aarque

Check my vids! TBH I'm not the best pilot, but if you just let go of the stick, K-Max will settle into a gentle climb, so there's that. I gave it a ton of yaw authority to simulate the servo tab control system, some people don't like it, but I've had a few helicopter pilots review it favorably. There is a logging version that is still experimental, it likely will be possible with the MSFS 2024 engine, but limitations are thus far preventing inclusion in 2020. I used gauge logic to make the sling load shift under the aircraft for the Bambi bucket, the military version sling load and the grapple and I also used gauge logic to keep the log on the ground when the grapple is within 50-100 feet. When you close the grapple, the log becomes attached to it.

Placing a pinned endorsement above File Library News signals a departure from the old Avsim. It appears Avsim may have abandoned it's roots and is shifting focus on what type service it provides to the community. It seems to be encouraging commerce, even though it has arguably the worlds largest repository of community shared files; what a burden, eh? The file library may be stagnant, but I don't see any pins encouraging amateurs, novices or grass roots developers to upload new files, or learn how to create content.

Edit the bitmap or texture that controls night illumination which does not have a _L or _LM extension. If there is night illumination, it exists. Bill was trying to help you not have to learn too much about arcane MSFS file conventions. Try this: do not look for any particular name. Find a pair of almost identical textures in the texture folder. If this particular model has multiple liveries, select a simpler model until you feel more proficient because multiple liveries can require multiple texture folders in order to render all night illumination. Eventually you will find a texture (use the _LM ones as examples) that has noticeable portions of tail and or fuselage that looks relatively "normal." Now locate the texture that is shaped identically, but is dark in most places. Windows will be bright and the tail might look like a spotlight is directed to illuminate a logo there. This is the texture you want to edit and perhaps several more similar. The _LM suffix is used to help identification and some software uses it, the simulator ignores the "_LM" designation.

I think it would be helpful to see the exe.xml and dll.xml documents to see what executables and modules are being started. I don't notice any anomalies in the FSUIPC report, but Pete is definitely your expert here.

Yes, along the lines of the messages that described the "loss of community" over this past week. How Avsim hosts forums for so many product developers. For me, some two bit puddle jumper, I check the site first thing every morning and yes, I feel its absence. Hell ya I want to blame Tom, or the hacker, somebody...these Azure golden conucopia out-of-reach cloud providers. Like frikkin angels they are. So, Tom, you should just chill, imo. I wouldn't count on not being vilified, but it's not because we hate you; it's more like we hate to miss you.

If I could offer; I have just been in contact with Gabriele and he has asked me to try and clear things up, as I am located stateside and not directly affected by the recent calamity in his region. First off, on behalf of VERO, Gabriele asked me to thank you for making this investment. He wanted to express that the issue wasn't so much your ISP, but that others had no trouble and the real issue was his own connectivity in regards to resolving your dilemma. The circumstance is that his residence remains without power into the indefinite future. He is unable to use his own computer, he must travel to a city with power and connect using public machines in internet cafes. I have known Gabriele a long time and he is incredibly resourceful and talented, his situation would probably have me overwhelmed and then where would we be. The fact that he gets up and gets messages out and called me to help with this is a testament to his commitment to this product and his customers. Please understand this. We'll be sending along details of how we can resolve this for you.

Ok, I have started the upload, the package should be available tomorrow. Apologies for the delay, I took the time to add a static and a flyable UAV:

Nice. The Navy's excitement over the LCS program is something I wanted to bring to FSX. While the Independence has some spectacular flat water performance, Freedom seems especially "corsair-like" to me; as if the military studied the best of what makes piracy possible, then turned it against the pirates. An interesting rumor about Freedom's new paint is that the scheme was designed by the crew, as opposed to experts trained in the art of camouflage. Who or what does anything visually nowadays anyway; but one of the more obvious clues that the "camo" is actually cosmetic and not functional are the four black mounds that cover some very sooty exhaust ports:

AI Carriers with hard deck. I toyed with the idea of porting Essex as a static spawnable, but what would be the fun of that. This way, you can park it by Cyprus (or wherever) and play with those sorts of scenarios. It's nice to see the fleet all laid out, you have Essex, the two LCS, two Oliver-Hazard Perry's, a Ticonderoga class cruiser (Lake Champlain) and and an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer (Fitzgerald). Frame rates only drop dramatically when you get in close to Essex, a shame really. Thanks for the feedback, I put a lot of time into LCS-1.

