). You can see by the location bar at the top that the whole package resides within X-Plane's 'Custom Scenery' folder (along with all the other sceneries we have created or downloaded). Also located in this folder are the libraries and objects (even one-off items) used to render the scenery. The objects folder highlighted in blue contains all the objects we have added to this package only and will be supplied to the user when published, making it self-contained. Figure 2 As you can see from Figure 2, every scenery object (.obj) has its required texture file (.png / .dds) in order to be correctly rendered. This texture file may not always share a common name. In the example of the third item down on the objects list; 'Helicopter', does not share its name with its texture file. A simple way to find out the name of an object's texture file is to open the object up in a text editor (Notepad, for example). The object's required texture file name will then appear at the top of the document (Figure 3). Figure 3 Here we can see that our 'Helicopter' object pairs up with the 'static206b.png' texture. To add, or not to add, that is the question... If we look back at the list of items contained in our objects folder, we can see three items from the JB_Library. They are: Hangars 28, 105 and 110. All three are required for this scenery. Why is this important? Well, here is where we have a choice to make. If we did not include these three items and their corresponding textures, we would have to inform users that they would need to download the entire JB_Library (621 items, 240 Mb) in order for the package to work. For those who already have the library that's fine but downloading over 240 Mb for just three items is wasting space on your drive, especially if you're not a developer and may never use it. My rule of thumb... It's entirely down to personal preference as to whether you add selected items from a library into your objects folder. You can do this or you can inform users that they need to download the entire library. As a rule of thumb, I usually add objects if there are ten or less from a single library. In the example of the CDB Library (which I use extensively), the amount of objects I use on a scenery can be many and so for this reason, I don't add the objects from that library but rather, make it a requirement to have the CDB Library. This is mentioned in the scenery description. Searching for objects and libraries... For this example, let's go and open up EGFP. You can download this scenery here: egfp_-_pembrey_airport_wales_v1_1.zip Figure 4 On opening Overlay Editor and loading our scenery package, we are presented with the view above (Figure 4). Click as shown to open the Libraries and Objects pane. This is where we can browse all our installed libraries for objects. Another way is to do a global search by simply typing the name of the object in the search box ('forest' for example). The Libraries and Objects box also contains an 'Objects In This Package' category which will display a list of all the objects we have included in the package's own 'objects' folder. Any selected object is displayed as a thumbnail at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes however, you might see your object displayed with this kind of texture (Figure 5). Figure 5 This is a classic sign that the object's texture file is either corrupted or missing. If you notice this error, then your best bet is to check that the texture is present. In the example above I have deliberately removed the texture file. After restoring the texture and pressing the reload icon: our object thumbnail is displayed as it should be (Figure 6). Figure 6 By left clicking on any object in our scenery (main view pane), you'll notice that the object turns a very pretty pink color. In the right view pane, you can then see that Overlay Editor tells you which library it comes from (Figure 7). Figure 7 Well, that's it for this tutorial. In part 4 we will look at the importance of object placement and the finer details of scenery design. We'll also look at how to use 3D people and how to fashion them in such a way so as to convey a virtual conversation. Remember, your scenery is more than a collection of hangars. It should tell a story. See you next time. Paul Mort pmort76@gmail.com Read other articles in this series -
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Overlay Editor Tutorial Part One By Paul Mort Hello and welcome to a new series of tutorials showcasing the features of Overlay Editor, a wonderful tool used in the creation of X-Plane sceneries. Overlay Editor is the brainchild of Jonathan Harris, known in the X-Plane word as 'Marginal'. His software allows you to create (with relative ease) X-Plane sceneries which range from small dirt strips in the back of beyond to full blown international airports located next to a metropolis. Over the course of these tutorials, you will discover not only how to create your first basic scenery, but also additional sceneries which contain that added 'wow' factor. So What Is Overlay Editor? In basic terms, Overlay Editor gives us (the developer) the tools to either create a new scenery from scratch or enhance an existing scenery which is always located within your X-Plane Custom Scenery folder. The great thing about X-Plane is that it has a very modular layout in terms of where everything is located. Sceneries, as mentioned, always go in your Custom Scenery folder and aircraft always go in your Aircraft