Instructions for the Airfield Construction Set

Airfield Construction Kit V.1.00 for CFSMap

designed by R.-J. Triebel, Hannover, Germany

What is the "Airfield Construction Kit" ?

The ACK is a collection of high quality extended bitmaps for designing Airfields, Taxiways, Roads and Railways for the Combat Flight Simulator and FS2000.

The ACK is working perfectly with Martin "Wizard" Wrights CFSMap program and includes a set of over 200 extended bitmaps with parts of runways, taxiways a.s.o, I have designed for the Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator.

Sceneries designed with the ACK have the same visual quality as the original airfields in the CFS scenery. In my humble opinion: just a bit better!

Working with this Kit and CFSMap makes scenery designing much easier than messing around with polygons!

Follow the instructions below carefully and see how it works:

First: Be sure to have downloaded and installed the following:

The airport 2.10 program from Pascal Meziat, and Manfred Moldenhauer.

It is downloadable on my site: www.combatflight.de It's located on the utility page.

Install the program and make sure to use a foldername that is less than 8 chars long (like apt210) Airport 2.10 can't handle the long filenames of Win 95/98 !

Install Martin Wright's CFSMap program

If you haven't it downloaded yet, it is available on his site: www.fly.to.mwgfx

To install it follow the included instructions carefully!

Create a new folder on your harddrive, name it "ack" and unzip the tiles10.zip from the ACK to that folder.

How to create a scenery:

Start CFSMap. Set the folders CFSMap is asking for. The texture folder could either be

cfs/textures if you want to design a scenery with the CFS ground textures or

"ack" if you want to work with the Airfield Construction Kit and keep the tiles in a separate folder

If you have set one of this pathes by clicking "done" you should see numbers like 090909s0.bmp in the window left hand of the screen.

Set Widht / Height to 10 at the gadgets in the upper left corner and click on the arrow under "Create". Choose "blank" there. The workarea should be filled with 100 little black windows now.

Then go to the "Airport Scale" gadget, insert the value "1" and delete the "4". This sets the scale of the scenery to a scale that is suitable for CFS airfields. Later you may try other values. Also set ALT to "3"

Now select a number in the window on the left side of the screen and browse with the "arrow up and down" caps of your keyboard through the tiles, which will be shown in the window below the list.

Then double click in any of the black windows in your workarea and the tile you've choosed should be show up there. Great! Half the work is done!

If you want to delete one tile, select the new one you want there or insert the black tile on top of the tile list.

Important: Please do NOT start to design an airfield now! You first should get familiar with the way I've organized the tiles.

Let's start with this: Choose the tile A0A000sB.bmp, it should be the third from top of the list and shows a part of a CFS runway which is centered in the middle. Now set this tile somewhere to your workarea. Below the tilelist you'll find 4 buttons "0" "90" "180" "270". Now click on 90 and the tile should be turned 90 deg to the right.

At the same time when the tile shows up, the program creates a new tile (the name of that is A0A001sB.bmp ) which will be written to your "cache" folder (i.e. C:\TEMP) and is available if you need it again.

Now insert the tile below the first tile of the runway by double clicking to that window. Hmmm, looks strange! The parts doesn't fit. Go back, click on the button 90 again and insert that tile. Now it fits!

The main problem if you create a runway, a whole airfield or roads is to have in mind, that the parts come in a way I have developed to create high quality airfields as easy as possible. That means, I didn't intend to design tiles that fit to every kind of airfield YOU want to design, the tiles are standarisized by me. The runways f.i. are placed in the middle, at the edge or some or a fixed number of pixels away from the edge. The reason was to make possible that you can have runways that are close together or in a distance. There are some tiles to connect this different kind of runways. Look at part A0A300sM.bmp. This tile makes it possible to connect a runway which runs down the edges with a runway that is centered.

There are some more tiles like that, check them out. To see if there is a connection to another tile at the edge you should magnify the picture by clicking on it! Some details are not visible on the little pictures. If you want, you may create three different runways now and connect them together. You will end up in a funny labyrinth, like i did the first time! ;-)

Have in mind, that you can't only create a runway top down, it works in every direction (N/E/S/W)! You see: It's working nice, but if you want to avoid peculiar airfields try to make a plan first. I always decide first, how many runways I want, how long they should be, how close they should be together and which heading they should have.

Now try to build a runway with an airfield and a taxiway! You see: In the beginning you need most of the time to search for tiles that fit together. Have in mind, that you can TURN the tiles too, to let them fit!

If you have something that looks like you want it (or doesn't look too peculiar) go to the "File" menu and save the mapfile for this example as "test1". Choose your folder carefully, so you'll find it later again. The best is to create a new one inside your apt210 folder and name it "maps".

