In broad terms there are two kinds of flightsimmers, "users" and "makers". Most flightsimmers are "users" who simply use the sim and whatever add-ons are available to them and enjoy flying the planes and exploring the flightsim world. The "makers", while few in number, are the creative souls who make this all possible, by making the actual sim plus the scenery, aircraft, panels, sounds, adventures, utilities...all the bits that make flightsimming what it is.

I made this! Maybe you could do this too...

In one sense I see myself as a "maker", since keeping this web site updated every day is hardly a small task and hopefully the flightsim hobby is better for it! Way back when, before I was running FlightSim.Com though, I was a "maker" in the sense I defined above. This was back in the FS4 days (which is just a reminder of how long I've been running FlightSim.Com...) and back then I did quite a bit of scenery design and even created an aircraft...my personal Archer, years before DreamFleet did their much better version of it for FS2002/FS2004. Designing was very rewarding, but there are only so many hours in the day and in addition to running the web site I do have other activities that I like to participate in...

Well, with that introduction, let me tell you a story about how I have again moved, in a small way, from being just a "user" to being a "maker" and maybe suggest and encourage others to do the same.

Here in New England we've endured a rather dreadful period of weather, days on end of ceaseless rain with some places getting a foot or more in a short period with significant flooding. Add to that a recent ankle sprain and I find myself stuck inside with many fewer activity options than normal! One day I notice a copy EZ-Scenery that had been sitting unused on my shelf for a while. I'd been doing some simming from my real world home airport and couldn't help notice that it could really use some improvement. Maybe it was time to see how "EZ" EZ-Scenery really was...

I had it quickly installed and a read through the instructions proved that it was, in fact, really easy! Adding new scenery objects required nothing more than slewing to the desired spot, using a slider to orient the object in the right direction, and saving it. If desired, objects can be resized or elevated (to go on top of other objects). Screw up, and objects can be selected and moved or deleted. And that's really all there is to it!

Well, nothing is ever quite that easy...

Another look at my new scenery.

With the EZ-Scenery learning curve out of the way I turned to doing real scenery on my home airport, Minute Man Air Field (6B6). I cracked open my Jepp Guide as a reference to the airport layout, and quickly realized why the FS2004 scenery was so bad...it did in fact match the Jepp Guide layout, which is based on official sources, yet what was shown clearly does not match with the real world. So, no blaming Microsoft, as they did accurately replicate the erroneous real world data.

But this did bring me to the realization that just dropping new objects in place was not the answer, not when the taxiways and aprons were so far wrong. Since these are a fundamental part of the airport facilities they can be changed, but now I need a different utility, the famous AFCAD.

So, it's back to installing again, reading the manual, and sure enough, AFCAD is also quite easy to use. All your work is visible as you do it, so it's just a matter of laying out runways and taxiways, and drawing aprons and many-sided polygons. Since the official layout was wrong, I turned to Google maps and their satellite images for my layout template and was soon able to come up with a set of airport facilities that actually did match the real world. Now I could taxi around the airport that I knew so well in the real world and not get lost!

Back to actual scenery design...but now a new problem. Microsoft of course puts a few buildings at virtually every airport no matter how small and 6B6 was no exception. The trouble is, now that the ramp was correctly laid out, the buildings were wrong and actually in the way. What to do...

Well, even "users" are familiar with exclude files and that of course is the solution. But as a scenery design novice, how to make one? Well, of course our utility "makers" have come up with solutions. The first one I came across was called ExcBuilder and it sounded like just the thing. Ultimately I did get the exclude file I needed but ExcBuilder does not do everything it's advertised to do and I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Briefly, what's required is a pair of coordinates (latitude and longitude) that define a rectangle that you want excluded. Turn these into an XML file, compile that into a BGL file with bglcomp (part of the FS2004 SDK) and there you have it. The concept is easy at least.

In any event, it worked...I now had bare ground to place buildings on. Back to EZ-Scenery, only to discover a problem. EZ-Scenery comes with a library of hundreds of objects and can use many more that are built into FS2004 but oddly I could not find what I needed: hangars. I am building an airport after all and what could be more basic? Well, again there is a solution, in that other "makers" have created new original scenery object libraries and have also organized the default objects to make them more accessible. There are hangars, you just have to find them!

Before--FS2004 default scenery.

Well, not surprisingly, nothing that was available was an exact match for 6B6's buildings, but I did find ones that were reasonably close. Those plus some airplanes from another add-on library and some other vehicles and miscellaneous objects and what do you know...the airport has really come alive and with a little imagination it does look like home! The screen shots show the difference all this made.

I then added a few local reference points outside the airport. Real world airports are not as easy to see as flightsim airports are. 6B6 looks like nothing but endless trees until you are practically right on top of it, so in the real world I've found several large objects that guide me into the traffic pattern. With these in place in my flightsim scenery I can now fly into my home airport without getting lost.

This has become a fairly long story, but in fact all of this took place over just a few days. What I learned is that the average flightsim "user" can expand his horizons and become at least a novice "maker" in fairly short order and without all that much difficulty. But the difference--to now have control over your flightsim world--what a change! Even if you never do more than make a few simple scenery changes for your own use the ability to do that, and not be limited by what others are willing to provide for you, makes a a world of difference. It's now your flightsim world.

I had fun with my introduction to scenery creation and I hope by telling the story it will inspire others to give it a try too. The learning involved is well worth it and the results are sure fun to use.

Of course, it would be nice if the buildings actually looked like the real 6B6 buildings, but to do that I'd need to learn 3D object design... Hmmm...

Nels Anderson
nels@flightsim.com
Download the scenery described in this article