folder. There are no other locations where additional 'user' files are stored (except plugins), but that's a different topic. The upshot however of having a layout like this, is that it's very easy to keep everything under control, which includes your scenery. To create a scenery, X-Plane first has to find the airport data which will be used as a foundation for our scenery. X-Plane holds this information in the form of a database and this is where the information (apron and taxiway layout) of thousands of airports is stored. The basic layout of each airport is known as the .apt file. This .apt file contains only concrete foundations, taxiways, local roads and taxiway markings. This is our foundation, our starting point, and where the developer can add additional buildings, etc. Where To Get Overlay Editor The first thing we need to do is download and install the software. You'll find the download for Overlay Editor here (Windows, OSX, Linux): http://marginal.org.uk/x-planescenery/tools.html Once you have unzipped the file a good place to move it to is your X-Plane directory. This keeps everything in one place. When first opening Overlay Editor, it will ask you to locate your X-Plane directory. Once done, it will then load into the opening screen. To open an unpopulated airport and create one from scratch, we need to click on the menu icon labelled 'Go To Airport' (Figure 1). Figure 1 With this done we are then presented with a dialogue box in which we can select our desired .apt file either by airport name or by ICAO code. When an airport is selected, you'll see that the longitude and latitude of the airport is also shown (Figure 2). Figure 2 Once an airport is selected (depending upon the complexity of the chosen airport) you will be presented with a view of the .apt file. This can range from a just a simple grass strip to a complicated tangle of runways and taxiways. Figure 3 shows what a typical medium density airport .apt file looks like. Figure 3 To zoom in so as to see more detail, you can use your mouse wheel. If you have a clickable mouse wheel, then you can zoom and also drag the view around to suit your needs. Libraries To create sceneries you need objects and these are found in X-Plane's numerous libraries, which in turn are located in X-Plane's Custom Scenery folder. Some of these libraries should (if you're an X-Plane user) be quite familiar to you. The most popular are OpenSceneryX, RuScenery, R2 Library, The Handy Object Library and the JB_Library. There are many more but naming just a few keeps things simple for the time being. X-Plane's default object library comes with the sim, but the ones mentioned above all need to be downloaded. These can be found in the FlightSim.Com file library, under X-Plane Scenery Libraries. First Steps For this initial exercise we are going to place our first object. If you haven't already done so, make sure you have selected an airport (.apt) as shown above. Any airport will do, but one with a simple layout is probably best for now. Right...let's go and place our very first object onto our already opened .apt file. In this case, we want to choose a hangar. Over to the right and slightly under the menu bar is quite a large selection box (Figure 4). Figure 4 This box is usually empty if nothing is selected in the search box found above. However, if we type 'hangar' in the search field, then you'll see that the selection box becomes populated (Figure 5). Figure 5 As you can see there are quite a few hangars to choose from (this is the great thing about X-Plane's ever increasing object library). Lets select the 'JB_hangar 101' from the JB_Library. Once selected it will create an icon to indicate what it looks like. If we now go back to the map we can use our scroll wheel to zoom in on our .apt file. As we zoom ever closer to the ground you will notice a symbol becoming larger and larger (Figure 6). Figure 6 This symbol shows us where, in the scenery, our object will be placed. Clicking on the green cross in the menu bar will now place our hangar (Figure 7). Figure 7 As you can see (Figure 8), even though our hangar has been placed in the scenery, it is wrongly orientated. To get it lined up correctly in the 'D' shaped area we need to move and rotate it. Figure 8 To rotate the hangar we use the following keys (Figure 9). Figure 9 Before we can move the hangar or rotate it, we need to make sure that the object is selected. To do this we left click on it. You will know when the hangar is selected as it will turn pink (what a lovely color), and only now is it ready to be moved or rotated. Figure 10 Figure 10 shows our hangar now nicely orientated. Well, that's it for this, the first in a new series of tutorials based around Overlay Editor. I hope you found it both informative and interesting. Next time, we'll deal with more advanced object manipulation and views. Thanks for reading. Regards Paul Mort pmort76@gmail.com Read other articles in this series -