Now it's possible to load your map later again. Lets try to do the next steps to see our airfield in CFS! Choose "Save Layout as Bitmap" from the file menu. Choose "test1" as name again, so you will know that the background bitmap belongs to this mapfile.

Now choose "Create Airport File" from the "File" menu and choose "test1" as name again. Now close the Airfield Construction Kit and start Airport 2.10

Working with Airport 2.10

At the first time you are running it, Airport needs to know some folder names. I haven't run an installation for a long time, but it should be easy to do it. Now you have to work on the basic settings of airport! Most of it you only have to do once, but it is necessary to do it properly! Go to the "Options / Preferences" menu and make sure, that the settings are like below:

Version: FS98 must be checked

Scenery screen: I have checked all boxes except the first one! Later you can play around with this settings a bit. But make sure, that you have the value "Show Grid" to 1000 meters ! Don't change this! Some users reported that they couldn't load their airfields again after changing this value to 100.

The FS path should point to your "Combat Flight Simulator" main folder.

Now the BGL path: The bgl file is that file that contains your scenery later and must be installed to the CFS/scenery/test1/scenery folder. Create that folder now. Close the preferences menu and minimize the airport window. Go to your "Combat Flight Simulator" folder, open the "scenery" folder and create a new folder, name it "test1". Now enter that folder and create two new folders inside. Name them "texture" and "scenery". Go back to the airport program and open the options / preferences menu again!

Set the BGL path to the Combat Flight Simulator / scenery / test1 / scenery folder! You have to enter this path every time you start a new (!) scenery properly, or Airport will create that file to the last folder you have used! Keep that in mind!

Now let's load our mapfile! Click on "File" "Open" and browse to the folder where you have saved the test1 files (apt210 / maps). There you should find your test1.apt file. Doubleclick on it and it will be loaded to Airport. What you will see will be a number of blue framed squares. Let's load our background bitmap now:

Goto the "File" menu, choose "Import Background map" browse to your apt210 / maps folder, choose the test1.bmp file (will show up in that little window) set the "Scale" to 10 pixels/100m (important!) and click OK. Now the map should show up under the blue squares.

Here you can later, if you like to do that, set buildings and more to the surface of your airfield. But read the instructions for the Airport 2.10 program how to do it! You need to copy some of the textures from the Airport / texture folder to your scenery/texture folder or your buildings and objects will be shown as black boxes! For now let's set a initial location, so you can access the airfield later. Click on the right mouse button and choose "Initial location". All you need to enter here at the first line is the name you want for the entry in your airfield menu. Choose whatever you want and click ok. A little red arrow should appear on you map. You can move it with your mouse somewhere to the airfield area.

Let's place your airfield somewhere in the CFS world: Goto the "Sections" menu and choose "General". Set the Latitude at North 52 deg. Set the Longitude to East to 4 deg 30 minutes (it's a place at the west coast of the Netherlands). Here you can choose your own locations later.
Note: Airport 2.10 needs a different format of Lat/Long as you can get from SHIFT Z in CFS! The seconds have to be converted by deviding the seconds through 100 and multiply it with 60 "(xx/100)x60".

Important Note: If you want to place your airfield later in a different area you have to take care to research this area carefully and get the altitude level by using SHIFT Z while you are on the ground. There is a major problem with CFS if an airfield is set to an area with different altitude levels! You will either get the effect that you "fall" through parts of your scenery or are sitting 100ft above it and the whole airfield is "floating" on the surface. So choose only areas at approx. the same altitude level around! Set the value of ALT in CFSMap to that value before you create the Airport file.

Click OK now.

Now save your Airport file by choosing "File" and "Save".

Generate the bgl-file. Simply click on the BGL button in the task bar. After this, check if there's a new file in the CFS/scenery/test1/scenery folder! If not, you haven't set the bgl path properly!

Ok, now your first scenery should be created. Congratulations! But we have to do one more step! The scenery will not show up, 'cause it will not find it's textures! The Airfield Construction Kit works in a way, that other user have to download the tiles only once (!) even if they want install more of your sceneries (or sceneries from others created with this ACK). If they get a new scenery created with this Kit, the need to download only a small BGL file and some textures for buildings. You don't have to send out the ACK textures!
But you should include a message to your "readme.txt" that they need to download the textures from the ACK if they don't have them installed!. Install the textures in a place where CFS can find it for ALL sceneries! It is the CFS / main texture folder. Copy the files from your ACK folder there or unzip the tiles which came with the ADK to the CFS/texture folder again. All you have to do now is to install the scenery in the scenery library and access your airfield over the advanced scenery menu. Choose "Scenery from FS6 or less" there! If you are not sure how to work on the scenery library check the Tips & Tricks pages of my site.

Happy flying on your own airfield!

