Terrascene in Fly! and FlyII

[Guest]

First of all sorry guys for a really simple question.Having been a FLY! and FLYII fan until FS2002 came out when I jumped ship, I now find I want to go back to FLY2 because I am about to embark on flight training in Florida from the UK, and want the use of a more 'accurate' flight sim.I distinctly remember having some very detailed VFR areas of Florida, but can only find Terrascene files avail for FLY! for this area.My question ....Can I use these Terrascene files in the Fly! Avsim files library in FlyII ?.My main puzzlement is due to the fact I am sure I had some Florida TS files in FLY2 originally (before FS2002) or was I just dreaming.If I cant use these files, would you guys suggest going to back to FLY! and downloading the files, or using FLYII and generating the TS files myself. I would only be using the sim for light Cessna flying, but honestly cant remember much about FLY! (the original).Serves me right really for removing FLY2 from my machine.Thanks for any light...Mike

[LAdamson 240]

>Having been a FLY! and FLYII fan until FS2002 came out when >I jumped ship, I now find I want to go back to FLY2 because >I am about to embark on flight training in Florida from the >UK, and want the use of a more 'accurate' flight sim. >Just curious of "whats" more 'accurate'. In my experience, yes......... the FLY/FLYII panel representation of the 172SP is more accurate than FS2002. But then the FS2002 navigational/airport/taxiway/topigraphical data-bases are more accurate than FLY/FLYII's. In other words, there is NO clear winner, when it comes to simulating flight all across the board. And if anyone say's there is, then I say they're wrong :)L.Adamson

[RandallR 444]

Mike,Your best bet is to generate new TerraScenery. There was a TerraScene set produced for Fly!2K, but not Fly!II for the Florida area. There may be a specific area or two, but not the whole state.Another thing to watch out for - the USGS is missing land-use data for portions of the Tampa and surrounding area. In order to do that area properly, you will need to do a little more "advanced" work and supplement the USGS with recent shapefile data from Tiger Census (or end up with portions of the Tampa/St. Pete streets flooded). :-)In a few weeks, I may have time to render that problem area and upload the rendering files for persons to use (just copy the data files into TS and hit render).

[Guest]

Randall, I would appreciate it if you could send me or upload the data files for the Tampa area. I actually had at one time the entire state of Florida terrascened and could not get over the flooded Tampa area and also a small part of Port Charlotte as well is flooded.I'd really like to get a complete Florida terrascene set on my computer without the bugged data on the west coast. Thanks. If you could tell me what to read to learn how to do it and find the data I would be glad to do it myself but I don't even know where to look. thanks

[RandallR 444]

It will be a few days before I can start this project, but here's a good post from Todd Klaus on using recent shapefile data to augment USGS: http://ftp.avsim.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboa...rum=DCForumID19For the missing LULC, Use the shapefile data and place it first, The USGS roads and good LULC sections should mix in the process and render over the top to produce useable scenery.

[Guest]

Depends on how you look at it, IMHO. It's pretty easy to fix the Fly databases, but the more limited aircraft systems modeling and flight models of MSFS are a bit harder to address (although some 3rd party stuff does a fair job - still not up to Fly standards though, IMHO). And even if you don't fix the (e.g) navaid databases at all, you still have plenty there to learn with.IMHO, Fly is a better sim in "near out of the box" condition for anyone trying to really learn, but then I wonder how good _any_ PC sim really is for that task - these are, after all, fundamentally low budget games, not $10 million dollar training sims ;-). Also, once you go into heavy sim mods and add-ons, you can pretty much make anything do anything.

[Guest]

>First of all sorry guys for a really simple question. >I distinctly remember having some very detailed VFR areas of >Florida, but can only find Terrascene files avail for FLY! >for this area. It's generally not hard to make your own terrascene areas - there are a few little tips to know, and it'll chew through some heavy disk space, but otherwise it's easy and fun. I did all of WA, most of OR, and a little of CA recently and it looks wonderful (considering it's all just "fake").It takes some CPU time. I was fortunate enough to have about 6 CPUs crunching on it, so 2 whole states' worth of terrascening only took me a few days.Oh - also I'd really recommend Fly2 over Fly.Hope that helps...

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Randall, please post this data to the Avsim library when you get it completed!I'm in the same boat.. I had Southern Florida scenery for FLy! and miss it in Fly2.(-:

[RandallR 444]

Bert,You'll need to give me about two weeks on this, as I am involved in a database project. For those who don't want to wait, I posted the above data so they could try it on their own. :-)

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Randall, I do not mind the wait.. :(

[Guest]

Mike,I have all of Florida already done in Terrascene2-I'm in the UK, send me your address and I'll get a CD off to you.You'll still have to do the work on the Tampa area of course.Also I found that the USGS data for Florida often gives you 'land in the sea',you have to mend these bits 'by hand',which I've done already. DaveTdavid@davidtaylorsound.co.uk

[RandallR 444]

Bert,I have uploaded a Tampa area TerraScene project pack for global tile 197,148 to the Avsim file library. It contains everything you need to render the scenery, including the shapefiles needed to "drain the swamp".

http://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3e64433e1877597c.jpg

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Randall, thanks for the heads-up.. this will give me something to experiment with. I was fortunate to get all of the Florida scenery on a set of CDs so I'm flying :-)I guess I better learn to master the Terrascene technique if I want to continue this hobby..Thanks again!

[RandallR 444]

Bert,TerraScene is really an easy tool to use as far as most of the continental U.S. is concerned. There are only a few problem spots, such as this area around Tampa. TerraScening in other parts of the world is much more complex because of the lack of geographic data - with a little study, you can still make good scenery anywhere in the world by using shapefiles.Even if you never make your own scenery, having a proper installation of TerraScene is important - many scenery sets will be made as project sets to keep from using too much space on Avsim's servers. If everyone uploaded TerraScene as complete scenery, there would soon be no room on the servers. :-)One thing I do miss is being able to edit the image files and provide corrected scenery, but to do that would require uploading the scenery in finished mode. The Tampa scenery file by itself would be 264 MB! Eventually, people may be able to by custom TerraScene sets on CD through the Avsim store - we'll see.