Start in my own backyard

[philmurfin 73]

Hi,

I live 20 to 30 miles from my nearest airfield and this can be a pain as I mainly fly VFR photoscenery, very low and very slow. In real life, I have a field behind me that would make a perfect grass strip and I would like to be able to begin XP from that location. In P3D, this is a very simple no fuss thing to do to set it up and start my flights from there. In XP it's seeming to be difficult, can this be done in XP and if so, how please?

 

Thanks

Phil 

[Janov 2,383]

Hi Phil,

 

thats easy, create a (simple) airport in WED, then you can always spawn on it, just like on any other airport. I have done several of those for friends, including backyard helicopter sites, etc.

 

Cheers, Jan

[tonywob 4,769]

I've done the same thing in the field behind my house :smile:. As Janov said, just download WED and simply plonk down a single grass runway and give it a fake ICAO code.

[Janov 2,383]

You can even make a "transparent" runway or taxiway, that way they don´t show up (don´t forget to make it not have lighting). Then you can create multiple startup-positions as well, if you don´t always want to spawn right on the threshold.

 

Just be aware that "transparent" features don´t have a physical property, so the ground would still be very "bumpy" where they are. If you don´t want that, you have to use a normal runway, taxiway or draped polygon.

 

There is another way to make surfaces "smooth", Ben Supnik blogged about that a while ago, but that was way above my head...

 

Jan

[philmurfin 73]

Thanks for your helpful replies, I'll give it a try.

One more thing however before I make a complete mess of things, I've never even looked at WED before, any tips please?

 

Thanks

Phil

[Jimmy RFR 406]

I'm new, but I've found WED to be very easy to use.

 

The tutorials on this page are perfect for an introduction:  http://developer.x-plane.com/docs/scenery/  Especially the two tutorials on Airport Customization and Advanced Airport Creation.

[philmurfin 73]

I'm sorry lads but I'm struggling. I live in the UK and so I don't have access to orthopho that the manual refers to. I have got as far as creat airport, given it a name and then what? How do I tell it where to place it?

 

Trully stuck!

Phil

[Jimmy RFR 406]

I'm sorry lads but I'm struggling. I live in the UK and so I don't have access to orthopho that the manual refers to. I have got as far as creat airport, given it a name and then what? How do I tell it where to place it?

 

Trully stuck!

Phil

 

I used this little application to overlay satellite imagery to aid in runway & taxiway placement.  It should help you out.

 

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=27381

 

There's likely some way of manually entering in lat/lon coordinates, but I never needed to find out.

[Janov 2,383]

Yes, WEDbing is what I would recommend to use - if you JUST want to plop down a helipad or runway, you can copy down the necesarry coordinates using google earth, then enter them into the "runway end" points in wed. This will "snap" your runway ends to the entered coordinates.

 

Jan

[philmurfin 73]

Hi Chaps,

 

Thanks for all your help and suggestions, I'd have got nowhere without them. I tried WedBing but it wouldn't work for me, I kept getting a "internal Server Error" message. That's a big shame as I could quite get into this scenery design again, I did loads in FSX but just for myself.

However, I did manage to get the field behind me set up as an airstrip and that's what I initially wanted and so I'm well pleased. I did have a slight error on my 1st attemp, I missed a minus in front of one of the co-ordinates, when I came to try it out I was in the English channel, half way to France.

Once again, thanks for your help, I'll keep an eye on WebDings to see if they get the problem solved, it seems to be quite common on their forum. But if/when they do get it sorted, I'll be back at you for some more expert advice (Please).

 

Ta lots!

Phil

[Jimmy RFR 406]

I ran into the Internal Server error initially, but I found that you have to be very specific in your workflow:

 

1. Open WED, create your initial airport scenery structure, right up to the point where you are about to create your runway.

 

2. Save your work in WED.

 

3. Exit the editor in WED, leaving the menu window open (the one where you can pick what scenery to load). You should see your newly saved scenery in this list.

 

4. Open WedBing.

 

5. Select your xplane main folder in the browser window, then your scenery that you are adding a backdrop for. You'll notice that it will automatically zoom Bing maps to the area you've last zoomed into with WED.  Set your resolution that you want to download, and pan / zoom into what features you want shown inside WED. Basically, if you can see it in your browser, it'll get saved into WED.

 

6.  Now you can click the "make visible in wed" button.  It'll download the tiles, and once that is done, show a message box telling you that you can now open your scenery in WED.

 

When I was getting "internal server error" messages, it was because I was still in the WED editor.  Hope that helps, if you ever choose to use it again!

[philmurfin 73]

Thanks for that, you're certainly getting me closer. WedBing is now tranfering data over to Wed without error messages. However, in Wed that data only presents itself as whte squares with no images?

 

Many thanks for your time!

Phil

[Jimmy RFR 406]

Well.... at that point I'm stumped.  Sorry!  I'd suggest, if you were to want to use it, checking out the .org forum and posting a thread about your issue.  Good luck, and sorry I couldn't take it further (I'm a X-Plane noob myself ^_^ )

[Janov 2,383]

Thanks for that, you're certainly getting me closer. WedBing is now tranfering data over to Wed without error messages. However, in Wed that data only presents itself as whte squares with no images?

 

Many thanks for your time!

Phil

 

Go ahead and read the FAQ on WEDbings website - it will tell you that the white squares are usually due to selecting a zoom-level that BingMaps does not support at that location. Fall back one or two levels (usually 19 works fine) and try again.

 

Goodl luck, Jan

[philmurfin 73]

Thanks to all who have helped me with this, I've finally got things working and I'm really pleased with the results.

I couldn't have done it without your help, so again a big thanks!

 

Phil