Ralf-J. Triebel (aka X_MAT )

If you have enjoyed this, check my site for new Airfield Construction Expansion Packs!

Credits:
Martin "Wizard" Wright for his great CFSMap program and all the fine tools I've used (BMP2000, TView) and all his support of my work.
Timothy N Reichert (Deputy Chief 12) for testing the Kit as an absolute beginner on sceneries and his friendship!

His judgement: "idiot safe" (whatever that means ;-)

Please note:

Sceneries created with the Airfield Construction Kit or by using parts of this texture collection must be distributed as freeware and include the copyright note " Designed with the Airfield Construction Kit by Ralf-J. Triebel, Hannover, Germany 2000".

You don't have the right to expand this Airfield Construction Kit by adding own textures to the archive! Pack them separately!

You also don't have the right to use this Kit for any commercial sceneries!

I would like to hear if you have created something with this collection! So please feel free to send me an e-mail! If you include a screenshot please attach the picture as a zipped file!

e-mail: mat@combatflight.de

Copyrights:

The Airfield Construction Kit and this instructions are copyrighted by Ralf-J. Triebel , Hannover , Germany 2000.
CFSMap is under copyright of Martin "Wizard" Wright.

Airport 2.10 is under copyright of Pascal Meziat, and Manfred Moldenhauer.
Some tiles of the Airfield Construction Kit are generated by using parts of original bitmaps of CFS. The copyrights of this parts belong to the Microsoft Corporation.
This is freeware!
As freeware you are permitted to distribute this archive subject to the following conditions:
- The archive must be distributed without modification to the contents of the archive.
- No charge may be made for this archive!
- All authors' rights and wishes concerning this archives must be respected.
Ralf-J. Triebel, Hannover, Germany 2000

		Set Widht / Height to 10 at the gadgets in the upper left corner and click on the arrow under "Create". Choose "blank" there. The workarea should be filled with 100 little black windows now.
		Then go to the "Airport Scale" gadget, insert the value "1" and delete the "4". This sets the scale of the scenery to a scale that is suitable for CFS airfields. Later you may try other values. Also set ALT to "3"
		Now select a number in the window on the left side of the screen and browse with the "arrow up and down" caps of your keyboard through the tiles, which will be shown in the window below the list.
		Then double click in any of the black windows in your workarea and the tile you've choosed should be show up there. Great! Half the work is done!
		If you want to delete one tile, select the new one you want there or insert the black tile on top of the tile list.
		Important: Please do NOT start to design an airfield now! You first should get familiar with the way I've organized the tiles.
		Let's start with this: Choose the tile A0A000sB.bmp, it should be the third from top of the list and shows a part of a CFS runway which is centered in the middle. Now set this tile somewhere to your workarea. Below the tilelist you'll find 4 buttons "0" "90" "180" "270". Now click on 90 and the tile should be turned 90 deg to the right.
		At the same time when the tile shows up, the program creates a new tile (the name of that is A0A001sB.bmp ) which will be written to your "cache" folder (i.e. C:\TEMP) and is available if you need it again.
		Now insert the tile below the first tile of the runway by double clicking to that window. Hmmm, looks strange! The parts doesn't fit. Go back, click on the button 90 again and insert that tile. Now it fits!
		The main problem if you create a runway, a whole airfield or roads is to have in mind, that the parts come in a way I have developed to create high quality airfields as easy as possible. That means, I didn't intend to design tiles that fit to every kind of airfield YOU want to design, the tiles are standarisized by me. The runways f.i. are placed in the middle, at the edge or some or a fixed number of pixels away from the edge. The reason was to make possible that you can have runways that are close together or in a distance. There are some tiles to connect this different kind of runways. Look at part A0A300sM.bmp. This tile makes it possible to connect a runway which runs down the edges with a runway that is centered.
		There are some more tiles like that, check them out. To see if there is a connection to another tile at the edge you should magnify the picture by clicking on it! Some details are not visible on the little pictures. If you want, you may create three different runways now and connect them together. You will end up in a funny labyrinth, like i did the first time! ;-)
		Have in mind, that you can't only create a runway top down, it works in every direction (N/E/S/W)! You see: It's working nice, but if you want to avoid peculiar airfields try to make a plan first. I always decide first, how many runways I want, how long they should be, how close they should be together and which heading they should have.
		Now try to build a runway with an airfield and a taxiway! You see: In the beginning you need most of the time to search for tiles that fit together. Have in mind, that you can TURN the tiles too, to let them fit!
		If you have something that looks like you want it (or doesn't look too peculiar) go to the "File" menu and save the mapfile for this example as "test1". Choose your folder carefully, so you'll find it later again. The best is to create a new one inside your apt210 folder and name it "maps".
		Now it's possible to load your map later again. Lets try to do the next steps to see our airfield in CFS! Choose "Save Layout as Bitmap" from the file menu. Choose "test1" as name again, so you will know that the background bitmap belongs to this mapfile.
		Now choose "Create Airport File" from the "File" menu and choose "test1" as name again. Now close the Airfield Construction Kit and start Airport 2.10

