Hi guys,

 

I've had a bit of break from sims for a while but have recently got back into FSX big time. Lots of new developments since I last took a look and I'm have a great time!

 

Growing up 16 miles away from Wattisham the sight and sounds of Lightnings is very close to my heart.

 

So I got very excited about the Just Flight Frightning and had to find a base for it.

 

I'm now getting to the question. I purchased the Team SDB RAF Wattisham for FSX. Which I'm really glad I did because it makes a great home base for my Lightnings with cool AI planes and lots of detail.

 

Most of the parking spaces are also available so I can line up among the AI aircraft. (bit of a sim fantasy dream come true for me).

 

The trouble is a want everything! Just off the start of runway 23 there a couple of blast hangers with lightnings in. Trouble is these are not AI they are static and there is no assigned parking space. All the other Lightning parking spaces are live and show up in AirTrafficFX but these two spaces in the blast hangers are not and they are always occupied.

 

I have ADE but it won't open the bgl files as it says 'they don't contain an airport' so I can't just edit them using that. I'm not even sure which bgl file the blast hangers are in as there are several of them.

 

Don't know much about scenery but would like to start doing more so, what do you guys suggest? All I'm after is two live parking spaces in the blast hangers and the static aircraft removed.

the reason ADE won't open it is that this is actual scenery, not ADE/AFCAD scenery which is great for developers as they usually don't want anyone changing their work. Sounds like the statics and the hanger are custom scenery objects. First thing you could try is move a BGL at a time to another folder and see if any of them delete the static aircraft since sometimes developers have a single BGL for the statics only. If that works, then you will have to open it again in ADE and make a parking spot in that location and assign a flight to it.

 

if that didn't work, try contacting the developers and ask politely if you could get a version with no statics.

 

Another alternative is this since it is for personal use. if you have instant scenery, see if there is an object library BGL for all the Wattisham objects , if so, then place an exclude for the hanger and the static and then place your own version from the library.

Many thanks Michael,

 

SDB had made it easier than I thought it could be and with your advice I have what I wanted. Once I found the right bgl file I was able to open the main layout of the airport in ADE and add the parking spaces. As you suggested there was a bgl file with the tag 'statics' which I removed and this cleared the inside of the hangars (or sheds).

 

 

Thanks for the additional info too, as I've now taken out all the statics, some of them I would like back, so I'll take a look tonight to see if I can find an object library BGL. There are a few more tweaks I want to do too, my grass areas don't look good because my photo scenery is showing the current white modern hangars, so I'm going to have a go at putting in some nice and tidy grass.

 

Many thanks for the help, it could have easily been a case that I would have given up in frustration, but I now feel I've made my first steps at working with scenery and it's a lot of fun. Best of all though I can now scramble the Frightening straight out of the blast shed onto runway 23 to quickly intercept those naughty Soviet Bears over the North Sea, rather than having to taxi for miles before take-off :yahoo:

 

All the best Gemma

Ooops I'm stuck again!

 

I've been trying to cover up the white patches that show up from my photo scenery. Firstly SDB have done a great job of making Wattisham fit photoscenery, I just want to get rid of the two new white hangers which show up in the photoscenery and spoil the look in a couple of areas.

 

I've been reading the manual for ADE but I'm still stuck.

 

So what I'm trying to do is put some polygons over the white bits I want to get rid of. I've started on one area and I have 3 polygons, one on top of the other:

 

Exclude General Tag Name Airport Backgrounds Alt.Meters 0.00

Airport Background Flatten Mask Class Map ExludeAutoGen Alt.Meters 0.00

Land Class Airfield1 Alt.Meters 0.00

 

It doesn't alter anything in FSX, I still see the photoscenery but not the airfield texture I want any thoughts guys?

Hi Gemma, to be clear, you have white hangers that are part of the photoreal and you want to cover them up with a polygon, correct? Ihat is simple, just load your airport in ADE, land on the spot in FSX and it should show you in ADE where you are in FSX. now just create an apron and assign whatever texture you want. if it flickers, add a flatten around it at the same alt as the airport. If you use a polygon, the photoreal will be on top of it because of the layer priority

Yep you got what I'm trying do, the 'white hangars' were added long after the Lightnings left Wattisham, so SDB have got it dead right and did not model them, but they are there on my photoscenery and I see them when I taxi, like patches of snow on the ground.

 

I wondered if the polygons were just not 'on the top'. I tried the apron approach. That works and covers up the areas. It doesn't seem possible thought to assign an appropriate texture to the apron as ADE gives me a choice of grass, concrete etc but the 'grass' one looks odd and really out of place.

Yep, your texture choices are limited using the apron method. You could try placing a building or hanger over them.

 

Another thing to try, but a whole lot more learning for you is to create a new photoreal background and edit out the hangers in the photoreal. there is good source material for Wattisham online, but it is modern so you would have to do some editing for your era. If you are interested in this, i suggest d/ling SBuilderX and learning how to use it to create photoreal backgrounds, lots of tutorials around.

Many thanks Michael, It's all a bit of a steep learning curve, but it helps a lot to know that there is another solution and I wasn't missing something with the aprons.

 

I've downloaded SBuilderX. Fortunately I've got some Photoshop ability, so editing the area to represent the correct era should be the easy bit. I'll have a good read through as many tutorials as I can find and see how I get on.

 

Many thanks again for the help, it's keeping me at it rather thinking it's all going to be too much to learn.

I have ADE but it won't open the bgl files as it says 'they don't contain an airport'

 

Open the AFD file in ADE then select "File -> Import BGL" and select the statics file.

Thanks GHD, not tried that I'll give that a go.

 

Progress on the photo scenery, things went well at first, I was quickly able to grab an image, compile it and add it to FSX, but still with all the bits I wanted to get rid of. I did it this way just to check I was up and running with SBuilder X and also to allow me to check how the image appeared in FSX with the airport runway, taxiways and my current photo scenery.

 

So next up I edited the image in Photoshop, about an hours work, checking the original version of the image in FSX and carefully altering the bitmap in Photoshop to replace all the unwanted white bits with nice green grass areas.

 

Then the problems started! I just could not compile the edited image in SBuilderX, I tried about a billion things, then found when I finally got it to allow me to select compile all I got was a .inf file. More head scratching and desperate surfing for answers, then I had the brainwave of putting the inf file in the same folder as the bitmap, and finally I got a BGL file I could add to FSX. Not sure what was going with all that, typical noob problems no doubt. If I hadn't had to do the Photoshop editing step, it would have been amazingly quick and easy.

 

So the results so far, first picture indicates the white buildings in the photo scenery which I wanted to get rid of:

 

 

 

I've still got a couple of aprons I added earlier which I can now remove, but the overall result is a Wattisham that looks much like it would have done in the 60s and '70s with no modern white buildings and therefore no white splodges to taxi past on the ground:

 

 

Though it doesn't show through the canopy of the Lightning which is heavily tinted, I still need to blend in some areas of my new scenery to totally match in with my old photo scenery, so a job for another day.

 

I've pretty much now got exactly what I wanted though and getting the confidence to start an airport project of my own from scratch. :wink2:

Open the AFD file in ADE then select "File -> Import BGL" and select the statics file.

 

Followed this advice, I've now been able to restore all the stock statics and just remove the two lightnings in the blast sheds, perfect just what I wanted to do :biggrin: I think I have Wattisham heaven :smile: I also downloaded SP1 for the Lightning today, which gives a noticeable improvement of the flight characteristics so I'm a very happy bunny tonight!