I may seem like a hater of FSX, but I think FSX will be brilliant .... in 1-2 years from now :). In the meanwhile the average joe hasn't got the hardware. For all the people who are enjoying FSX ... good for you :)

Uh-oh, I rarely jump into scenery design discussions, but I'm appalled by the ranting of rookys against the pros. Have fun landing on a runway FS doesn't know about - not ATC, possibly no navaids, no taxi aids - holy cow, what a realistic airport.Whoever read the original thread knows that these developers got off their asses way before this discussion started - actually to give us great realistic scenery back in FS2k2 and k4! Now they're desparately searching for a method to keep on doing this and they're not yet getting the right help from MS to achieve it.So kids - hold your breath, test your proposals, make them known, share them and let them be reviewed by the people who been there and done it.Thanks for listening.

How can you possibly suggest that FS wouldn't know about a runway that was a texture? all it needs to know is a positional reference. You are aware that you can put objects in computer games that have no textures on them aren't you? How do you think all the missions triggers work?

I think you've completely missed the point. You say,

The AFCAD file tells fs the runway is there. The Texture on the mesh could be anything.

Wow, so many uninformed posts in one thread! Martin was just trying to tell the community that they do not have the TOOLS right now to continue making the high quality airport add ons we have come to expect from the top scenery designers. He did not once attack FSX (as a matter of fact he praised it and the the direction it was going with rounded airports) the problem arises the sdk's offer no ability to custimize ground scenery like what we are use to. The people who are blinding complaining that he is whining should shut up and leave this thread if you are not a scenery designer because it is obvious you have no clue what you are talking about. We have the fortune of having one of the top scenery designers shed some light on a very important topic and the best thing people can say is that they are lazy or should move on with technology. You obviously did not read his post or understand it. Go make sweet love to your FSX box while the real community works are a very serious problem.Sorry, but so much ignorance in one place is hard to ignore.David

Future airports don't have to be built using AFCAD and xml stuff, they can be built using any method you deem suitable to get a result. I am talking about thinking outside the box here.If you can put an object in a simulation, and you can texture it, you can build anything you want. The traditional methods can be usd for positional data if you wish, or other methods can be employed. What I am talking about here is developers actually DEVELOPING stuff.

You just proved you have no clue. Thanks

You aren't a politician in real life are you? :-)Slogans are great-but fsx is not an "awkwared little shift to eye candy". A statement like this does sound good, and does shift attention from the facts though.In fact when you turn the 100 fold eye candy over fs9 down you find many, many serious improvements in all respects-but it seems many are so hung up on the the eye candy they don't get far enough to experience these.The tweaking is being done so most can enjoy both these improvements and eye candy at the same time. If you don't want to enjoy it-don't!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Ok, so I have no clue, then by way of example, perhaps you'd care to explain why this wouldn't work, or as you claim, is impossible:VFR photographic scenery taken from high altitude has (obviously) airports on it (you can see them if you have any old FS9 ones loaded into FSX and you can even make out aircraft on them, despite the lower resolution of these older textures).So if you can take or create high resolution images that can be placed into the simulation as these sceneries are, they can be of the airport surface, the photos can be enhanced or treated to remove object shadows etc, and if the original image was not of a sufficient resolution or taken at a time when shadows would present a problem this can also be corrected. Objects can be placed at that location and textured for the buildings, either scenery triggers or detection boxes can be used to track movement on this new airfield, and, if you wish, new data can be overlaid in the location to enable the ATC elements to function with your enhanced airfield.This is a slightly unconventional method, but there is no reason whatsoever why it would not work, and as a matter of fact I am working on doing this right now for an airfield in Derbyshire UK.And it is working. :-) It's going to be on AVSIM fairly shortly too as a download, which would be kind of hard to do if it was impossible wouldn't you say?

Chock,Considering you joined on October 14th, your 57 posts have to be some of THE most annoying drivel I have ever read here.Are you even understanding what Martin is saying? He can develop all the great textures he wants, but in FSX there is NO tool to put it in the simulation correctly.Sure, he could go to developing airports using default (crap) textures and buildings, but then what would be the point?There is NO issue of wanting to use old airports with a minor upgrade charged at full price for FSX. Fact is that NO NEW development can take place given the SDK tools. So if all you want is airports developed using the 'official' method, then good luck with your default taxiways, runways, textures and airport buildings.

How big is this airport in Derby?Not big enough to suffer from the curved earth effect wich was CLEARLY spelt out in the post at FlyTampa.Try and do LOWW, KTPA, KMIA, KSFO or something of that nature and we shall see how you do..........####, if you can do it right I will even pay you for the scenery.

Ok to all of you cheerleaders out there who are so quick to critisize and call people lazy, or should be in a retirement home. I anxiously await your solutions to the problems and your new airport scenery.Gawd, some of you people really have got the blinders on dont you ?? Just because its the newest doesnt necessarily make it the greatestthing since sliced bread. FXS is a prime example. And its not onlyscenery problems. The jets, with the possible exception of the 737which isnt half bad ( not great) handle like c**p and the auto pilotis the usual piece of garbage, and there's much more. But thats okI guess I can always sit on the ground and look at the birdies, thetrees, the ripply water and the airport ground traffic getting inmy way as I taxi (now thats really "as real as it gets"). Wether you are willing to admit it or not, and the more I read themore apparent it becomes. FS9 is here for a looong time to come.But lets not hear any whining and wailing as to why is there no3rd party scenery for FSX. You already know ! I'm willing to betyour going to find the same thing with 3rd party aircraft. No Im not talking about repaints.

You are referring to photoscenery a' la Megascenery or the UK Horizon stuff. We are in a completely different game.Photoscenery looks wonderful at 1000ft, but 10ft above the taxiway we need to inject 10times the amount of detail into the ground. We do this with 'overlays' which are geometry created in Gmax/MAX whatever. These don't work anymore. Only XML default taxiways/runways can replace them in FSX.With Max I can cutup geometry anyway I want, control UV placement down to the pixel. With MS methods, I get default tiled crud. You can't even replace the textures. We like to spline map our taxiways so the texture follows the curvature of taxiway. That

Jeez!1. I said NOT using the tools in the SDK, or USING them if you wish, but choosing to innovate. There was no FMC in FS98 but that didn't stop PapaTango from creating EFIS 98 so you could have one in that sim. There's no vocal ATC system in FS either, but you can get VoxATC to make it happen. The people who created these applications and add-ons did not sit there crying about missing features and difficulties, they saw them for what they are, the opportunity to innovate.2. I have so few posts because my old log on won't work on this forum, so it was quicker to create another one. You'll find add-ons on this site that date back to FS98 that were authored by me.3. I said an airfield in Derbyshire, not Derby airport, specifically, Camphill in Derbyshire if you must know, check the link if you are curious, and if you are really curious, load up FS and go to those co-ordinates, you'll find that the airfield's location has a huge V dip in it, approaches that come over slopes, often with massive wind shear as a result of the terrain and it is located approximately 700 feet above the surrounding hilly terrain. Is that undulating enough for you?http://www.dlgc.org.uk/Take a look at the pictures if you like, it's in the PEAK DISTRICT, which even if you don't visit that website should give you a clue as to how level it most certainly isn't, and that ain't gonna stop me putting an airfield there for FSX.