		At the first time you are running it, Airport needs to know some folder names. I haven't run an installation for a long time, but it should be easy to do it. Now you have to work on the basic settings of airport! Most of it you only have to do once, but it is necessary to do it properly! Go to the "Options / Preferences" menu and make sure, that the settings are like below:
		Version: FS98 must be checked
		Scenery screen: I have checked all boxes except the first one! Later you can play around with this settings a bit. But make sure, that you have the value "Show Grid" to 1000 meters ! Don't change this! Some users reported that they couldn't load their airfields again after changing this value to 100.
		The FS path should point to your "Combat Flight Simulator" main folder.
		Now the BGL path: The bgl file is that file that contains your scenery later and must be installed to the CFS/scenery/test1/scenery folder. Create that folder now. Close the preferences menu and minimize the airport window. Go to your "Combat Flight Simulator" folder, open the "scenery" folder and create a new folder, name it "test1". Now enter that folder and create two new folders inside. Name them "texture" and "scenery". Go back to the airport program and open the options / preferences menu again!
		Set the BGL path to the Combat Flight Simulator / scenery / test1 / scenery folder! You have to enter this path every time you start a new (!) scenery properly, or Airport will create that file to the last folder you have used! Keep that in mind!
		Now let's load our mapfile! Click on "File" "Open" and browse to the folder where you have saved the test1 files (apt210 / maps). There you should find your test1.apt file. Doubleclick on it and it will be loaded to Airport. What you will see will be a number of blue framed squares. Let's load our background bitmap now:
		Goto the "File" menu, choose "Import Background map" browse to your apt210 / maps folder, choose the test1.bmp file (will show up in that little window) set the "Scale" to 10 pixels/100m (important!) and click OK. Now the map should show up under the blue squares.
		Here you can later, if you like to do that, set buildings and more to the surface of your airfield. But read the instructions for the Airport 2.10 program how to do it! You need to copy some of the textures from the Airport / texture folder to your scenery/texture folder or your buildings and objects will be shown as black boxes! For now let's set a initial location, so you can access the airfield later. Click on the right mouse button and choose "Initial location". All you need to enter here at the first line is the name you want for the entry in your airfield menu. Choose whatever you want and click ok. A little red arrow should appear on you map. You can move it with your mouse somewhere to the airfield area.
		Let's place your airfield somewhere in the CFS world: Goto the "Sections" menu and choose "General". Set the Latitude at North 52 deg. Set the Longitude to East to 4 deg 30 minutes (it's a place at the west coast of the Netherlands). Here you can choose your own locations later. Note: Airport 2.10 needs a different format of Lat/Long as you can get from SHIFT Z in CFS! The seconds have to be converted by deviding the seconds through 100 and multiply it with 60 "(xx/100)x60".
		Important Note: If you want to place your airfield later in a different area you have to take care to research this area carefully and get the altitude level by using SHIFT Z while you are on the ground. There is a major problem with CFS if an airfield is set to an area with different altitude levels! You will either get the effect that you "fall" through parts of your scenery or are sitting 100ft above it and the whole airfield is "floating" on the surface. So choose only areas at approx. the same altitude level around! Set the value of ALT in CFSMap to that value before you create the Airport file.
		Click OK now.
		Now save your Airport file by choosing "File" and "Save".
		Generate the bgl-file. Simply click on the BGL button in the task bar. After this, check if there's a new file in the CFS/scenery/test1/scenery folder! If not, you haven't set the bgl path properly!
		Ok, now your first scenery should be created. Congratulations! But we have to do one more step! The scenery will not show up, 'cause it will not find it's textures! The Airfield Construction Kit works in a way, that other user have to download the tiles only once (!) even if they want install more of your sceneries (or sceneries from others created with this ACK). If they get a new scenery created with this Kit, the need to download only a small BGL file and some textures for buildings. You don't have to send out the ACK textures! But you should include a message to your "readme.txt" that they need to download the textures from the ACK if they don't have them installed!. Install the textures in a place where CFS can find it for ALL sceneries! It is the CFS / main texture folder. Copy the files from your ACK folder there or unzip the tiles which came with the ADK to the CFS/texture folder again. All you have to do now is to install the scenery in the scenery library and access your airfield over the advanced scenery menu. Choose "Scenery from FS6 or less" there! If you are not sure how to work on the scenery library check the Tips & Tricks pages of my site.