Tutorial : how draw airport compounds ...

[Guest laurentC]

Hi all,Many airports have now nice 3D objects and taxiways ... but many also have non appropriate textures underneath. It would be a good idea to have also compound areas where runways, taxiways and facilities are well shown ... something like generic MSFS.Furthermore it's hard to distinguish runways from distant point of view ...How to draw a generic texture and get an airfield compoundROTW January 2005(This tutorial is a summary of a previous rotw Henri's SIMVOL french tutorial : Henri has also developped technical explanations that are not reported here ) 1) What is neededA Dxxxyyy folder of the area with almost two RAW and a Gxy.TRN filesFly!II |____data | |____Dxxxyyy | | |_______ picture1.RAW | | picture1.ACT | | picture2.RAW | | picture2.ACT | | Gxy.TRN2) Recipe- first rename your Fly! data folder as data_ini (to prevent any damage to your files)- open Fly!- choose an airport : let's say LFGK ( because the runway stays above an unique texture and things are easier that way! ) Teleport the aircraft to LFGK- call the Editor (Ctrl+E) and note in the "Editor location" window the Globe value = 2,166 thus the Dxxxyyy = D002166 the tile = 26,51 the texture all around the airport = AA82829C32 Important note : Look at the 4 last char. 9C32The first two tell us which texture is involved = 9C serie and the last two the tile = 32. But you need to transform the last two values to get the good code ... !The rule is : invert the figures 32 ==> 23 then change the new second figure according this table3-->02-->11-->20-->3then 32 ==> 20Now you have a texture code 9C20 : Add 5D to the very end and you finally get the gentex.pod texture code (see below).In our case 9C205D(BTW : 5D stands for Daylight 256x256 picture size)- place a building on the runway then save, exit from the Editor and close Fly!- in the Fly! new data folder you should find a D002166 folder with a scenerya.s01 inside You now know which Gxy.TRN will be needed : G01.TRN (like the end of scenerya.s01 file name)- Open again Fly! Go to LFGK and open the editor again- In the Editor tools, select the "Import Scenery" feature ; select the "generate elevations" in the dialog window and fill rough values for the lower left and upper right values.In our case Latitude is ~47 59' N and ~3 23' E then fill lowerleft with 47 49 N and 3 13 E and upperright with 48 09 N and 3 33 E (we define a larger area than the one we are intersted of). All default for the rest of the choices. Then import. Some error messages will be shown ... just click "OK".- Close the Editor and Fly!- Now in the data folder you should find all the Dxxxyyy of the area you defined. Erase all the folder except for the D002166.- In this folder you should found many Gxy.TRN ; erase all of them except for the G01.TRN (and erase also the scenerya.s01)- if you search inside the G01.trn file (with the notepad for instance) you should be able to find the texture we want to modify(if the airport stays upon 2 or 3 textures you should find the other textures in the same Gxy.TRN file) ========== BEGIN OBJECT ========== -- texture list 16 8282777700 8277777701 7767776702 6767678203 6767828210 6767827711 6767776712 6782676713 8B82676720 8282676721 829C676722 9C67678223 67778B8230 77AA828231 AA82829C32 <---- 82779C6733 ========== END OBJECT ==========- modify this texture with our RAW files and their pathNotice that the RAW file name must be 8 char.Let's call them LFGK_D__.RAW ========== BEGIN OBJECT ========== -- texture list 16 8282777700 8277777701 7767776702 6767678203 6767828210 6767827711 6767776712 6782676713 8B82676720 8282676721 829C676722 9C67678223 67778B8230 77AA828231 DATA/002166/LFGK_D__.RAW <---- 82779C6733 ========== END OBJECT ==========- Now you must prepare two RAW files : a 256 x 256 and a 128 x 128 versions of the same pictureNotice that those raw files must be called with a file name that merges the 8 char we named the raw in the TRN file plus a 4 or 5 depending on the raw file size ( 5 = 256x256 -- 4 = 128x128).In our case two file named : LFGK_D__5.RAW and LFGK_D__4.RAW - In the Fly! system folder open the GENTEX pod and extract the 9C205D.RAW and ACT filesModify it with your preferred paint tool then save two RAW files : 256x256 and 128x128 (as stated before); place them in the data D002166 folder Hope this will help,laurentC (rotw) http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/105258.gifhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/105259.gif

[Guest tonyc]

laurent, this is very good. A great tutorial. thanks. Also, this is the type of scenery modification that should become a tool so that in a flash the airport has its compound. It would be very nice to a have a simple UI with blank fields and have the user enter airport name only.tony

[Guest danieletona]

Very, very interesting.A big beautiful job.DanPS: Laurent, have you received the models?

