FSXA MegaSceneryEarth Airports Project: KWRI

[Gaiiden]

Time to kick off a 3-week long project - McGuire Air Force Base. I've pulled out all the stock objects and have aligned the runways. Over the next day or three I'll be laying down the taxiways and aprons. I would have liked to cover only the actual taxiways to leave the yellow lateral lines showing like I do for my KEWR scenery but thanks to Twy H (far left) being incomplete I have to "pave" over the whole thing and extend that width onto the other taxiways as well.

There's also the matter of recent airport construction to take into consideration. Current satellite and aerial images shows work being done to Rwy 06/24 as well as the taxiways adjacent to it. Those two small ones in the middle have been completely eradicated, for example. Not much I can do about that though. Then there's the Marine Ramp off to the left of Rwy 36, which has been completely redone. That I can patch over with some grass aprons though.

Once aprons are down taxi lines and other markings will be drawn. Then parking and AI pathing will be put in and tested. Will have to import some military AI. Next will come the immediate airport objects. Then the surrounding airport objects. Trees will go in after that followed by lighting. Did I say 3 weeks? Maybe more

 

[EdGeneer]

Nice...

Is there any recent sat photography you can super impose over the top of that to easy your 'construction of the new construction'...?

I have thought about redoing my KGFL scenery with the new construction they are planning, but I have NO idea where I would get the updated imagery... Im almost thinking I have to 'draw' it in using 'other' photos etc to get the correct ground lines...

Looking nice for starters.... Keep us posted!!!!

 

[Southwest]

Nice work Gaiiden!

 

[Gaiiden]

Is there any recent sat photography you can super impose over the top of that to easy your 'construction of the new construction'...?

I don't know about getting ground scenery and I'm not willing to use Google Earth or anything like that as I think the copyright doesn't allow for it even though I'm not commercializing its use.

Besides, I like the challenge of working within design constraints, one of which is that I deal with the default MSE ground textures. Hasn't been a real problem so far, several dozen airports in

 

[Gaiiden]

Initial tarmac placement

the first pass of tarmac placement is done, although I still have to finish laying out the new marine ramp area to the west on that patch of grass apron.

Been rather engaged with my latest AVSIM product review - I didn't have anything for the month of Dec so that freed up a lot of time. I've extended the project into March.

 

[Gaiiden]

Not dead!

Took some time off to recharge the airport development batteries, and also because I started playing Mass Effect 1 at the beginning of January and decided I liked it so had to power through that and Mass Effect 2 (plus DLC) to make sure I was ready for Mass Effect 3 to launch at the beginning of next month.

So I spent today going back over my apron work and finalizing it, smoothing the curves and making sure everything is aligned. It was a bit tricky is some spots since certain materials don't overlap each other in the order you would like. Best example are those two concrete circles on the asphalt - the Hot Cargo ramps. Concrete is rendered under asphalt so to get the circles to show I had to surround them with asphalt tarmac. Thankfully ADE's helper shapes and being able copy/paste vertex coordinates made this process painless.

I've already begun laying down taxi lines and markings but may not have that all wrapped up for another day or so - there are some pretty complex taxi lines that will be a challenge to render. Luckily I like challenges.

I also loaded up a more appropriate REX HD concrete texture

 

[Gaiiden]

Main taxiway lines drawn

Spent development time today drawing down the taxi lines for the main taxiways. Google Earth provided measurements for pretty much everything, I did very little guesstimating when laying down the lines. I enjoyed tackling the lines in the second image the most. It's amazing how simple things become once you get the hang of using guidelines properly. I had to tweak 2 nodes after viewing the result in the simulator and that was it. Looks complex but actually very simple once you get the technique down.

You'll notice the taxiways are rather wide - tomorrow I'll be laying down the side lines that define the actual width of the taxiways, which varies. After that I'll start on the apron lines.

 

[Gaiiden]

main taxiways defined

Alright the taxiways are now all defined - they are pretty much all 75 feet wide. Again Google Earth was used for measurements and everything lined up very well, only had to do a teeny bit of apron adjustment. Getting the lines to show up where I wanted them wasn't a huge issue once you know how to set things up in ADE, since where ADE draws the line and where it actually shows up in the sim are not the same. So once you compensate properly for that it's all good.

