Currently working on KAUS greater area from as north as Georgetown to as west as Lakeway, and connected Austin to San Marcos by including South Austin, Buda, and Kyle. Also, added East Austin (which makes Mueller airport look awesome!). All of this is finished, I am currently fleshing out landclass fixes all the way down 71 to smithville/la grange to Columbus Texas. 

You can now see Austin Texas VFR from the outskirts of West Houston!!! and vice versa, can see the edge of Houston from Smithville. I learned a lot of lessons, specifically for the "highrise" landclass, as the MSFS developers used a "puzzle piece" like landclass shape, it blends very well. It is the complete modernization of Austin Texas, and now you can navigate from Hobby to KAUS VFR easily and with Kyle and Buda, very easily recognize San Antonio. Also, it is very neat to be able to recognize Fort Hood/Kileen from Georgetown. 

 

Now when approaching KAUS during the day or at night, you can shoot super accurate approaches, and it looks very accurate. Before, KAUS was in the middle of nowhere, just nothing but grass, where the city only became visible about the time you were landing. Now it is very easy to shoot an approach night or day. 

Also added DKR stadium, and Moody Center so you can easily spot University of Texas! (which they light up at night)! 

Shot showing fleshed out east austin with Mueller, also in the background I took the time to add the west lake hills and beyond out to velonte and lakeway. Made sure this was super accurate, it was the only way it looked proper. At night it is very cool, because now you can make out the lake

 

All and all I did not need to take nearly as much time to complete this as the KEFD project, as there was not nearly as much VFR scenery this time around, almost entirely landclass fixes. 

 

I will post it here in the next week. 

 

--- 

Future projects:

- Landclass correction for Dallas-Ft Worth and San Antonio. Just need to add neighborhoods. Especially Dallas. 

- Texas college towns/Amarillo/El Paso. (these will be very easy). Might just add a stadium, few generic buildings for campuses. 

 

- Central Ireland project.

 

Considering Albuquerque/las cruces and high elevation colorado ski towns. Albuquerque needs the glow of the buildings on the top of Sandia Crest. Would be really helpful in not running into the mountain during VFR flight lol. Also add the route 66 neighborhoods Moriarty to Albuquerque. That will likely wrap up my contribution to FSX. 

 

Added east Austin east of I35, now providing a clear runup to KAUS during night or day, its actually quite canny on approach if you have imaginesim Kaus objects or textures (my computer doesnt handle their textures well in DX9). 

I did the neighborhoods south of the airfield, and having the glow of the dense city is super helpful in locating the black hole with papi lights and beacon. 

I really like how this shot turned out, I also added south austin buda and kyle. You can actually see San Marcos at the bottom now. 

I did east austin as north as Georgetown, so there is plenty of run up visual now. 

This shot represents everything that was green grass in stock FSX, everything south of 183 as barren as the KEFD-KIAH project. You can see I tried much harder to "puzzle piece" the highrise textures. I followed accurate lines from satellite imagery for that as well. 

 

Also, in the background of that shot shows how far it spans west, and that I took the time to test getting the boundaries really accurate for that. Whats cool is if you have UTX USA vector support, you get the Dam, which really brings the whole thing together. 

 

This shot really shows how east austin ties into the previous image. FSX only had downtown! 

Whats cool is how awesome it makes Mueller airport look, I am tempted to do a retro Mueller file. 

 

I removed the imagine sim landclass textures so you see what youre getting, but you can see the little touches of imaginesim scenery objects, just demonstrating how well this project blended. All of this work is super helpful at night, due to FSX's limited render distance. 

The blue circle represents stock or default FSX for Austin Tx. For scope of project. 

Here is Kyle/Buda, I really took the time to puzzle piece these out correctly.  

But I also did landclass corrections for highway 71 --> I10 all the way to Sealy Tx (which I am currently finishing). Currently complete all the way to Smithville. I am not trying to rush, trying to do it correct like the KEFD project. 

