I am totally new to making scenery in Flight Simulator.I would dearly like to know how to do it so I can make some great scenery. I have tried using FSX KML, which broadly speaking I have been able to use to change the ground textures around.I have a few questions: 1) How do you change the default shorelines in FSX? I make a new one, but all I get is a line in the middle of the sea or on land with waves!2) Is there a way to view how the scenery looks without loading up FSX every time? 3) Is there a way to exclude everything in an area and (except airports and mesh) and start from scratch? and will this mess up the sea and the seasons?4) Is there an application that will allow me to view the bgl file and edit the poly-lines graphically in an intuitive way or "paint" the land with textures?The whole thing is really confusing and I cant seem to find any tutorials describing how to do this stuff. Are there any? Thanks in advance for your help!

I would go through the "beginner's guide" thread at the top of this forum. While it is based on FS9, most everything in there will still apply to FSX. At this point, of course, there aren't many tools, other than the SDK, for FSX. Many elements of FS9 scenery, though, will still operate in FSX so that is an option.The SDK FSX tmfVewer is much inproved over prior versions, and should be used for visualizing terrain bgl files, at lesat until LWMViewer or some other tool is updated for FSX.I think now you can reload the scenery without exiting FSX, so that is a time saver.scott s..

I agree with everything Scott says, the Beginner's Guide is still the way to go for the moment. As soon as things start to settle down, we shall update it with revised and new information.From what I understand, TMFViewer is much preferable to launching FS - much faster anyway. I am not sure if terrain scenery can be re-loaded from within the game. It seems that for performance reasons, the guys in Redmond have locked the terrain.I have occasionally be able to end a flight, change the scenery, then re-load without exiting FS. But, most of the time, this has not worked and the terrain remains locked.It would be interesting if anybody else would comment on their experience with this.Best regards.Luis

Hi Luis,good question about the re-loading of scenery within the sim. I too have noticed that adding or deactivating scenery library entries in FSX works inconsistently (though most of the time). I haven't found a specific pattern yet but I wonder if it has to do with the pre-fetching of scenery elements that FSX does? Maybe switching to a different location (far away) and returning to the area of interest would get FSX to "release" all data? Then again, giving the long loading times of FSX using that approach wouldn't be much faster than re-starting the sim.Cheers, Holger