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Creating Photoscenery for Airfield?

Hangar34

Hangar34

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unitedkingdom
Hi all,

I'd like to create a photoscenery background image for my local airfield, utilising an exisiting airport layout (for the moment) in SBuilderX. I'm a complete beginner when it comes to doing this sort of thing, so some help would be appreciated.

I've managed to get my background map created in SBuilderX and zoom level 19. Now what do I do? What sort of polygon do I need to draw around the actual airfield boundary to 'cut' it out to an irregular shape so that it blends into the surrounding area in FSX?

Then what process do I follow to export it so that when I add it to the Scenery Library and start my flight from the airfield I can see the texture on the ground?

I haven't yet found a tutorial yet that is simple enough to take me through the necessary steps from beginning to end withour it going off at a tangent and discussing other types of polygons, water masks, blending masks, road vectors etc.

Can anyone provide some simple advice or links?

Thanks.
 
Photo based scenery goes into FSX in a square or rectangular format. What shows up in the game is controlled by a blendmask, so it's not a tangent, it's more of a necessity. Details are in the FSX SDKs, along with an example set of files.

Once that task is finished, the help file for SBuilderX has more information on how to use a blendmask with the program.
 
I recall reading a post about the same but for FS9, however I can not for the life of me remember where it was. It was either here, simviation, simflight, avsim, ptsim, flightsim, or one of the other countless places I frequent for tips and tricks (half of the tips and tricks only work for select project styles if you follow meticulous formatting and layouts in the precise order of their set in their description of the tip. As most of us know, depending on the project and the way it can get dull, a set order is not readily available. Although a plan is usually in place, its not a 'do models first', 'do background image second, do airport taxis third, do frequencies 4th, etc. Im saying a generic order is there but its not a hardcore must follow it this way to do it type of project).
By a large margin, and ive been doing FS research and site file/forum browsing since 1998, FSDeveloper is the sole compilation location for information, I am amazed it took me til 2012 to sign up for it (not first time here, but first time member). The others are very good, but I personally believe FSDev is the best. Well organised, clean layout, general information wiki, and a large team of staff and users that stay pretty much on topic usually with a quick response. Other forums lack organization and cleanliness. They are cluttered with ads and etc unlikeables. Response is about the same.
Only forum I have seen that comes close is VATSIM.net forum, however its not a developer forum per-se, but it is clean and well organised with fast responses.

FSDEV team, you did a great job.

EDIT: OOPS, after the good job notation, I forgot to mention the reason for this reply. :rolleyes: :o :D :p :eek:
Anyhow, I cant remember where I saw the post, so do you think you could do a quick map of what order or where to look to do this?

Watch I will remember in 2 days where the thing is. It was probably here and I probably replied to it requesting info or saying where I went wrong with it.
 
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Thanks for the replies.

Made some progress with this. A further question about the blend mask facility. If I want to just drag & drop my .TIF and .INF files onto Resample.exe, can I still just add '*_B.tif' as a suffix and it will still work? Or does this only work within SbuilderX itself?

Thanks
 
Hangar34 said:
Or does this only work within SbuilderX itself?
Click to expand...

Yes... and No.

SBuilderX will automatically utilize a similarly named blend mask to the source file when compiling the BGL file.

Once you've run through the first compile, where the INF file contains the necessary references to both files, subsequent re-compiles can be done via the drag and drop method with the INF file and Resample.

Resample knows nothing of the BMP or TIF or *_B.tif files, only what's contained in the INF file.
 
Great, thanks for the extra help. I've now managed to bring my photoscenery background into FSX and blend it in just fine.

So... I need to build the airfield completely now from scratch. Which airport design tool would probably be easiest for a beginner to use (e.g. ADE, Fsxplanner etc.)... any recommendations?

Also, in order to prepare for building my airfield, what else do I need to produce in SBuilderX... a flatten? An airport background poly?

Thanks for the continuing assistance folks.
 
Hangar34 said:
Great, thanks for the extra help. I've now managed to bring my photoscenery background into FSX and blend it in just fine.

So... I need to build the airfield completely now from scratch. Which airport design tool would probably be easiest for a beginner to use (e.g. ADE, Fsxplanner etc.)... any recommendations?

Also, in order to prepare for building my airfield, what else do I need to produce in SBuilderX... a flatten? An airport background poly?

Thanks for the continuing assistance folks.
Click to expand...

ADE is easy an free
idk fsxplanner
 
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Hangar34 said:
Thanks kevintampa5, I'll check out ADE.
Let the learning curve begin!
Click to expand...
I played wth fsxplanner for a bit, not fond of its interface. ADE is more straight fwd. FSXPlanner is powerful and a good tool, but it is icon and shorcut based, ADE is able to perform right clicking for a lot of features where planner can not. It is also less graphic based in some areas than ADE.
Not saying its bad, just different.

Oh, ADE learning curve is about the same as AFCAD 2.21 imo.
 
Right, come across a problem now...

Basically the airfield I'm doing needs to sit on top of some existing photoscenery. I've created the photo background, created the blend mask and they work fine. However, I now have water around outside area of the blend mask. I don't really need a water mask for the scenery, but I've tried creating one to eliminate the problem, but it's not working.

Any ideas folks?
 
Yes, I was going to post one... but then I realised that I think I've made a schoolboy error :o

The dev machine I was using has an SDK patched up to Acceleration, but the test FSX machine only has a RTM version of FSX Deluxe on it, so I think that might be where I'm seeing the problem manifest itself. Have since tested it on an SP2/Acceleration version of FSX and all seems fine.
 
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