YOU can help keep Fly growing

[Guest]

A post from Lindy got me thinking. She was comparing Fly with The Other Sim, and had this to sat in favor of TOS:>Second -- eye candy. Pure and simple......tons of default >airports and airfields that have at least some buildings in >the area, most with some kind of taxiways and/or parking >areas. I've had this exact thought myself. The lack of airport scenery is one of Fly's biggest shortcomings. I can run TerraScene and navigate to my destination by pilotage, but the airport might not even be there (I've been unusually unlucky here, 3 of the 5 airports I've flown real life X/C's to are missing :-( ) Of the airports which are there, few have buildings, and only controlled fields have taxiways. The Jepp data licensed by MS is just more complete than the DAFIF used by TRI, and they've had a lot of time and money to flesh out individual airports (even back in '98 the airports and generic buildings were pretty good).There's no reason it has to stay this way! This is one area of Fly that can be improved upon by every person reading this forum. Creating a new aircraft or SDK plugin is a huge investment of time and effort, and not something most of us would be able to do. Making or improving airports is a much smaller task, something we could all contribute to.Taxiways are easy. Take one or two hours to learn the program and you can churn out your average airport in less than 5 minutes. Buildings? We've got the scenery editor built right into Fly2, and for bigger jobs, there's TerraModels. Creating a new airport from scratch is a step up in difficulty. There's no really nice tool for doing this; you've got to use the database editors, which is intimidating at first. Still, once you figure it out it's a project of hours, not weeks. I just saw a post from someone who took care of all of Australia!We've all been wondering if Fly is dead. Well, the answer is up to us. Here's a chance to keep it growing that we can all contribute to. It would be impractical for any one of us to fill in the data for all the airports. As a group, it's a project with a manageable scope. The biggest problem would be getting someone to coordinate efforts to avoid duplication of effort and package things up into reasonable sizes so you don't have to download 3,000 individual airports.Since I'm the one shooting my mouth off about this, I'll be volunteer #1. I've already done the taxiways for all the Pennsylvania airports in Fly2. I'll go back and plant some buildings at these airports. After that, I'll see about getting the missing ones filled in. That leaves 49 states (and a few other countries :-) ) to go. Any takers?-Frank

[Guest DannyV]

Hi Frank,I totally agree with you! I am just finishing up the Tupolev Tu-154 right now (need to have a break from scenery for a few days). I plan on populating all of the airfields in Australia that are now in the database using TerraModel.But first off, Sydney Intl and Melbourne will be coming out. After that, I was thinking of modelling major city landmarks around the world. You can't fly into a major city and have no buildings! Photoreal will add to the eye candy! Vin has done Phili and between us, Sydney as well! Singapore is just down the road. I know Europe needs buildings - they have plenty of distinct buildings etc that can be modelled! Then there is the USA. Plenty of work there as well.Count me in! I don't consider fly dead - its just in a sleepy phase :-) We can think about Fly 3 later down the track when TRI considers what to do with the code base. In the mean time, we can help by populating the world for them :-)Cheers,Danny VickersAustralian Fly! Group

[michal 44]

Frank,I understand your drive however some obstacles remain on the road to complete success. One is the inability to fix underlying ground textures right below airports. I have watched some honest attempts in FLY to provide better airports but with no 'fix' for the ground textures the final 'eye-candy' looked disappointing. Rich once mentioned he was working on the way to fix it though, in view of the latest events, I am not sure whether it is still on track.And finally there is yet a another point brought by Lindy - performance/smoothness. Unless airports can be optimized for reasonable performance all this extra detail can bring more harm than good. I am careful not to drag this other sim into it but contrast with FLY in this area is quite stark.Michael J.

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Danny, I would like to help in some way. I'm not a programmer and can't do models ( can't afford 3D Max ) but if you or AFG need some one to have a go at populating some of the smaller NSW airports I would be only too pleased to "have a go" to help out.Count me in!Cheers,Roger @YSSY

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Frank,Great idea Frank. I'm no developer but I recon I can have a shot at populating a few small airports with taxiways/buildings etc. Should keep me off the streets at night :-)It's true; so long as we nurture it Fly! will not only survive but will continue to grow.Cheers,Roger @YSSY

[Guest Fly II Pilot]

Frank,I like the idea, I'm doing all taxiways for Argentina, and some in Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. I'll also update the navaid and airports database to add what's missing and correct what's wrong (kind of obvious statement ;-) ). Finally, I'll create some major buildings at each airport.Regards,Alejandro AmigorenaSyracuse, NYAthlon XP 1800ABIT KR7A-RAID768Mb RAMGeForce 3 64MBSB Audigy GamerCH Flight Yoke USBCH Pro Pedals USB

[Guest Henri W]

Frank,I agree with you 100%. So far I have done two airports in the Netherlands (EHRD and EHVB). I will do more in the future. At the moment I am adapting the cockpit of Jarno's B1900, after that I will continue my scenery work.Fly! II is certainly not dead.Best wishes,Henri

[RandallR 446]

Michael,I really haven't seen much of a problem here, if the creator is careful to use the great capabilities of Terramodels properly.The answer is not to get so carried away as to attempt to model everything. Do enough of the airport and nearby city, if appropriate, to give a nice feel for the area. Put in the main terminal, some of the other buildings, tower, etc. and keep the polygon count down.TM includes two bitmap levels - when the scenery is created with care and the proper texture set is installed by the user, you can move through them smoothly with any system.

[Guest Josve]

Ai ai ai :) good news Henri!Johnny"I'LL BE BACK"[div align=center]http://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/josve/fly2/vas.gif][/div

[Guest Colins2]

Michael,You can place textures under airports, admittedly by hand, but it is easy to do.I wrote TerraShape for exactly that purpose.Wherever you are in the world, whatever your data sources, you can always tell TerraScene to include a shapefile in it's data path.TerraShape allows the creation of such a shapefile set, amongst many other features.Colin

[akriesman 0]

Michael,If Rich gets a chance to release the next Fly II patch, it will have the ability to change the underlying airport textures.Terramodels 2.2 already has this feature built into it, in anticipation of the next patch.When the next patch is released, I should also be releasing about 25+ airports for the state of Oklahoma. All of these airports have replaced the underlying texture.I still believe Rich has plans to release at least one more patch.Allen

[Guest]

It can be done : 245 airports with accurate taxiways , 20+ airports with detailed scenery and even more on the way, corrected Navs, Ils, Comm frequencies. We even make planes ! ... ;) and we are just 15 members at ROTW. Imagine what you all could do ! All the tools are available. All you need is the will to do the job and a some coordination. The ROTW teamhttp://www.simvol.org/fly/avatars/logojp.gif

[Guest nycflyer]

Boston and Logan are in the works.-----------------------Scott CannizzaroPPASEL-KTEB

[Guest]

I'm nearly finished with a few nice airports in Southern California. In addition, I do work as a 3D modeler and would like to provide some models to enhance airports. One idea I'd like to start work on is some key landmarks for cities...starting with the Coronado Bay bridge in San Diego. Features like this might add a lot to making cities recognizable.Dan

[Guest]

Not to be very modest here, my "ALLMODELS" static models with around two hundred models is (probably) the largest freeware models set for any flight sim.Still, if you need some more please let me know...:-coolBiberwww.LTBA.netbiber@ltba.net