New version of UGTB Tbilisi scenery

[HaraldG 559]

Hi,

 

just for those who are interested - there is an new version of the fine Tbilisi Airport by Alexander Svanidze. It contains a little but remarkable part of the city now - the TV tower, which is an important landmark when approaching UGTB from west or south.

 

http://www.avsimrus.com/f/fs2004-scenarii-44/new-tbilisi-noviy-tbilisi-49571.html

 

regards,

Harald

[edetroit 933]

Thankyou for the HU Harald......d/l ing now. B)

[HaraldG 559]

Yeah it's a great location for Il-76 and An-12 - I really saw an An-12 when I was there last summer.

 

In the meantime I realized a little "bug":

The night lighting of the TV tower misses the oscillating lights... and the ferris wheel... that's a little sad indeed because they are most remarkable when one's approaching at night.

[Appliance 51]

Thanks for the heads up Harald.

[HaraldG 559]

You are welcome!

Enjoy the wild East!

 

P.S: If you wonder about the emptiness of the airport, you should go there at 3:30 AM. At this time the apron is full of planes. Most flights arrive at 01:00 or 03:00 in the night and depart around 07:00 in the morning.

Strange times, aren't they? Never mind! Last year my friends and I arrived with Lufthansa at 03:00, then we and our bikes were brought to our B&B at the other end of the town. Instead of going to bed, we were invited to a delicious home grown fig brandy with some bread, cheese and tomatoes. It was after 05:00 AM that we went to sleep. Everytime I fly there in my FS2004, I remember the Georgian hospitality. I will return there in real life this year again.

 

P.P.S: What I meant with my remark about the TV tower's night lightning is the following:

 

in FS2004

vs.

 

in real world. In addition, the lights oscillate. And that's what you see if you look out the airplane's window when approaching 31L from west.

 

Nevertheless a very nice scenery and one of my freeware favourites. Better than many payware sceneries.

 

Regards, Harald

[Joseph29 225]

FS9 uses the code UGGG for Tbilisi and if your AI traffic is set up with the code UGGG you will not see any traffic at the airport.

 

Open up the AFCAD and under airport properties change UGTB to UGGG. That should get the AI traffic to UGGG instead of UGTB.

[WingZ 547]

Not knowing the area, and not knowing the language has some disadvantages...

I installed 2 folders from the download: Tbilisi, and Funiklor.

I assume one is the airport, the other the town landmarks.

The airport is really pretty, although there are some surrounding mesh issues  

and a floating runway nearby

I did have a number of relic AF2_UGxxx.bgl files around the place, but removed them and didn't see a difference.

 

Interestingly, there is NO UGTB airport anywhere! The airport shot above comes from UGGG... and I don't see any towers or other artifacts, perhaps Harald can point out where to look?

 

Definitely lost, in Georgia. 

[Joseph29 225]

WingsZ, I have the same mesh and floating runway as you do. Just so you know that floating runway is Tbilisi Soganlug airport.

[kiwiflyer45 123]

Hi Harald. This is a bit off-topic but I thought I'd give you a heads up. If you haven't yet tried the recently uploaded freeware ETNU Neu Brandenberg check it out. It is very good and as it's in your part of the world, I thought of you when I first tried it out. It's worth installing it just to see the static Mig 15/21/23 in former GDR colors

Cheers

Ian

[navtech 13]

An automated (Google translation) of one of the comment on Avsim.ru .....

Quote

Okay, but seems to have been, but without the cable car, and with the same kind of glitches hanging strip to the left of the airport and the approach lights, hanging in the air. Although I could be wrong. The top ten got up normally, except for the cable car, he became a "semi-underground". By the way, a band that in the nine hung in the air, a dozen "make" a neat area and turned airfield Tbilisi Soganlug and on the basis of this fact, it has been suggested that this scenario could have done for dozens ...

Also:

http://www.avsim.su/forum/topic/38320-ugtb-gotovitsya-1-ya-chast-scenariya-tbilisi/page-28#entry2425989

[navtech 13]

Same problems (mesh and floating strip)

 

 

But tower is there

 

 

[navtech 13]

With the Tbilisi scenery removed (I keep the tower .. white circle)

 

And now the floating strip is on a plateau .. 

 

[WingZ 547]

Yes UGOT, as labelled.

WingsZ, I have the same mesh and floating runway as you do. Just so you know that floating runway is Tbilisi Soganlug airport.

Relatively easily fixed with a flatten - mine is ugly, someone with patience could do a number of them to make it look smooth.

 

 

Also slightly off-topic: when downloading this scenery I found this in the WhatsNew side panel, never seen an Mi -10 in FS9 before!

 

[HaraldG 559]

Hi to all,

some of the problems you describe are familiar to me, some not.