Here is a shot from Kyle, at that big patch in the background is San Antonio! You can actually spot these textures from 200 miles away when flying to Dallas at altitude. Which was why I chose to do this project. I kept having difficulty spotting major cities and major interstates/highways. Now everything canonically connects and I took the time to make sure it is correct!

 

Luckily Austin did not take nearly as long, but all in all about a month considering. Whether airline or general aviation, it allows you to easily spot 71, la grange, smithville, columbus, i10 and Sealy, by then, you can definitely see Houston. 

This is the last shot I will share until I upload!

 

Moving forward, I looked a map of Dallas-Ft Worth, and Dallas is going to be a lot more work than I first considered, luckily flat terrain, but it is just going to require a lot more puzzle piece work and blending than first assumed. I am probably going to put Dallas on hold for now. 

When flying over the "tristate" area Houston-Austin-San Antonio, its now very easy to spot smaller college towns, Waco, College Station, etc. Just planning on doing basic VFR scenery for those towns, stadiums and surrounding airports. 

I am unsure if the KEFD file or these cause any stutter, I do get a small stutter just prior to Sealy, however, I'd rather have a stutter 100 miles out, than on final approach. 

 

-D

Edited June 8, 2025Jun 8 by Sweetd31

Keep in mind I am on a PC that cannot handle Direct x 10 so I can run Dx9 pretty well though, FPS wise. 

Looks like the result of a lot of good work with a very definite improvement over the default landclass/autogen! Thank you from an FSX dinosaur!

Bill

https://www.flightsim.com/files/file/212471-austin-texas-greater-area-landclass-fix/

Download link from flightsim.com

I will upload to avsim later on. 

Athlone Ireland

 

Early preliminary work, going to work on the town center, and the barracks area. I need to push the base back a little, but there is a helipad and airport ADEX, and the landclass that I chose it the one that looks best for Ireland. 

going to look real good once done

 

Last ones for the night, this is a good stopping place, I have grown quite fond of the project, it is fun landing in the tight space

Oh my goodness, the passion in this is quite immense. I am so happy you found the project enjoyable. A couple of questions,

Is the town's location geographically accurate? I use Volanta and it would be weird to land in the Barracks and find that I am off centre.

Will the helipad have night time lighting?

Did you map the Shannon going into Lough ree? Sometimes AC112 does training around the islands in Ree. I also sometimes operate the Irish Coast Guard so the Lough would be pretty beneficial.

I also wonder if you extended the river Shannon south, e.g. to Clonmacnoise and down.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, the Dublin motorway past Athlone is not generated in default FSX. It'd be nice if that existed.

Edited June 21, 2025Jun 21 by Wizzkidd02

Im gonna go on a limb that you do not have any payware scenery like orbx vector or ultimate terrain europe? 
 

This is important to know moving forward, because i am going to have to add the lake and islands by hand. As far as the GPS coordinates, i originally did it all by trial and error, but then i noticed you actually provided the coordinates. And when i compared them, i was spot on!  That highway and railway was huge help.

yes there is natural halogen lights illuminating the apron and landing . My 2nd question, is it completely lit up at night? Or does it have blue lights outlining the helipad? Or both? I plan on doing both.

 

for example, is it lit up like a spot light, or is it just outlined with runway lights?

 

 

31 minutes ago, Sweetd31 said:

Im gonna go on a limb that you do not have any payware scenery like orbx vector or ultimate terrain europe? 
 

This is important to know moving forward, because i am going to have to add the lake and islands by hand. As far as the GPS coordinates, i originally did it all by trial and error, but then i noticed you actually provided the coordinates. And when i compared them, i was spot on!  That highway and railway was huge help.

yes there is natural halogen lights illuminating the apron and landing . My 2nd question, is it completely lit up at night? Or does it have blue lights outlining the helipad? Or both? I plan on doing both.

 

for example, is it lit up like a spot light, or is it just outlined with runway lights?

 

 

I do not have orbx unfortunately, nor do I have any major ones. I did not think this was important. Unless you carved the river around the location of the islands, leaving the islands as flat ground? Like make it water except for the approximate location of the islands? That would work for me because of a lack of pressure that I want to put on you.