Next up over the weekend I'll be doing the apron taxi lines, which are pretty complex and numerous!

 

[blk137]

the taxi way lines and runway detail look amazing!

 

[nzeddy]

Looks good!

 

[Gaiiden]

Ramp markings part 1

Thanks guys for the comments.

Got busy over the weekend so didn't get any work done on KWRI until today, when I started laying down the markings for the ramps. So far I've completed the eastern ramp and roughly 1/3 of the main ramp. Throwing down the lines is no problem, the main time-consuming process is measuring out the placement. But everything is still lining up perfectly in terms of measurements with only minor adjustments here and there.

 

[Gaiiden]

Ramp markings part 2

So if you thought yesterday's ramp markings were impressive today I finished up the entire main ramp area and whoooo what a job! I was able to re-use a lot of measurements so that sped things up a bit but still drawing so many lines takes time. Had to fudge a bit here and there to get things to line up and look proper but nothing that's a major departure from what's there in real life.

The only omission is that large empty space on the ramp to the left - there's some old defunct parking there that's got some exposed turf areas. Since I just covered over it all with an apron rather than cut around everything I just left out those parking spots altogether since they aren't used anyways.

The last picture shows the two ramps I have left to do on the other side of he airport - both have markings just as complex as the main ramp but I should be able to wrap them up tomorrow.

 

[Gaiiden]

Ramp markings part 3

Dev hours today were spent on only one ramp due to its complexity. I had to do a lot of guideline-laying before I could even start drawing taxi lines to make sure everything was measured out properly and to plan how to lay down the lines to get the finished look without making the end result completely unusable for AI aircraft. As it is I won't be able to path AI to every single spot but I wasn't planning on that anyways, given the vast number available. (users will still be able to start in any spot around the airport)

Despite the complexity I'm so experienced at doing this now I only had to re-compile the airport to check it in the sim 4 times. And then only very minor tweaks were needed to align some things.

Oh and just in case anyone thought I was staying zoomed out to hide sloppy line drawing, I made sure to zoom up close on one of the more complex areas for the second image

Also I'm going to start chatting up on the forums over at Military AI Works to see if there's any support there for some military AI that can bring this base to life.

Finishing up the last ramp tomorrow!

 

[Gaiiden]

Aprons complete! (1st pass, anyways)

I got distracted helping LHSim out with their LHDC airport file, so spent the last few days fixing things and sent it off to them for testing. Hopefully lots will make it into the next release.

Today I came back to KWRI and finished off the last apron, which is a nice milestone to reach as I'll be going on dev break next week to attend the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. So I can come back and dive right into the next part, which will be a day of reviewing all the curves I had to make myself and tweaking them to look better - also making sure all overlayed taxi lines are aligned properly.

In the images below you see the Marine parking area which is serviced by helicopters. As such since I wouldn't be pathing any AI through here I stuck with default fillets to create the parking arrangement - I had to lay taxi lines atop each other to allow the fillets to not be affected by other nodes that would shorten them - this is how they overlap. I completely eyeballed this section - Bing aerial photos is the only service that has a recent enough image of this new ramp to see taxi lines, and there was no way to measure.

Also note the bent lines in the second image. Another reason why I hate default fillets.

See everyone in March! *waves*

 

[pina47]

You guys might wanna check out terraserver, they have some pretty up to date imagery, and by up to date I mean only 1 or 2 years old, at least in my region

 

[Gaiiden]

Military AI!

You guys might wanna check out terraserver, they have some pretty up to date imagery, and by up to date I mean only 1 or 2 years old, at least in my region

Thanks but I can't use up to date imagery for this project, I have to use MegaScenery Earth textures.

So I finally got around to laying down the AI network and installing movement packages from Military AI Works. Unfortunately thanks to the great job I did creating the taxi lines and ground markings I had very little room to put down additional nodes to link up the AI paths. This means I couldn't run two separate AI networks for proper drive-through parking. In fact, I barely had enough spare nodes to be able to link up all the 100 parking locations without going over ADE's 3999 nodes-per-project limit (I have 3958 - eeps!).