Here are some screens from my latest project. USS Essex is the centerpiece, but it is really a compilation of modern US Naval vessels. I'll upload the whole "fleet" soon, probably this weekend. Just a head's up, Essex isn't really flyable, especially at night, but if you can manage to get your aircraft into position at one frame-per-second, you can get some awesome screen shots - and besides, your system might be better than mine. Here are the shots: Here are some of the other ships, USS Independence: And LCS-1, USS Freedom: You can even practice the rescue when, after the botched Iran hostage extraction, an Oliver-Hazard Perry frigate turned into the wind so a stricken MH-53 could land on the helo deck in order to repair it's refuel probe: I just have a few more details to fix up before this package is ready.

I live in Underwood, Wa. My house is about 2 miles from the Columbia, in the heart of it, basically. Awesome scenery, true, very rugged as well. One of the cool and unexpected perks is the quantity of unique air and water craft we get in the Gorge; presumably because of the spectacular scenery - and also terrain masking. Every summer we get biplanes and relic war birds, a B-17 used to fly in formation with a B-24, but I read somewhere that the B-17 burned. I've seen A-10's fly below me over the Hood River bridge; the Intruders did and the Growlers currently do practice runs on the bridge out of Whidbey Island and surprisingly, the Hornets are quieter than the Intruders. I've seen Ch-53's sipping from a 130 at an altitude that appeared to be within the walls of the Gorge, impossible I know; and I once saw something, probably a OANG F-15 fly past the dining room of the Columbia Gorge Hotel. That would have to have been at about 500,' one can only see the opposite wall of the Gorge from that vantage. I once saw John Kerry windsurf here; but the weirdest thing would have to be the black surface effect boat that briefly visited. I think it was a Lockheed-Martin rapid deployment project and the local news said it was being tested here because it was relatively private, huh. I remember the thing threw a wake that would have to have been visible from space.

Thanks guys, really not that ambitious, more about patience, like when I wait for my 300,000 polygon carrier to render. Something I'd wanted to do - and I learned incredible things about both the subject and the technique along the way. For example, during my Rybachiy project, a movie was released starring David Duchovny and Ed Harris that centered around K-129, the Soviet sub that sank in 1968. What are the chances of a major motion picture release, based at an obscure location, happening while working on a scenery of the same place..? I'd hoped to get some good views of the base, but Rybachiy, the town of Viluchusk and the entire peninsula remain closed to non-residents. The port used was much larger than Rybachiy without the steeply encroaching hills on all sides and further snow capped peaks. Still, the story was fascinating and offered some interesting explanations for some of the K-129 mysteries and anomalies.