 

1. The thing with the cliffs and other mesh problems seem to depend of what mesh you use. Note that the UGTB add-on comes with a mesh, as the stock mesh of this area seems to be completely false. I deleted the two mesh files included in the UGTB scenery, named Caucasus-E.bgl and Caucasus-W.bgl (or similar). Instead I use the Caucasus mesh from avsimrus:

http://www.avsimrus.com/f/fs2004-sceneries-44/1sec38mlod10-caucasus-mesh-fixed-24780.html

Now I have some strange little peaks immediately before the airport, but not that strange wall some of your screenshots show. Perhaps worth a try... I have to add that in reality there is a relatively steep river gorge shortly before the airport begins. The pictures of WingZ and Navtech show this only insufficient in my opinion, so that I recommend to try the linked mesh indeed. The solution with the linked mesh is not perfect, but the most acceptable in my eyes.

 

2. UGGG vs. UGTB: The ICAO code UGGG from Soviet times was changed to UGTB in 2006. I modified both the AFCAD and the stock scenery file (AP959170.bgl, I believe) so that they show the code UGTB. All my AI traffic refers to UGTB, too. Same with Batumi, changed from UG0E to UGSB in 2006.

What I meant to say in post #6 is simply that at normal daytimes there are quite few aircraft movements, while at night UGTB comes really to life, and this is how it is in real life there. By the way, I made a second afcad file with the ficticious code UGTM to build the military area of the airport, mainly for helicopters. From there, some Mi-8, Mi-24 and an An-2 of Georgian Air Force will start for a pattern or a hop to neighboured airbases from time to time.

 

3. The problem of Soganlugi (sometimes referred to as Veli Airfiled): I didn't find a final solution to this. It's obvious that the stock mesh of FS2004 sets a too high altitude for this area; and this problem manifests as soon as you use a custom mesh as it comes with that UGTB add-on and/or a custom flatten file which may be also included in the add-on.

 

I use the Georgian afcads by Winfried Orthmann for UG0T. Just search for "Orthmann Georgia" in the library; citation from the readme of this add-on: "There is a problem with the airport Tbilisi Soganlug. In the default scenery it is placed on a much to high elevation(about 100m above the surrounding terrain). Since it is impossible tocorrect the eleveation against the default flatten files, I had to remove the flatten area for this airport from the MS file. If you do not want to have the Tbilisi Soganlug airport sitting on a mesa like hill, you will have to do the following...".

 

The add-on by W. Orthmann is quite old but better than nothing for these Georgian airports, which are only a single strip in FS2004 or which aren't in FS2004 at all. This add-on contains a file to replace the stock FL959170.bgl. But now in my sim, the airport somehow stucks in the landscape rather than being on a plateau as some screenshots here show. I tried several modifications of the afcad regarding height settings, but without success. But as Soganlugi is used by very few planes as I believe I didn't mind this as much until now. The newest images at google maps show it in a desperate state so that I doubt it is used at all. A part of the runway seems to be scrapped. If I'm there in July/August, I could ask if it is still used or not.

 

Your posts now drive me to further investigation when I'm home today; I could try it with an own flatten, too, instead of using the replacement file of W. Orthmann. My theory so far is that these who have Soganlugi as a "mesa" have installed "only" a custom mesh, while the UGTB airport add-on contains an additional flatten file so that the mesa is flattened while the stock afcad data of Soganlugi still contains the incorrect height data. In my case, the flatten file of UGTB and the one of Orthmanns add-on may be incompatible with each other, while Orthmanns afcad file for Soganlugi has the correct height data. Creating an afcad file for UG0T which refers to the height of the flatten coming with UGTB should therefore be the solution. I will post my results as soon I have some.

 

4. Regarding the TV-tower; I have two Scenery.cfg entries, one for UGTB airport and one for the city scenery, which is in fact the "Funiklor" folder. The last has a lower priority in my sim. If you position your a/c at 31L and look forward-left, you should see the tower at distance on the opposite slope of the Mtkvari valley. I have no idea why the tower shouldn't show up. Anyway, this shouldn't be a matter of mesh, since the add-on brings it's own as described above. 

 

5. An addition: I think that the airport add-on coverage for this area is quite poor. We have UGTB and UDYZ, but there are no actual renditions of UGSB and UGKO, which were completely upgraded recently, and no UGMS Mestia airport at all. May I call for talented developers (unfortunately, my skills end up building a simple afcad) to bring us these airports for FS2004? Same for better Armenian and Azerbaijani airports.

 

I hope I could help a little - and that you can understand my non-native English. My investigations are going on.

 

Now a question from me:

@ Navtech: Which ground textures do you use? It looks as if you were there:

 

 

@ Ian: thanks for your heads-up regarding ETNU. I have it already installed, together with EDAH Heringsdorf by the same developers. Wish they would do EDAB Bautzen next, where my Messerschmitt is parked...

 

Best regards,

Harald

[navtech 13]

@ Navtech: Which ground textures do you use?

I use as ground textures the World ORBX ground textures modified for working in FS2004
And also Ultimate ground environment
This is a nice mixt
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