What are AFCAD and Landclass?

[Guest RTC]

Sorry, I'm jumping straight from FS98 to COF, and many of the scenery downloads in the library mention AFCAD and Landclass, which are new terms to me. Could anyone enlighten me?Thanks;RTC

[Guest dodger]

hello rtc, i hope i'm right,landclass is scenery, afcad is a tool for changing runways and parking at airports, go to the avsim library and download Lee Swordy 's afcad file ,i have version 1.3.2 ,there is 67 pages of it but it will tell you all you need to know, then like me you will want to add ai aircraft at your airports,so download traffic tools from him as well, i hope i have been able to help you as i don't know what you may need in 2004 compared to 2002, regards,

[spotlope 0]

Landclasses define the look and autogen attributes of a particular area. There are default autogen objects that show up on a particular landclass depending on what it is. So farmland will have barns and such, suburban areas will have houses, urban areas office buildings, etc. You can change landclasses for a given area using a couple of different freeware programs. John Cillis' LandClass Assistant springs to mind... just do a search in the file library here for more info. AFCAD is at the moment being totally rewritten for FS2004, as MS changed the way AFD files are handled. The old version won't work at all in COF, but the new one that is supposed to be released in the next month or two is supposed to not only do changes to parking areas and other AFD stuff but also make visual changes to airports as well, which will be a welcome addition. Wait for it and I'm sure you won't be disappointed.thanks,

[Guest wathomas777]

Ok, for the novice. (Flight Sim has changed quite a bit from FS98...)AFCAD is a file that defines an airports attributes. Most importantly the runways, taxiways, and Parking Spaces within an Airport. FS2002 and FS2004 have had way too few Parking spaces in their airports, so people have created "AFCAD's" for airports which when used in conjunction with AI traffic programs (Such as Project AI, Ultimate Traffic, or My Traffic) Allow a much higher density of AI traffic to show up at Airports. When someone talks about AFCAD, it is usually regarding the AI traffic and parking spaces.Landclass is a file that defines what is in each area. Each section of scenery is defined as a type of land, Urban, woods, farm, etc. Depending on the Land Class, the computer will apply the appropriate textures and Autogen scenery.Microsoft's Landclass is pretty coarse. That is, they tend to paint the area in pretty "broad" strokes. Thus you can often find yourself flying over areas of scenery that have quite a few repeating textures, and not very realistic from the air.FSGenesis, and others have created Landclasses that are much finer in detail. That way, small towns and hamlets usually will show up more accurately, plus farmland and rural areas will often be broken up by woods. This provides a much more "realistic" feeling affect from aloft, because the land looks more varied.Realize that Landclass is not to be confused with satellite imagery (such as is in Mega Scenery). Land class simply defines the land use of a region, and that region is painted with the "generic" textures assigned to that land use. Whereas Satellite imagery provides an actual rendition of that area.Landclass can greatly enhance your experience because although you will not necessarily be able to pick out "your street", in most cases, housing developments will appear "where they should" and the overall feel is more realistic.FSGenesis sells a nationwide Landclass for about $13.00 that is well worth the price. In some areas he has gotten it a bit off, but the errors are much better than some of the boring repeating textures we were subjected to in previous versions of Flight Sim.

[Guest OneTinSoldier]

Yeah, that FSGenesis is good stuff. I bought all 5 of their DEM38 Scenery packages covering the entire U.S.(after having checked out the Rocky Mountain Region one) and the U.S. Landclass package. Those Scenery packages are pretty big downloads though! So glad I have broadband.Jim

[Guest panzerschiffe]

No kidding. 500MB+ each for most of the sections, but for me, it was worth taking the time and spending the money for them. CD versions are available too for those who can't download it.