Here are a few images from two scenery items I am getting ready to upload. The first is intended as an enhancement to the Aerosoft Kamchatka - the Lost World scenery; it is the Rybachiy Submarine Base in Avachinskiy Bay. Rybachiy had the NATO reporting name "The Hornet's Nest" and remains the site of the only functioning nuclear SLBM storage facility in the Russian arsenal. It is also the site of large scale decommissioning and dismantling and in typical Soviet fashion has a large graveyard of submerged and half sunken ships and hulls, which is represented in the scenery. I also modeled the SAM site at the top of the hill. ______________________ The other scenery "item" is a landable carrier from the Indian Navy called the INS Vikramaditya. Similar to the Lioning, the newly re-furbished, former Soviet Kiev class aircraft carrier serving China's Navy; India chose to allow steadfast ally Russia to complete what is being described as the future flagship and final non-indigenous warship of the Indian Navy...It was supposed to be delivered in 2008, oops! Vikramaditya, which means "Brave as the Sun," has animated radars, deck and night lighting, working IFLOS, cables and catapults. She floats 40,000 tons leaner than either the Admiral Kuznetzov or the Lioning. Some small portion of this may be made up when the ship carries it's own defensive system, currently it has two PK-2 chaff/decoy dispensers, besides it's air complement for protection. The latest plan is to acquire the AK-630 CIWS and longer range Barak SAM; I added the much more wicked Kashtan and two Barak 8 launchers. I also made some escorts, the INS Talwar, India's latest "stealth frigate" and a Russian destroyer of the Fregat Udaloy II class, which might be a typical escort from Severodvinsk, a trip that is expected to occur late this year. The airplane I am testing with is the MiG-29K from Iris, which I made a believable INAS skin for. I do not know how to fold wings or deploy the fuel probe, but I have started to get the traps despite the lack of an AOA indicator, which, along with their equivalent of slime lights, are present on the real bird. Some of the traps are a little hairy.. This is a perfect line up. Speed, altitude; the "ball" is centered in the green lines. Maintain throttle and pick your cable. My intention is to wrap up the "readme's" and upload Rybachiy in time for Saturday, Sunday at the latest; then Vikramaditya next weekend.

The payware version of SU is identical to the free one with the additional capacity to produce commercial quality layout. An example would be a three view drawing of a machined bracket. Ruby script is something I'd associated with web development as a way to incorporate dynamic graphical elements and I could be entirely mistaken. At any rate, it is open source and is reported to be easy to learn. Insofar as vertices, I have read the true killer is "draw calls," or at least some sort of obscure balance between the two. While SU uses colors, MCX renders those colors and they show up fine (by and large) in FSX, each one represents a single draw call; whereas a texture that has the colors "burned into it," is only one draw call - and the default result is a .bmp, by the way. I suggest that your 2000 vertex threshold might represent resource exhaustion, because I am able to compile and test much larger models. From a 20k polygon model I derive a 2000 poly low LOD version. I am not suggesting it is feasible or practical, but it is possible and they appear to work fine. Consider some larger scenery projects where the terrain details have to be built as a model; those can be immense as well. I think the volcanoes at Kamchatka are 600 or 1,100 mb. Imagine rendering that sucker, take for freaking ever. Speaking of which, I am getting a nice library of my own, I like collecting unique or obscure models. If you need a Tu-204 or a J-15 or something, I could probably make you some nice compact ones to try..

Maybe Michael also uses FS9 then. You guys probably don't know about the work at the train sim sites, but some of them have used the open Ruby scripting language of Sketch-Up to produce specific .mdl related plug-ins. I am referring to LOD generators, untextured surface highlighter and other very useful additions. They work just as well for FSX .mdl's as they do for Train Sim ones. So, we have specific Sketch-Up tool's to help us and Arno's magnificent program to put the finishing touches on and convert. I tell you...I see aerial photos that show GA planes around the Garmin facility (in the KSLE area). So I go to the Warehouse and run a search for GA planes and come up with a Quest Kodiak and Diamond Katana. Both perfect and - to me at least - look absolutely plausible and proper in the scenery. That was a whim, took maybe an hour, if - and while the Kodiak is 3500k, the Katana is 95. I don't know how many polygons you can fit into 95k, but I'll take 'em cause I can't draw either - not compared to that elegant piece of digital origami that is ready made for placement in the FSX - or FS9, for that matter - world.

While there may be unusable models at the Trimble 3D Warehouse, my scenery stands to show that statistic is far from accurate. I found only one Oshkosh Mk48 and used it. I found only one M978A4 tanker and used it. By your reckoning, I should have had to discard more HEMTT's than I encountered and that is simply not the case. There was one, among all the Oshkosh HEMTT's, that I just couldn't use. All blacked out and rounded corners, it was styled from The Dark Knight; his mobile headquarters or something. I almost used it anyway but I just couldn't take the curves and besides, this is McNary not Bagram, I already had enough. The fact that many of the models need to be thinned, or streamlined does not make them unsuitable. The work involved, to me, is worth the magnificent sense of immersion I get when I look around from the runway or tour the area and there were so very few times I said to myself, "I need to start from scratch in order to achieve that." My scenery works pretty good in my system. Older i9, 580 GTX, pretty nice but definitely not "a whale." It works for me and it appears to be working for - to borrow your math - the majority of the 350 people that have downloaded it thus far, as every single one of them has a link to this thread, so...thanks for the perspective.