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Start Designing Scenery - A Designer's Guide Book By Jim Sushinski This is not a help book to Abacus' Airport and Scenery Designer, but a guide book to help you to get started. All technical information should be in the manual that came with the program. Consult the manual if you are not sure about something. You can also contact Abacus tech support if needed. Getting Started To begin your voyage as a scenery designer you need to get one of the scenery designing programs. First off, you need to select a Flight Simulator. Preferably Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) 98 or 2000. Once you have obtained MSFS you can now choose the scenery designer program to create your masterpiece. There are many products such as: Airport 2.5, Abacus Airport and Scenery Designer, Apollo Scenery Designer, and many more commercial and freeware designers out on the market. I would suggest Abacus' Airport and Scenery Designer (ASD). This program is very easy to use and many beginners and professional scenery designers use it. ASD will be the primary focus of this scenery designer's guide. For further information about ASD go to www.abacuspub.com Once you get your main scenery design program you now should choose what area you want to model. I would start with your hometown area and airport. I started off by making the airport of Algona, this was the first choice in ASD demo that I was using at the time. I used this airport to figure out the ins and outs of ASD. I also found out many things about flying and how airports are constructed and also overall concept of designing a safe airport. Once you install ASD you need to put in your ID and SN number (this would also be a great time to register your product). After that, you will need to set up ASD to work with FS98 or FS2000. To setup go to the file on the top menu and then to preferences below that. When the preferences window comes up you will see many separate sections. You should already be in the general tab window. Here you can pick your FS version and the Latitude and Longitude for your scenery. Next you can choose how you want ASD to relate to you by things like confirmed deletions and coasts behind your scenery. After you have done that, choose your CD-ROM drive and your FS path. Once you have finished the general preferences click on the Compiler tab. SCASM comes with ASD and you should have SCASM enabled. You can also change your macro path. You can check the two features at the bottom for easier use, depending on your liking. You can also go through the other tabs and set ASD to fit your profile. Go ahead and explore to see what you can do and change. This is a good time to go to the Taxiway tab and set the width and the texture asphalt.r8, concrete.r8, and color f002 or f003 depending on what your airport tarmac and taxiways are made of. Once you have a better understanding of how ASD works you can tweak the preferences to make it easier for you. Now that you have ASD set up and your scenery picked out, now is a good time to pick the area you are doing of scenery. You should get as much information on your area as possible depending on how detailed you want to get. First I would get information on the airport you are to model. A great online source is www.airnav.com. Airnav.com has information on almost every public airport in the US. I would also get a satellite photograph (if possible) from www.terraserver.com. In the search box put the name of your airport and voila! Now choose the airport from the list and there you have your airport satellite picture. You can fine tune the picture as needed by zooming in or enlarging it. Another good source of information is either an airport diagram book, which is good if you are modeling whole states, and Jeppesen charts. The more information you have on your airport, the better your airport will look in the long run. You can also get more detailed with more information. It is also a good idea to draw your airport and how you want it to look on a piece of paper. This will help if you are not making a full replica of the airport. It will reduce overcrowding so you can see what you want and not all the other stuff in the picture. If you can get any information like pictures and a general latitude and longitude and some runway information from airnav.com, I would suggest that you use the MSFS version of the airport as a guide. We will discuss that later. From Paper To Program Now you are ready to begin making the replica of your airport. First you have to set up your map properties. Go to Edit in the top menu and then to map properties. Once you have filled in the copyright, the scenery directory, and the scenery menu, then choose the place where your airport will be. You should check the Files tab to make sure that the outlet path is the same as what your .scb file is in. If not, change it to what the .scb file will be in. The .scb is the file used by ASD to store your airport and maps. If you don't have accurate lat. and long. (latitude and Longitude) coordinates, you could start from the ASD wizard even if you have good information. Go up to the File menu and click on ASD wizard. You will get a list of the state and airport that ASD will create. Just pick your state and search for your airport. Sometimes ASD will not have your airport in the listings because it is a small airport. In this situation you will have to do the best you can with your lat. and long. coordinates, because you will have to put them in manually in the airport properties box. You can fill in the Airport name and the ID. This is also where you can fill in the lat. and long. coordinates and the rest of the information such as elevation. If your airport has an ATIS you can click on that tab and put in the frequency and desired message. You can go through the other tabs and fill in the complexity and other features you want in your airport. To start off, click the runway tool on the toolbar and drag it to any length. Once you have done