On the upside, in relation to AI movement I think I figured out why, at ATC-controlled airports, aircraft would not get proper taxi directions to the gate and vanish from the taxiway when at non-controlled airports the aircraft would always taxi in fine. In learning more about and implementing drive through parking recently I realized that I wasn't placing an additional node close to the taxi-in hold short node to keep the AI from jumping at the hold short, which is when ATC looks for a parking location (parking location is also assigned upon landing, and that's what non-controlled airport AIs use successfully). Initial testing looks good, I'm getting aircraft taxiing in properly at KWRI.

Getting all the parking codes assigned was a bit of a trial that took me the most of the past two days to finish. I have a thread up over in the airport design forum looking to see if there's a better way for me to figure out what flights arrive/depart from KWRI so I can look up their codes in the aircraft.cfg. If anyone has a method they use for this, let me know here.

The results, however, are stunning. Huge props to the people over at MAIW because - wow! Just check out the pictures below, which are at 100% traffic density. I'm going to have to include my static aircraft for this airport as a separate BGL for once so that it can be disabled if people want to use just AI traffic! I'll probably have two - one for all static craft for people with AI off and one with lesser amounts of static craft for people who want to use some AI (like 50% traffic). The poor Marine helicopter tarmac looks all lonely still, hahah.

The next few days will be testing, testing, testing. Once I'm satisfied the AI is working and moving properly I'll move on to buildings. Or maybe I'll do trees first. We'll see.

 

[Gaiiden]

testing complete: fully-functional ATC!!

Happy to announce I've completed testing - there were 39 unique aircraft models visiting KWRI at some point during the week. Thanks to UT2 and SuperTrafficBoard I was able to spend a few hours today and yesterday testing arrivals for all of them on all four approaches. STB is an awesome program - I can call down any aircraft for a landing at any time after I set things up properly. So landing 39 aircraft generally takes just under an hour.

I'm also pleased to announce that the one major flaw in my use of custom taxiway lines has finally been overcome - ATC will now give proper taxi in directions to the user aircraft as well as all AI aircraft. FINALLY! As I explained in my last entry the problem centered around how I was placing the hold short node for exiting the runway. Once I learned how to adjust this getting things to work was easy:

So next comes object placement. Will report back this week with trees or buildings - still haven't decided which to start placing first.

 

[Gaiiden]

Weekly update #1

I could have been posting new pictures every day but decided to just pick a few angles at the end of each week demonstrating the various areas that have been completed. As you can see decent progress has been made but still, this will take a while

So far the runway objects like PAPI boxes, windsocks, etc are all in; also the central area of the airport is done with the control tower and such; the eastern tarmac area is filled in and I'm almost halfway along the main tarmac area.

I've decided to get all the trees and objects placed near the airport to get an idea for how far back I need to fill in trees to block out the horizon once all the buildings and stuff are in the way. So I'll wrap around the entire immediate airport periphery and then extend further out with trees and buildings (no objects) as needed.

As usual I'm just looking at the Bing aerial images for inspiration on what should appear where. I also downloaded a 3D military people library from FlightSim.com that recently went up so for the first time there will be people at my airport!

Then, once everything is in place because KWRI is so big it will probably be a major performance drag at the level of detail I'm currently placing objects at, so also for the first time I'll be setting objects scenery density so users can get rid of a lot of the smaller details and unimportant objects if they need to increase performance.

Also along this line I will be releasing a "fly-over" version of the airport that only shows the runways, taxiways, tarmacs and large airport buildings - the rest of the objects will be gone so there's minor to no FPS impact when you're simply passing by an airport - when you have many installed a couple can be quite close together and drag down the frames of the airport you're currently at.

 

[Gaiiden]

Main tarmac area finished

I've been juggling a lot so haven't been putting as much time into scenery design lately but I have pushed through this week and finished off the main tarmac area. The level of detail is definitely at a new level for me - it's a good thing I will be modifying objects to use scenery density settings because even on my machine when looking over a large portion of the tarmac area my frame rates drop into the single digits. It's a shame the simulator doesn't make better use of render occlusion - or is it the objects that are to blame?

I still have to fill in some more of the area farther back behind the main tarmac but that will be only buildings and trees - no objects - so things will go faster until I get around to the ANG tarmac where I will need to do a bit more detailing.

Something tells me this won't be done by the end of the month like I hoped But I think it will definitely be ready sometime in May.

 

[EdGeneer]

Wow, alot of objects there... looking good... hopefully there isnt alot of fps drops with all those... the military guy on the concrete barricade is a nice touch...