Thanks for the suggestion. To free up resources, you could remove some of the object .bgls from the scenery folder. KSLE_obj6.bgl contains extra hangars, vehicles for the FedEx building and a very minor building south of the GA hangars. Removing it would have minimal effect. KSLE_obj5.bgl is probably the biggest drain; many of the larger models incorporate volumes of polygons. Removing it will hide most of the custom ground vehicles, the airport terminal, the restaurant, several other key buildings and the single effect to illuminate the tower. This .bgl would be one to try to keep. KSLE_obj4.bgl has more ground vehicles, the static Blackhawk's and Kiowa's, the UAV, some hangars and the tower. Aside from losing the tower and leaving those lights hanging in mid-air, that could be one to remove. Lots of draw calls with those aircraft I think, they are colored and not textured. KSLE_obj3.bgl is almost entirely the north fuel depot, some ISU-80's and static GA planes. It could be removed and not missed. KSLE_obj2.bgl is mostly just Hummers, Hemtt's and the UAV station, it also could be removed. KSLE_obj.bgl was the first, mostly hangars and some of them are big. It's not terribly critical but also doesn't use much in terms of resources. One could remove it but I don't think it would help. Finally, security.bgl has four police cars and with the lightbars and eye candy are each almost 5 megabyte. Since they were made with Sketch-Up, they are likely packed with polygons so definitely take that one out. See if that helps.

Yes, exactly what I was thinking about my comrade. Thanks for the Bing Maps hook-up. Tell you what I really need is good imagery that isn't within US borders. I noticed Ray Smith had uploaded an AFCAD for Capital International Airport, in Beijing, China's...capital. He did an excellent job of mimicking the new international terminal using default buildings, but it turns out that T3 is currently the largest building in the world and it is really beautiful. They say it looks like a dragon, but I think it looks more like an ant. It is absolutely stunning at night and of course there are several excellent models, all they would need is that beautiful night texture and placement on a halfway decent ground. So far my technique to get that ground has been to get a reasonably good working map with SBuilderX, that comes out to about 175 mb; but I don't think it requires seasons because it is almost entirely concrete, dirt or grass -- then I go in with Google Sightseeing and scroll down real close until just before the digital distortion shows, copy/paste that tiny swatch on the .bmp that is to be my photo ground, align it and so on. I try to get as much ground detail as I can onto that .bmp because it get's washed out somewhat compiling to .bgl. Better detail ground images than Google, or at least bigger pieces would be awesome. I don't know if they exist, even Terraserver can't help. What they offer doesn't even have T3 or even any evidence of the coming construction and they want $25 for that map. The "new" terminal was opened in 2008..

Thanks for the thumbs up. Yes, the photo textures, by and large, are questionable. Then there is the other side of it; while doing my project, I was also adding similar models to the Google Earth 3D building Layer. About a week after I had added the KSLE terminal building and had it approved in a process I believed was automatic, if not routine, I noticed that my building had been removed! Some other identity with two backwards "N's" in his name had submitted a superior model. "#####?" I thought, "all these buildings yet to do and my only toe hold on Google Earth (at the time) has to be 'improved' upon?" ...but it was superior and I ended up using the Russian guy's model. I still intend to drive to Salem, obtain crisp and otherwise undownloadable texture images of that freaking terminal, use HIS model and upload it with my textures to knock the dude off my corner of Google Earth, the nerve. He is welcome to shoulder me out of Minsk or Chernobyl or wherever he hangs out in return. My point is that there is usually at least one good face and I have learned tricks to smooth those grainy textures. Bottom line, the models are already geo located and assembled. So even if they need textures, one is still ahead, imo. By the way, I've learned that the Blue Angels will perform at Hillsboro this year, perhaps our paths will cross.