 

Sorry to brag, but can I ask again about the motorway not being fully displayed? Sometimes AC112 uses it to fly over when the weather is bad. ALSO, SORRY, I JUST REMEMBERED, ANY POSSIBILITY OF DOING THE MOTORWAY FROM ATHLONE TO GALWAY? Again, that motorway is only in Athlone and then only the railway tracks are what FSX generates.

 

The helipad does have lights although it is not specified which, though I would imagine they are like LED spot lights. If you notice on the map, there are 2 helipads. One for landing, and seemingly one where the helicopter is parked when ready for duty. If you look at pictures of Custume barracks, you will note the other helipad closer to where its hangar is, is triangular shaped. It is hard to describe.

Edited June 21, 2025Jun 21 by Wizzkidd02

Let me get athlone finished first before I consider anything else. I am going to do all tall buildings in the area. I am going to more than likely ignore that shopping centers, because doing parking lots takes forever. At the end of the day, the tall buildings is most important. 

 

I got it, I already placed both pads. I dont mind doing the lake, I will do it roughly as accurate as possible, carve the edges, etc. I tend to do a lot of testing anyways, so it will look proper. Also the road number would help, do caution, vector work is a little more difficult to get spot on. As my method is only relatively accurate. I tend to just "eyeball" it. 

 

*Also, I did the vector for the bridges that you see in that image. are you simply saying extend them? Keep in mind, my method wont include cars. I don't use SDK, I should, but I am too lazy to figure out why it is not working. 

 

 

*******************************************************************************

After looking at google maps...

yeah, 50 miles of vector work might be asking a bit much. might need to learn how to navigate.... but I will tell you what, I will provide you with VOR stations/DMEs, in fact, if you happen to know the radio frequency, I will include it so you wont get lost in the weather. Otherwise, craft like cerasim have excellent GPS. I can add a beacon as well, which will help some. 

 

You are better off having me do towns in between Gallaway. 

Edited June 21, 2025Jun 21 by Sweetd31

43 minutes ago, Sweetd31 said:

Let me get athlone finished first before I consider anything else. I am going to do all tall buildings in the area. I am going to more than likely ignore that shopping centers, because doing parking lots takes forever. At the end of the day, the tall buildings is most important. 

 

I got it, I already placed both pads. I dont mind doing the lake, I will do it roughly as accurate as possible, carve the edges, etc. I tend to do a lot of testing anyways, so it will look proper. Also the road number would help, do caution, vector work is a little more difficult to get spot on. As my method is only relatively accurate. I tend to just "eyeball" it. 

 

*Also, I did the vector for the bridges that you see in that image. are you simply saying extend them? Keep in mind, my method wont include cars. I don't use SDK, I should, but I am too lazy to figure out why it is not working. 

 

 

*******************************************************************************

After looking at google maps...

yeah, 50 miles of vector work might be asking a bit much. might need to learn how to navigate.... but I will tell you what, I will provide you with VOR stations/DMEs, in fact, if you happen to know the radio frequency, I will include it so you wont get lost in the weather. Otherwise, craft like cerasim have excellent GPS. I can add a beacon as well, which will help some. 

 

You are better off having me do towns in between Gallaway. 

Yeah, don't have to do the road. I didn't mean the bridge. Also, the motorway is the M6. Sorry for the pressure, just excited about this project finally happening. oh and don't bother with the shopping centres. YOU'RE TOO KIND! 😄 To be fair, I'm not that one pilot from 15+ years ago that illegally landed his helicopter on a shopping centre roof in Athlone. 😂

Edited June 21, 2025Jun 21 by Wizzkidd02

Haha oh my, there is cannon behind the city of athlone.

 

If ultimate terrain x europe covers ireland, thats hands down the best bang for your buck for vecror stuff, lakes, rivers, shorelines, beaches, railyards, etc. with using VOR and GPS youll be fine in ifr conditions.

 

just dont run into the church, or the radio tower, they are fairly close to the airbase.

Edited June 21, 2025Jun 21 by Sweetd31