Sidney Schwartz

Exactly. John nailed it. B)

The main problems caused by duplicate libraries are objects not showing up, or showing up but with no textures.

I wish I knew of one. There's a free program called LMviewer that I think is supposed to show landclass information, but I could never get it to work. Hopefully someone else here knows of something else, or knows how to get LMviewer to show landclass information.

Yes, tedious and time consuming it is. I periodically have to go through my scenery folders and weed out duplicate libraries. It's been my experience that the main cause of duplicate libraries is scenery designers who package the libraries with their scenery instead of instructing the user to download the libraries ONLY IF THEY DON'T ALREADY HAVE THEM. A pox on them, I say. [Duck and run]

Yes, you should have only one instance of a particular object library. It shouldn't matter which one you keep, as FS9 will search all active scenery folders for an object, but in the interests of maintaining some sort of logical system, in this case I'd leave the one in the RWY12 folder and delete the other two.

ADE will not do what you want in FS9, only in FSX. Sbuilder is what you will need to use.

VFR by definition means no contact, or minimal contact, with ATC. That said, PFE does support flight following as well as most of the usual multicom/unicom announcements...taking the runway/departing; reporting position on approach; reporting downwind, base and final; reporting clear of runway. The multicom/unicom announcements can be used if you begin a flight IFR and end it VFR. The most common situation would be departing from a controlled airport and landing at an uncontrolled one. Conversly, you can take off from an uncontrolled airport, pick up your flight plan in the air and complete the flight under full ATC. Having used both RC and PFE, I can't say either has an overwhelming advantage over the other. The important thing is that either one is a vast improvement over the default ATC.

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?do=copyright&fid=116686

PFE has a variety of accents from around the world, especially if you buy the voice expansion pack. It will detect what part of the world you're flying in and use the appropriate voice sets, or you can customize assign voice sets to areas of your choice. I fly only in the US and Canada, but if an Air China pilot is in my airspace and talking to atc, it will be in a voice with a Chinese accent. Speaking of real voices, I very highly recommend the liveatc.com site. It's free and allows you to listen to real time atc chatter from specific airports and control centers. Coverage is spotty, but it's incredibly cool to be hear real controllers giving taxi, approach, departure, etc. instructions for the airport you're at in FS. I bought an inexpensive little program also called LiveATC that acts as an interface between the LiveATC web site and whatever plane you're flying. It allows you to tune atc streams from the web site on your FS com radio. Usually what I'll do is have PFE atc on com 1 and liveatc on com 2. It's great ear training, and you get to hear some interesting and amusing real life exchanges.

I was an FDC user also (long time ago), but the great support I got from Dave March was definitely a factor in giving PFE a try. If you want to keep it simple, you can have PFE set up and running in a couple of minutes. I don't use FSnavigator, but I believe PFE will work with any FS9 or FS2002 compatible flight plan. PFE has lots of options for configuring SIDs & STARs, waypoint altitudes, and other stuff, but you don't have to use them if you don't want to. For example, when flying a STAR you can indicate that you want approach to give you vectors to final, or you can fly your own approach at pilots' discretion. It's a nice touch. You should be prepared for the fact that PFE does approach vectors differently than RC. You can set the distance of the final approach fix from the runway,and also the localizer intercept angle. I had to twiddle with those settings a bit before I found the ones that worked well. You should only have to do that once, though. Also, PFE is not aware of terrain elevation surrounding an airport like RC is, so if you're flying in mountainous areas you have to remember to specify a final approach altitude that will keep you clear of the granite. Good luck. I don't think you'll be unhappy with either RC or PFE.

Wow! Now that looks like an airport oughta look. Excellent work! :Applause: You'll find that making scenery is as addictive as crack. Fortunately it doesn't cost nearly as much. :wink:

I used RC for many years, since before FS9 had its own atc. I was a beta tester and recorded one of the voice sets for version 3. While I appreciate the developers' commitment to "quality not calendar", as they put it, v5 is taking an absurdly long time to appear, and now it's not certain if it's even going to be finished or not. I decided to try PFE. After the expected learning curve and period of adjustment, I am very pleased with it and will not be going back to RC. Neither program is perfect, but I think PFE has the edge in features. If RC5 ever appears, I'll be eager to see what it does.

I happen to know IOS pretty well, so I'll answer your question. In the future though, I recommend you post questions about using IOS on the Flight1 support forums. Nothing against the nice folks here. It's like John Dillinger said when he was asked why he robbed banks. "Because that's where the money is." :smile: 1. First pic shows the three basic shapes I'd start with. Building base is green, main roof is orange, extension to building is aqua. 2. In the next pic I've 1) clicked the move part tool, 2) clicked on a vertical line to constrain movement in that direction, and 3) dragged the top outside edge of the extension downward until the slope of the top of part of the extension matches the slope of the roof. In the third pic you can see how it all blends together when all 3 parts are the same color. Total time about two minutes. Hope this helps.