this, you can right click and then go into the runway properties. Here you can put in the latitude and longitude of the runway from the information that you got off a chart or airnav.com. If the runway lat. and long. is not available, just make an educated guess. Once you have the runway properties filled out, you can adjust the length and width as needed. You can also set the number and the angle of the runway. When you click on the next tab you can set the intensity of the lights and whether the runway has PCL (pilot controlled lighting) and its frequency. You can also set the RCLS or Runway Center Line lighting system. The approach lights are set if you click on threshold under the runway you want. Select what kind of runway approach lights you want and the REIL (Runway End Identifier Lights). After that, click on the VASI/PAPI and select the kind of approach system your runway uses. Don't worry about the slope and other features at the bottom, unless you have extra detailed information about the airport. Click on the Feature tab and you can select what your runway will have as far as pavement markings. Here you can also select if your runway will have an extension and displaced threshold. In the Menu tab click enable, and you can select the name in which your airport runway will appear in the FS directory. You can leave the other boxes at the default values. Click OK, and you will have your runway placed. Zoom in or out until you have a good view of the newly paved surface. Next click on the polygon tool. As you should have already read in the ASD manual, click and point where you want your polygon to go. Use this for the grass around the airport and leave enough room for the tarmac and taxiways, including buildings and hangars. On the first tab of the polygon features, click the Airport Property box and the surface should be default. After you have done that, go to the next tab. In the texture box type grass.r8 and in the color box type f021. This will make your polygon have a grass texture and appear green in the scenery designer. Once you have the grass polygon done, find a nice place to place your tarmac on top of the green polygon. Click and drag as done before you have your preferred shape, and fill in the properties the same way, except for the Texture/Color tab. In this tab make the polygon texture either asphalt.r8 or concrete.r8 and the color f002 or f003. The asphalt.r8 will make the polygon appear in the asphalt texture and the color in the designer will be a dark gray. This applies to the concrete.r8 and color. It is a good idea to make the textures and colors correspond with the Taxiway settings you fit in the beginning. This will eliminate bleedthrough and make your scenery look nicer. If you want to have different textures, make polygons meet up exactly. This can be done when you have a better idea of how to use ASD to the fullest. Add any other polygons where you think you might need a tarmac for a building or a hangar. You can remove them later if you are not using them. To add a taxiway click where you want it. Try at one end of a runway. Stretch it out how far you want it to go. Click once to make it a point where it will stay, then drag again to the other end of the runway and do the same thing in reverse order and then double clicking to put the taxiway down. The end product will look like a big U with the ends of the U connecting with the ends of the runway. To add segments in the area between the runway and the taxiway do the same as above and stop after going out to the taxiway and then stopping or lay a point and continue on to the tarmac. Continue this until you have the taxiways complete. To add a building, click on the building tool and click and drag to about the length you want. Right click to get to the properties and fine tune the length and width of the building. You can also make the building octagonal or with an inclined roof. Click on the FS98 building style tab to make the standard building type and click on the FS2000 building style tab to set the building types for FS2000. I'm new to FS2000 building types, but I can discuss the FS98 styles. You will have 8 styles and you can pick which sides you want to show (which comes in handy for densely packed building areas). In the preview you can check out what kind of texture your building will have and what it will look like. Once you are done with the building, click on the middle of it and drag it to your desired location. To add a hangar click on the hangar icon and do the same as you did with the building. In the Style tab you can pick your style of hangar, the dimensions and position, and the special features. These can make every hangar you make look different in some way or another. Once done click on the texture/color tab. Here you can pick a texture or color for your hangar like you did in the polygon and taxiway scenarios. If your airport has a tower then go ahead and add one by going to Insert then Tower. Right click on the tower and then to properties. Add the textures you want and the width and type of tower you want. This part should be pretty easy! Those are the general makings of an airport. You can add more runways and buildings to make your airport complete along with hangars and tarmacs. Just remember what you put down first, as far as taxiways and polygons are concerned, will be on the bottom just like a cake. From Beginner To Intermediate Designer align="left" hspace="10" width="328" height="363"> Now that you