Methods of Starting Scenery Design

[Guest heclak]

Hi guys, I'm really impressed by what i see here. The talent is just amazing. I've started to get into scenery design. And i'm wondering which paths should i take. 1.EZ-scenery.Simple but payware. Not sure about its limitations. Can further improve library with downloads and FSDS.2.Gmax and FS SDK. Not too sure about this method regarding placement of scenery.Seems quite complicated but very powerful and most importantly.Free.I'm hoping to venture really far and into very complicated scenery. High-detail airports.Which path do you guys recommend? Will EZ-scenery and FSDS still be useful in FSX? How steep a learning curve can option 2 be. I have experience with AFCAD and Excbuild already.Thanks

[scruffyduck 4]

You are really talking both ends of a long spectrum. Have you read the beginners guide at the top of this forum. It is aslo available in pdf format at www.scenery.org in the tutorials section.There are a lot of good tools out there for scenery design - each has it's strengths and weaknesses. For an all-round scenery program which can handle ground works as well as object placement I would look at SBuilder (it does not handle runways and taxiways so you need AFCAD2 for that). If you want to design your own objects for FS9 then you will need GMax or FSDS3. There are a lot of FS9 object out there now I have over 3500 in my database. FS9 objects are all the same inside so EZ-S objects can be used in other programs etc etcIn the end it depends what you wantto do - at one end if you want to do your own object design you will need Gmax or FSDS3, at the other if you want to enhance scenery with objects made by others then EZ-Scenery is a good place to start. In the middle come tools like SBuilder, SceneGenX, RWY12 Object Placer, Ground2K4 and so on

[Guest fame]

Hi heclak:If you're asking for a recommendation in scenery design tools to create your hometown airport, I recommend the following programs:FS2000/2002:FS Architect 2002: http://www.pouksim.com/ the software is very easy to install and use. You can download a Freeware version for evaluation purposes, plus a commercial version 3.00 build 14 is also available.FS 2004 Compatibility: FS Architect's main features for creating BGL scenery and mesh terrain ARE compatible with Flight Simulator 2004 since FS2004 supports the legacy BGL format. Importing of FS2004 BGL files is not functional due to the file format changes. If you would like to create scenery for FS2004, download FS Architect and try it.FS Scenery Creator: http://www.fssc.avsim.net/index.html FS Scenery Creator is my pick for a very nice freeware program.There are other FS2000/2002 programs as well, such as:Airport for Windows: http://www.airportforwindows.com/SCASM: http://www.scasm.de/FS2004:Gmax: http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax the gold standard for creating objects in both FS2002 and 2004. The program comes with Microsoft's Pro version of FS2002, or downloads a copy directly from the Turbo Squid, Inc. Website.For modeling the balance of your scenery (airports, runways, taxiways, etc) you'll require additional tools. I recommend SceneGenX www.airportforwindows.com or AFCAD to handle this area of design.One final note of caution; the programs mentioned are in a constant state of development, therefore it

[Guest heclak]

thanks for the advice. I think i'll go towards using FSSC or something like that to build up the airports that i create with gmax. What if i'm aiming to move towards standards like FlyTampa. Would it be limited?? What skills would i need to develop.?

[arno 1]

Hi,If you are working for Fs2004 combining FSSC with GMax is not very useful. This is because FSSC can only place objects in the API format, while GMax creates MDL scenery objects which need to be placed with XML code. In that case I would advice either to use SceneGenX or use an XML object placer program (like Rwy12, EZ-Scenery or ObPlacer XML). You could still use FSSC for the ground layout thought, but you should remember that you can not mix FSSC layout with AFCAD, it will always show on top of AFCAD stuff.About the last question, most of such addon developers have probably developed some manual source code editing and tweaking skills. These are needed in general if you want to go beyond the capabilities that the normal design programs offer. But diving into the source right away is not something I would advice :).