Something I really miss from FSX/P3D is ORBX's little GA airfields and grass-strips. They have a great atmosphere to them, and are a great way to start and finish a flight. As everything with X-Plane, if it's lacking, you create it yourself :smile:

This is my 3rd airfield project and since it's a fairly small but busy airfield (EGNU in the UK), I'm really concentrating on the small details to try and bring the field to life:
 

I've added a basic orphophoto around the airfield and edited out the car and building footprints as I work on them. This way, the shadows aren't static and burnt into the ground, and it looks more natural.

 

The airfield has full night-lighting (Even though it isn't used at night, it looks nice just after the sun comes up). It also includes moving people. The three people below are all animated, two are talking whilst the other guy works on the plane.

 

One of them has also left his girlfriend sitting bored watching the planes. 

 

I've also modelled the industrial estate as it's very prominent and visible from the airfield. I have done about half the buildings, so there is still much work to do here:

 

I've also included vegetation, fencing etc all done using photos taken on-site.

 

There is still some work to do, e.g. the prison at the north end of the runway (Which you get fined if you fly over). Getting pictures for the prison are pretty much impossible, so it I'll have to be creative here. Also, if used with World2XPlane scenery, the entire area is populated with little villages, towns, farms and woodland just as they are in real-life and is really nice to fly around in and practice circuits or fly to the other nearby airfields (Which I've also done).

 

Of course, it will be freeware and all objects/artwork created will be going back into World2XPlane, e.g. all the industrial buildings.

Beautiful Work Tony,Well Done.

Very nice, love doing circuits at small airfields.

Google Earth gives a pretty good look at the prison complex layout Tony!

 

John

Thanks John. Yep, I can get a pretty good idea of what the buildings should look like, the shapes, etc, but actually making them look like they really do is difficult without real photographs, It's such a prominent landmark on the approach, that it would be great to get it looking realistic. 

Really nice!

I really liked the last shot with grass , did you create this grass by your self or is there any kind of library around there?

 

 

I really liked the last shot with grass , did you create this grass by your self or is there any kind of library around there?

 

Yep, I created several styles of grasses and weeds from photos I took. Gotta be careful with them though, as they eat frame-rates if overused. I tried doing a field of oilseed rape next to the runway, it looked fantastic, but killed the FPS too much unfortunately.

Should be easy enough to get access to the prison lol (just nick a car), seriously though, great work.

Especially like the "Tony-flow" animated characters!

Should be easy enough to get access to the prison lol (just nick a car), seriously though, great work.

 

:smile:, good point, although this is a top security prison with the likes of Charles Bronson, I might have to go on a mass murder, all in the name of X-Plane of course.

Nice scenery Tony!

Outstanding work, thx Tony

I always wondered why no one ever created a  grass library.

Looks Great....love the bored girlfriend...so true so true!

I always wondered why no one ever created a  grass library.

 

There is some grass on x-plane.org to use, but it needs recolouring to match the overlay you use. Generally, it's very easy to create grass or plants (Which are actually just forest files), just take a few photos, alpha mask the background in photoshop and create a forest file by hand (which is easy enough). Just be careful with them, as people can go to town and the grass and shrubs will really destroy performance.

 

 

 

Looks Great....love the bored girlfriend...so true so true!

 

:smile:

fantastic can hardly wait to see the finished product 

excellent work Tony!