Can someone verify this for me?

[Guest flight]

After installing Holger Sandmann's scenery for the B.C. Rockies I am wondering if the scenery is working right for me. I notice a big improvement in the land mass, the mountains, roads, etc., but I'm wondering if some of the scenery upgrade isn't working right. Should the airport at Banff be more detailed than shown in the pic below? I'd appreciate if someone who has this scenery installed would check out Banff airport and let me know if their airport is more detailed than mine in this pic.Also, should Holger's scenery add buildings to the town of Banff? Just what should one expect to see with his scenery files? I realize the vast improvement over the default textures. I just want to make sure all of the upgrade is installed correctly in my scenery library, so that I'm enjoying it to its fullest.

[Holger 0]

Howdy,nope, I don't "do" airports and buildings ;-) My expertise is in making landscapes look more realistic but I don't have much knowledge about 3D design. However, there is a small (fictitious) Banff add-on by Frank Betts, which fits quite nicely. It's available on his website here ("4 Stop Canada"): http://www.flightsimsetc.dhs.org/content.p...t=fs2004sceneryHope that helps.Thanks for the interest in my files!Cheers, Holger

[Guest flight]

You're very welcome Holger. Your addons are absolutely incredible. Thank you for the quick reply...and from the master himself!Cheers mate!

[Brevoort 0]

> Should the airport at Banff be more>detailed than shown in the pic below? I'd appreciate if>someone who has this scenery installed would check out Banff>airport and let me know if their airport is more detailed than>mine in this pic.The real Banff airstrip is on the other side of the highway from where it is in FS. And in real life it is nowhere nearly as well detailed as it is in FS. In the default FS scenery Banff and the airstrip are only barely recognizable because of the wandering of various fictitious rivers and roads and jumbled mountain ranges.The tremendous improvements brought about by FSGenesis Mesh, Mr Sandmann's startling scenery enhancements, and Canada Roads go a very long way but the airstrip is still in the wrong place. It should be at the base of Cascade Mountain and parallel to the Trans Canada Highway just after the highway sweeps west through a 90 degree bend.I think that there must be something wrong with the government geo data in this area because various roads are shown creeping across mountains where no roads exist at all, not even nearby. I also think that I see hiking trails shown as roads. The whole area is a mess and I don't think it is anyone's fault, just a result of scrambled data.As for the airstrip. In the real world it consists of a clearing through natural pasture. There are runway markers but not many of them. I noticed last week when I was home on leave that someone has put up a new windsock and it looks like the town ran a grader through the snow sometime in the last month but it is still ankle deep in snow. There are two, possibily three, lean-to structures tucked into the trees where people used to tie down their Cessnas but these days there is only one lone aircraft and it doesn't get much use. There are no facilities, not even a FSS telephone, nor even a latrine.There is a parking lot at the northern end of the strip but it is used only by people who want to hike up Cascade and by people who use the airstrip to run their dogs.The FS version is laughably sophisticated compared to the real thing and if someone was to undertake a scenery upgrade it would consist of degrading the default scenery.Rick GrantUN Kabul

[Holger 0]

Howdy,thanks for the kind words, gentlemen!Interesting description about Banff airport; thanks for sharing! It's not too difficult to adjust the location of an airfield but those projects were done at a time when I din't know how to do that. Also, I don't remember seeing the airfield on my satellite image but it sounds like it's pretty easy to overlook anyway."I think that there must be something wrong with the government geo data in this area because various roads are shown creeping across mountains where no roads exist at all, not even nearby. I also think that I see hiking trails shown as roads. The whole area is a mess and I don't think it is anyone's fault, just a result of scrambled data."For small airfields in particular the available data are indeed more guesswork than anything else. I'm currently working on adjusting airfields for a freeware project in the US. Most small airfields - accurately placed in FS9 default based on the official AirNav.com data - are in fact misplaced by a couple of hundred meters, including incorrect RW directions, and the altitudes are often wrong too. That's why adding high-res mesh often leads to those airfields sitting on plateaus or in trenches. Interestingly, the bigger the airfield, the more accurate the AirNav data. For the roads, railroads, lakes, etc. the FS design team used 1:1-million scale global data (with a few exceptions), which explains the poor locational accuracy (i.e., over-generalization). For my projects, I use source data of scales between 1:25,000 to 1:100,000. Hence the difference.Cheers, Holger

[Guest Larry S]

It may be degraded even more in the near future.http://www.digitalbanff.com/banff/news/2004/11/16883.html

[Holger 0]

Hi Larry,interesting.Seems to me that if they really wanted more space for wildlife they should should first decommission some golf courses, ski areas, and roads instead. Cheers, Holger

[Guest flight]

That is very funny Rick. I found your present day description very interesting. What a difference between "real life" and "simulated life."

[Brevoort 0]

>Seems to me that if they really wanted more space for wildlife>they should should first decommission some golf courses, ski>areas, and roads instead. Very true Holger,There are some who advocate forbidding all signs of human activity and humans as well from setting foot in Banff National Park but they are a minority.The fuss over the airstrip is a little difficult to understand considering that herds of elk wander freely along it with only the very rare small aircraft to bother them. The argument that aircraft engines affect the wildlife is specious when you consider that days and days go by between aircraft movements. There is also a four lane divided highway, the Trans Canada Highway, as well as the main railway line to the coast, not more than 500 metres from the airstrip. It's all you can do to hear an aircraft engine standing right next to it for the roar and rumble of road traffic and wail of train horns.That said, I do have to admit that there is little reason to keep the strip other than for emergency landings. If it was developed in order to attract more flying tourists then there would be a legitimate environmentalist protest because development would result in fences, and there is very little room in that stretch of the valley to allow animals to move through.But honestly, if you took down the windsock and let the snow drift around a bit there's no way that even the most wild eyed environmentalist would ever notice there was a strip there. And from the amount of Elk dung trodden into that strip I doubt that the animals give a #### either.CheersRick GrantUN Kabul