What is a good scenery design program?

[Guest]

Hello all!I am wanting to design scenery for FS2002 but have never attempted in the past, other than LAGO scenery enhancer. For starters, I want to edit the landscape around my local airport to be more realistic. Currently FS2002 features loads of relatively flat, green forest, but in reality it is hilly agricultural land with rows and rows of grape vines! I would also like to add buildings that do not currently exist in the sim. Additionally, I would like to edit the airport itself with proper building placement, custom building shapes, ect... LAGO's FSSE has been helpful but it can't erase (or move) the existing buildings FS puts in place by default, which are in the wrong place to begin with. Can anyone please recommend a good program or two that I can use to accomplish this. I've heard GMAX is useful but has a very steep learning curve. Any advice, recommendations or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance.Regards,John

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I'm the author of Landclass Assistant, a freeware app available in Avsim's file library. You could use it at least in part for your project--it can be used to change forest to farmland textures, add/update city textures, etc... But it does not allow work within the confines of an airport, or adding custom buildings, roads or other objects.As for removing existing buildings and airport mods and roadwork, I recommend FSSC by Derek Leung. It's a great package, and freeware as well (I believe).Regards,-John

[Guest]

John,Thanks for your suggestions. I will most certainly give your app a try, as well as FSSC. Your recommendations are greatly appreciated for a "newbie" scenery designer. I hope to one day upload changes that I make. I feel the need to give back to the community that has helped me out so much over the past 5 years! :-)Regards,John

[jkanold 0]

Use Terrascene for accurate coastines and land class ground textures.Elrond's Resample Tool or TerrabuilderElrond's Texture ConverterMartin Wrights DXT ConverterWe use FSA for the airport layouts and taxiway lines.Gmax is the only thing that should be used for creating models. Avoid frame rate killing macros of any kind.You can export scenes and single objects using GMAX.I use FSTerrain (a wonderful program that no one seems to use) for hand edited DEM meshes.AFCAD to change the AI traffic and starting positions of a/c.Photoshop and a good digital camera.Six or seven months of pulling ones hair out learning SCASM, transparency tricks and SDK stuff.And with a little luck, you're all set.Now, if someone would make the last necessary tool, we could release our latest project.http://members.rogers.com/jkanold/jimlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[jkanold 0]

Use this forum and, if need be, email the talented people found here.For all of those that have helped us, Thank you.http://members.rogers.com/jkanold/jimlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif