1. Without going into any details, exactly what is involved with making scenery for FSX? 2. Why would it take up to a year to make some airport scenery if you had all available processing/program software you needed - couldn't repitition objects just be duplicated where existed? 3. Why couldn't "static jetways" be easily replaced by movable ones in some/certain sceneries? Thanks

To answer this . ....... there will be some detail ...........1. To get it exact all buildings have to be measured, photographed, models constructed in gmax and placed with an object placer program, Instant Scenery is one. The airport has to be reconstructed with an airport program such as ADE. Ade will delete the default airport.2. see 1.3. They can. some can't though. Building scenery depends on how accurate you want it. You can go to the airport in a program like Google Earth and take a screen shot to get the runways and taxiways and aprons the way it is in the real airport but that will be several years old. best to go measure. You will need permission to do that. Joe W.Lake Placid, Fl.

I agree with Joe. The time taken will be in proportion to the detail and accuracy. Airport Design is divided into two parts - functional and visual. Functiona deals with the way it works, how aircraft taxi, are parked and so on. Visual is all the bits you can see. For some elements such as ILS you need both - the functional that sets up the localizer glide slope and so on, and the visual objects that represent the transmitter cabinets and arrays. Tools are tools. You can pretty much place any airport element functiona and visual with a tool like ADE. However this is the tool. What you also need is an understanding of how airports work in FS and what you want to happen. Closing runways for takeoff and landing, getting parallel runways to work, designing proper approaches for the airport all require knowledge. As developer of ADE I know an awful lot about the mechanics of putting the bits on the ground but I am not at all an expert on getting it to work. Folks like Joe, Jim Vile, George Davison to name but a very few have that sort of knowledge. Most high end scenery is built with a 3D design tool such as GMax which provide the visuals in great detail. So many airports need several tools to create the different parts. You can copy and paste bits of an airport around and that does save time. However most detailed airports have buildings and other objects individually built with 3D tools and photographic textures. These are one-offs.

First, want to thank both of you for your time and information. Without knowledge in this area of flightsim, I am trying to visualize what you have explained. I am not sure if I want to pursue this as a skill but curious as to what all maybe involved. Would anyone of you know if there is a video (like You Tube) that would kind of demonstrate what you have expressed? Also, would a real good airport project, simular to FsDreamteam's KDFW, require one, two or more people to be produced or could one person do it rather successfully? I have done quite a bit of computer programming some years ago in basic 09, C, Pascal and even plain octal. I did not do any graphic stuff, only using CHR$ for visuals - but this was many years ago. Any information you care to provide is much appreciated. I am merely seeking knowledge because I am interested. Thanks again

Wilbert .............. You can just "alter" airports to your liking with Instant Scenery or ade. There are plenry of objects in the libraries that are included to add a few things to any airport. I do this all the time for my self. If you have any problems you can PM me and I'll try to answer.This is supposed to be enjoyable. When it stops doing that it's time to take a break.

http://www.airportdesigneditor.co.uk/ Go to the above web site and download ADE, take a look at the program and read all of the extensive tutorials included. It's free. To create a FSDreamteam KDFW will also take some 3D modeling and more, which has a more extensive learning curve but can be accomplished if you have the patience. This requires GMAX (free-but difficult to learn) or FSDS by Abacus (not free-but more intuitive for FS). Support for ADE and a lot more help and tools for scenery design is available at FSDeveloper.com.