[RandallR 444]

Laurent,Thanks for this useful information. I'm sure it will be beneficial for certain projects.Were you aware that Allen Kriesman's TerraModel's program can also do this with a few mouse clicks? It will allow you to instantly create ground polygons that appear below the runways and taxiways. The texture is provided with a TIFF image of your choice - it could be an actual ground image of the airport, a grass texture, etc. I normally use a grass texture image:

[Guest laurentC]

Daniele,Scusa, ma non ho ricevuto ancora niente ... magari riprova.Saluti,lauretC

[Guest tonyc]

Randall, I am interested in the TS2 solution. Can you be a bit more "tutorial" in explaining it? I have not used TS2 in a long time. thanks.tony

[RandallR 444]

Tony,I'm guessing you meant TM? :-)TerraModels 2.2 added some great features - they didn't all become useable in Fly!II until the last patch was released:1. Under the object menu, you can select the Irregular Ground Polygon tool. You just click on the background (such as a graphic of the airport chart or sat image), creating the outline of the flat object you want to create. I use it to create grass underlays of some airports to cover up inappropriate textures.2. You need to create a TIF image which will fill the polygon. I created a 128x128 image by adapting part of a TS grass texture.3. Then you use the following Scenery Placement Property:No Z-Buffer (flat object)"This is a new feature added with Fly2 patch 230. It will allow flat terrain objects to be displayed, without using a Z-Buffer. This will eliminate the unsightly

[Guest tonyc]

Well, I did say a "long time" , so my mistake :-(. Thanks Randall. It's amazing how some of these tools come and go in our life with FLY2.tony

[Guest laurentC]

Thanks Randall for having pointed this out. I was not aware of this possibility ... like many I suppose. I should say there's still room for us around here to share our know-how, isn't it ?Cheers,laurentC

[Guest Fly II Pilot]

Randy,Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that TerraModels places a texture on top, like an object. What Laurent suggests is to actually edit the underlying texture for the tile(s), so it's slightly different.I think the TerraModels approach is better for placing details while Lauren't solution seems to be better for larger areas because you can blend the airport surroundings by retouching the texture using a photo editor.I would only add one thing to Laurent's excellent tutorial. Before editing the texture, I would first zoom out and take a screen print that shows the airport (and hopefully taxiways and buildings) from a vertical position, within the Fly! editor. This way, you can then lineup the screen print with the actual texture and use the screen print as a reference to know where the runway, taxiways, and even buildings are. Just an idea...Regards,Alexhttp://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/dfdg/banneraa.jpg

[RandallR 444]

Alex,I see Laurent's approach covering a large area in a "block" form, while with TM, you can create any shape for the texture/image, such as shape it to the actual airport boundaries, etc.I suppose that either approach could be used for any airport - it may actually be more appropriate to use Laurent's approach for "details" for the vey reason that you are editing the underlying texture.The TM approach actually creates a flat model, which then lays on the ground below the runways and taxiways. Though its boundaries can be very accurately defined, the surface is "filled" with the tiff texture of your choice, which is then repeated. So, you would have detailed boundaries, but, the internal areas of those boundaries would not contain details... :-)

[RandallR 444]

Absolutely! This is just one of those little known features that depended on Rich getting the no z-buffer changes into the last patch. The idea was mentioned a number of times during the last beta work, so I kept my eye on it and used the approach to solve problems for some airports.

[Guest Colins2]

Randall / Alex,I agree with both of your points of view and just offer the following:Laurent's method only works on a ground tile area which means that it will be a square texture or multiples thereof.TerraModels appraoch is different and will give an extra object as you say.There is a 3rd way :-)This is kind of similar to Laurent's method but would require a bit more work.You can use TerraShape to create an shapefile airport area and generate the scenery with TerraScene.I did this in the TerraShape manual somewhere.I'll try some more experiments to see what steps are involved to prune out the unnecessary stuff.Colin

[Guest detector]

Hi guys :) I used Terrashape all the time to draw airport compounds, using a separate layer for it, which I named "Airport". In the airport layer, I had several colours, so that I could draw parking lots and stuff within the compound.For drawing small spots, I used Terramodels Irregular Poly. Worked like a charm. I used it to put in a custom made asphalt texture at ENGM, which you can see on the right side of the terminal.