have figured out he basics of ASD, you can begin to expand your knowledge and create even more realistic airports. We will begin by adding an ILS or Instrument Landing System. To add an ILS go to the Insert menu and select insert ILS. A menu will pop up, and have a list of runways that are at your airport. To add an ILS to one of the runways, click the box next to the runway you've chosen. Then select the markers you want. Information about the ILS of an airport can be found at www.airnav.com. After you selected the markers, a properties menu should then come up. In the General tab select the ID and the name of the ILS. You also want to set the frequency. You can also reset the range but I usually leave it at the default number. When you select the ILS tab you can change the different items such as the glideslope and the threshold crossing height depending if you have the information regarding this. If not, just leave the numbers at the default value. In the VOR tab you can set what kind of transmitter you will have. You can also use the DME or Distance Measuring Equipment which is helpful to see how far you are from the VOR. The VORTAC is basically the same thing as a VOR plus DME. On the markers page you can set the markers to correspond the real life airport. To insert a beacon click on the little circle with a star inside. Click on the icon and then click the area where you want the beacon to go. Right click on the beacon and select Properties. If you want a regular pole beacon, leave the style at the default or you can pick a variety of lights and poles. You can select what other graphic things such as shadows or how many light arms are on your street lamp if you're putting in a parking lot. You can choose from an endless features list. Click on the color tab. Select you color for the day. When choosing your color at night be sure to pick the color intensity. This will ensure your beacon will be seen at night. Here is a way that pilots distinguish airports from one another. The color code is as follows: White and Green = lighted land airport (most common) White and Yellow = lighted water airport (very rare) Green, White and Yellow = lighted heliport Green, White and White = lighted military field (very common) Use the colors to make your airport distinguishable to tell other pilots what kind of airport it is. Sometimes lines can get tricky to place because they might not line up or you might accidentally make them too small. Well first off to place a line, click on the Insert menu and then click line. To set the first point click where you want it to go and then drag out, the same you would with the taxiways, and then click where you want the line to end. Make a line go in increments of 45º by holding down [Shift] after placing the first point. This can help in many ways. Right click on the line to edit the colors and what kind of line you want and the different kinds of special properties concerning a line. You can also drag the line to the correct spot by clicking on it and then dragging it to the location you want. A macro is a precision object that is not part of ASD. ASD has been integrated to be able to handle these macros. Macros come in many shapes and forms and I have many on my site. To place a macro go to the insert menu and click macro. To place it on the airport diagram click where you want it to go. Double click or right click on the macro to bring up the macro properties. Here you can change the rotation in degrees, the lat. and long., and sometimes other things. The other things are called arguments. These arguments can be changed depending on what they say. For example a house you might be able to rotate it and change the lat. and long. but also change the width, length, and the color of the roof and building. The length and width are measured in meters and the rotation is measured in degrees like the hangars and buildings. I think signs are one of the most complicated part of ASD. To place a sign, go to the Insert menu and click Sign. Click a place where you want a sign and then double click on the sign to bring up the properties. Here you can select what kind of sign you want, the size, and other features such as the rotation. Click on the message properties to insert your message and you can also change the sign depending on your message. I will not go into further detail on this for it is too complicated, and the ASD manual should cover this better than I can. For information on the sign types, use the file 5345-44f.pdf for Acrobat Reader. The final step is to compile your scenery. Go to the File tab and then Compile tab. Now is a good time to save your scenery too. To compile scenery click the compile button and it will be compiled unless you have an error. Most errors can be easily fixed maybe because you forgot to enter a texture in a polygon or something. Use the ASD manual for help or e-mail the Abacus tech support team and they will help you with any errors. You have gone from just a beginner to an intermediate designer! The quest is not over yet. To continue your journey you will have to expand your scenery and probably place it on the web at FlightSim.Com. You'll get files from many other people such as yourself. Everyday many hundreds of people make scenery and now you will be a part of the fun and will hopefully have fun flying around your creation as well as making it. The reward that you'll get is very high, when knowing others are using your scenery! Jim Sushinski mrjkr@redrose.net
