Where to find scenery tools?

[Guest]

I'm looking to accurately create scenery for the area that I live in. Can someone point me in the right direction to where I can find any tools that will enable me to do this? Rich@KLEW

[Guest moomox]

Try some of the following applicationsGmax (www.discreet.com/products/gmax) If you can learn it, you will love it!FSArchitect (www.pouksim.com) One of my favorites!GroundmakerAirportNovaAnyone think of any others off hand?

[Guest seev_39]

I use both Gmax and LAGO's FSSE. To learn Gmax will take you days. But once you know how to use it you can actually "produce" nearly any object, especially landmarks, such as high-rise buildings, refineries, powerplants, etc. But also small sceneries, such as a village center. You will need many real photos of the objects for the day textures. The night textures you can rework with Photoshop, etc.FSSE (FS Scenery Enhancer - a payware) is a different thing. It has an object library from which you can chose any object and install it into FS anywhere you wish, doing so in real time - from inside the game. It takes minutes to learn the program. The bigest advantage is that you can control the size of the objects, for instance you can install a lighthouse 20 meters high or 100. You can also control the distance from where you start to see the objects. With a little imagination you can create any scenery you want. It is real fun.Another tool you will need is the creation of smoke effects which is giving a third dimention to city sceneries, such as smoke coming out of a power plant flow. You can find it for free in the Special Effects SDK.Combining all three will give a familiar look to the area you live in, provided you don't fly too low.Seev

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I also have a freeware tool out called landclass assistant... It's a bit different than other tools. It's something you apply on the scale of a city or small region, although some users have completed entire countries with it. The concept behind landclass is rather simple.... In FS2002, Microsoft has coded land types, such as rural areas and urban areas, into the sim. LCA allows you to change these land types, which is a big help since much of the data MS used was older, and doesn't reflect the land use of today.The example I use in my tutorial is Carson City, NV..... It's urban area is around 75,000 pp, but it was missed altogether in FS2002 and came out as farmland. With LCA, one can "draw in" Carson City or something similar in very short order. My latest version (1.3) interfaces with FSUIPC, so you can be in the sim, and grab lat/lon data easily in order to define an area for updating.I think it's pretty much a companion tool to some of the other scenery software out there. It won't create buildings, and it doesn't work within an airport's boundaries, but it will allow you to get your local simming area very close to reality, at least in terms of land use.-John

[Guest]

Hey, thanks a bunch guys. I'm gonna take a look at these for sure. One more newbie question... Is there any freeware that can generate land scenery from satellite pics like TerraScene that's used in the other sim?

[John_Cillis 2,406]

"Is there any freeware that can generate land scenery from satellite pics like TerraScene that's used in the other sim?"Terrabuilder can (although it isn't required if you know how to do the math, as it just adds an interface to the tools MS included for Terrain development). Still, I wouldn't import Sat. Scenery without it. What's more, you can gen scenery with Terrascene, import it into Terrabuilder, and output it into MSFS. I will try to remember to post a few shots of my Tahoe effort--a large area I converted from Terrascene into MSFS.Visit the Terrabuilder forum and read the threads there. Misho did a great job with it...-JohnHere

[Guest]

Nice work John... and thanks for the great advice.Rich@KLEW