Well... I would say the biggest issue would be the textures. You are very skilled with basic FS tools, correct? It should be a simple matter to use a program like ModelConverterX to dig out the relevant models, recompile them with .BMP's, then recompile those into the library .bgl's. You should be able to spoof the GUID's from the old models so you can continue to use the placement .bgl. I know ModelConverterX has a FS9>FSX flat Earth converter and you can probably run that backwards for the placement bgl if you need to. If I'm not mistaken, Airport Design Editor also offers retro compatibility adjustments. I can send you .mdl files or possible even .jpg/.bmp's if I have them. I'm looking at your KPDX among other options for a current and quality FSX Portland airport. 3D Warehouse already has models for every single structure on the grounds. I live in the Gorge, near Hood River.

I believe DDS textures are FSX only, apologies. If I am mistaken, then perhaps try it - and - if nothing else, do this: take the file "Photo_KSLE_Ground.bgl" and drop it into the scenery folder of KSLE you use in FS9, or make a KSLE directory with the "Photo_KSLE_Ground.bgl" inside the scenery folder, declare that in the scenery and you can fly the photo scenery. The AFCAD and it's objects should work, yes? So there's a conditional yes, or no, for you...

I recently completed this scenery and am uploading it to the Avsim library. I started this topic in case people have issues, however, there are things people might want to offer comment on. For example, the water level in the nearby lake is much lower than the surrounding terrain and I suspect this is due to interaction between the blend mask and terrain mesh I am using, because I notice that water bodies farther away have normal shores. I have pictures here: http://s96.photobucket.com/user/aarque/media/KSLE%20McNary%20Field%20Salem%20Oregon%20USA/KSLE.jpg.html?sort=6&o=2 and I'll link the scenery after I get it uploaded.

Thanks, I plan to have it uploaded it by Saturday 4/20.

This is a little project I've been working on for FSX. It seemed like there was a big hole in the ORBX coverage on the way to Portland over Salem (Oregon, of course) with the default airport down there, so I set about fixing it. The result has seasonally edited photo textures and I designed it so the blend mask cuts off the photo scenery right at the perimeter road. For the most part, it does exactly that: Here's a view of the tower and terminal: I created several of the buildings and many of those are also in the Google Earth 3d Buildings Layer. Other buildings were already modeled and I converted them to FSX model format. Some buildings are a hybrid, the tower uses a "generic" control booth, on top of a photo textured structure. The red effect lights were created and placed by me: The Aviation Department building in the foreground and the weather balloon shelter in the background were both made by me, with photo textures and items from the 3D Warehouse added for realism. A few shots of the National Guard base on the other side of the field.. The entrance gate: Did you notice the Huey?: Here's the apron; mostly Blackhawks (of course), but it's not implausible that some Kiowa's would stop for supplies and lunch at the Flight Deck: Finally, in the background, you probably saw this: The control booth was free online, but the AAI RQ-7B Shadow drone, I made. It is my practice to assemble polygons in a likeness, then apply textures to imitate reality and it was proving extremely difficult to find good images of a radially finned, air-cooled Wankel motor. Finally I located, on an entirely Asian - Chinese I think - website, a PDF of a cut-and-paste paper model. I Photshopped it into a .jpg and that is what you see as the back of the motor - and I didn't even do the author justice. Apparently he intended the modeler to fold the paper exactly like the fins of the motor, radially and in such a way that would dissipate heat as the wind blew through them, like a processor cooler. Theoretically that could be done in Sketch-up, I have seen images of turbine sections made with a trigonometric algorithm, but then you have all those extra polygons to render, besides the effort. Right now the scenery weighs a hefty 430 odd mb. I'm not so worried about the size but I am getting a few FSUIPC dings when I zoom out or mess around too much. I believe the snags are tied to light effects - and all the rich detail, of course; but some lights are much worse than others, so I am still juggling combinations. Here's a link to a few more pictures: http://s96.photobucket.com/user/aarque/slideshow/KSLE%20McNary%20Field%20Salem%20Oregon%20USA?sort=6