Bing Maps is a great resource. It has angled, rotatable views of most locations. I believe thats your hanger in the pic. Not good enough to use directly as textures (except maybe for the roof), but certainly good enough to serve as a model for making your own textures. 99% of the hangers you'll find are either wood or corrugated metal siding, and those are easy to find on the web.

Very true. I consider myself lucky when I can find pics of an airport that can be used as is for textures. This doesn't happen very frequently. Instant Object Studio is a very capable tool. All you need to do now is learn how and where to look for textures. Fortunately there are gobs of free photo textures on the internet that you can use to create suitable substitutes. I've amassed a collection of textures in various categories -- doors & windows, roofing, concrete & asphalt, wood, etc., that I use constantly. The best site I've found specifically for textures is cgtextures.com...it's a gold mine. I often also just do a Google search for something I need. Speaking of Google, you should always do search for the airport you're working on. I almost always find something useful. Needless to say, you should have a decent graphics editing program and know how to use it. What airport exactly is this one in the Poconos you're working on?

Thank you so much for these great textures! I've used the Bird's Eye View and then FScene textures, and I like yours much better. Let the eggheads argue...I'm going to fly and enjoy the best view I've had so far in FS9. :lol:

Another possible solution would be my library of small airstrip objects. It includes GA parking T's and lots of other stuff you'll probably find useful. You can import the objects into ADE and I even included thumbnails for you. Here's the link... http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?do=copyright&fid=143755

Good discussion. I'd be interested in knowing if any of you have been having stuttering or other problems with my scenery. For years now I've been using DXT1 with alpha channel and mips almost exclusively. The only reason I'll use DXT3 is if I need a semi-transparent texture. Oh yeah....I always respond if someone emails me with a question or problem. I must be lucky because I've had very few of these considering the number of sceneries and scenery objects I've uploaded. :smile:

I certainly agree, and there are plenty of public domain objects available without having to "borrow" custom objects from someone else's work. I'm supposed to be working on a new tower and terminal for KATL, but I'll probably goof off and go flying instead.

A few? I've uploaded about 50 FS9 scenery object libraries myself. The number of files in the FS9 Scenery Design library here on Avsim is over 600, and the majority of those are probably scenery objects. I've seen lots of nice sceneries people have done with these "prefab" objects. I use AFX and Instant Scenery. I don't think any of the freeware programs are even close to Instant Scenery when it comes to placing objects, but I agree that ADE9X is the best of that bunch. As for creating your own scenery objects, I've put in lots of time with Gmax, Sketchup, and Instant Object Studio, and I prefer Instant Object Studio. It's great to be able to create objects direcly in FS rather than going having to go through makemdl or ModelConverterX. For a good example of what IOS can do, have a look at my Port Columbus KCMH scenery for FS9. Every building on the field, as well as the jetways, gate numbers and taxiway markings, were made using IOS. That said, 3D modelling definitely has a learning curve and requires patience.

Thanks for the info, Dick. I'm not a huge fan of large ground photo textures anyway, but I do incorporate smaller pieces within the airport boundaries. I've been using texture vtps, and it works nicely. Speaking of airports, if anyone would like to adapt my recently uploaded KCMH for use with FSX, feel free to do so. :smile:

Thanks, Dick, for yet another contribution to the cause. :smile: Would it be possible to make a version that grabs just an LOD13 section in a higher resolution? This would make is possible to make a smaller but more detailed area in Sbuilder. I could do the same thing using Exploring Google Earth and a lot of patience...it would be great to have a more streamlined process.

You didn't say if you're using FS9 or FSX. Someone's already done a very nice version of KOGD for FS9. Just search the file libraries here or on Flightsim.com.

Doesn't the Ruby language work only with the payware version of Sketchup? I never tried it. There's an easy way to tell if a Warehouse model is going to be too complex for FS9. Once the model is loaded in Sketchup, choose "Model Into" from the "Window" menu. I go by the number of edges. 2,000 - 2,500 seems to be the point at which the model won't compile properly.

You can use the two programs together, but each will have it's own set of files. You cannot save something you've made in IS into an IOS file, and vice versa. If I understand you correctly, you've excluded the stock buildings and now want to add your own buildings and some grass. It doesn't matter in which order you do this, but neither IOS or IS are very good for adding the grass. That's best done using either your afcad program (if you don't already have one I recommend AFX for payware or ADE9X for freeware), or Sbuilder, an excellent free program that let's you make all sorts of changes to the landscape. Hope I've answered your question.