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Afrika Korps scenery?

Thanks Huub, I actually think I got it to work. i did a large chunk of desert in Libya, and set the airfield down in elevation so that you can see the sand dunes around you, this way it doesn't kill the immersion at runway level and there is plenty of photoreal around to drive your tank or jeep and still be immersed. I did blend the photoreal with the default even though i didn't want the yellow tint, but I also upped the contrast more to bring out the dunes, so that worked out for this allied base. Then I found a nice oasis in Algiers and added it to my base photoreal and added some subtle other color changes and tire markings going around the base in the sand and it looks fairly decent. I also opted for a ground poly runway as it just needed that much detail, I'll deal with the P3d thing when it comes up.

Now I gotta come up with a battle scenario. I have some wrecked versions of the tanks and the dodge 6x6, some with fire effect. If I can just get proximity explosions to happen when the plane flys over, it will look like tank fire.
 
MCDesigns said:
Thanks for the info Huub, will see about fixing that.
Small update, here is a preview of some of the new objects. Got a few more to do then the fun part, LOL.

In working on the ground I have run into an issue. Granted at runway level the photoreal method works best for originality and ambiance, but in the air without doing a really big area of photoreal and even then finding a way to try and make it blend is a tough call I am finding out. I have been playing with both methods and both have pros and cons.

I run with default textures, have no interest in FTXglobal, partly because most of my actual flying is over photoreal, the others reasons we won't get into.. Blending sand dune photoreal over default is tough, mainly because of the yellowish tint default has which kinda ruins the photoreal when color matching. Amazingly enough, even at 30 cm p/pixel, there really isn't much detail to be had in sand dunes except at altitude, LOL. I tried the landclass/vector way with changing the landclass with autogen and using default dirt runways with ADE and that worked fairly well, but lacked in originality and again I have no idea how this will look with FTXglobal, does it change the look and the autogen?
When I look at desert airfields in old photos, there isn't much there, some aircraft, some tents, some vehicles, some areas with camo netting covering weapons and vehicles and the scattering of boxes, equipment and people, so conveying that ambiance while on the ground is important to me. I have thought about going the ground poly way, but that is alot more work and won't work in the latest version of P3D using the old FS2002 way. Anyone can place objects, this is about creating a scenario with me.

Any ideas on what you guys think or want with the ground is welcome

RsObkt.jpg
Click to expand...

Micheal, three suggestions the Sd KFZ 251, the Panzer IV Ausf G, and the SD KFZ II Sanderkraftfahrzeug. This last vehicle was the workhorse carrying troops and artillery pieces. Some German artillery guns would be good also.
 
You know Piglet did a LRDG Chevy truck back when he was making things for FS9, although I could never get it to work in FSX I'm sure that if it could be made to function it would be a blast to drive in a good North Africa scenery package.
 
Piglet's Chevy works fine in FSX, however it only displays on the top half of the screen, while the lower half is black. I think this can be solved. However as I won't be close to my flightsim computer for at least a week, I can't try to solve this puzzle.

In addition to Tom's post, I think the German scenery definitely needs a few AA 88mm guns.......

Cheers,
Huub
 
to get the LRDG Chevy to display properly, go to the Panel.cfg file and at the very bottom you will find this

SIZE_X=8191
SIZE_Y=3366


change it to

SIZE_X=8191
SIZE_Y=6143

that should get you full screen
 
huub vink said:
Thanks Norab!
Click to expand...

+1, I forgot about Piglets LRDG, loved it back in the day.

Small update, here is what you will see flying over the first Allied base. I still need to tweak the photoreal (add water, tweak the autogen, etc), but you get the idea. In the image are 8 U.S. soldiers, 2 British soldiers, 2 pilots, several 6x6 carriers, several jeeps, 2 types of camo netted covers/tents, sandbags, fuel barrels, 2 willys, 2 static P-40's, 2 static Spitfires, one static C-47, and some tents. Outside the image are some shermans, artillery placements, some more soldiers and sandbag areas. FPS are good, so you can add more if you want. Ideally I would love for someone to create a working AFCAD and add some AI aircraft, but that is beyond my time and knowledge. Looking forward to the German bases, should be fun, LOL.


B1Ka9j.jpg
 
On the tiny screen of my smart phone it already looks great. Can't wait to get home in the weekend and see it on a normal size screen.
 
Loving this, too! A place for the P-40 to feel at home, I feel there isn't much love for it around the Solomons (judging from the disparaging comment in Jolly Rogers ;) ).

Any good books about the air ops in the African theater?
 
Hi, I am (partly) back...... and found this thread upon perusing SOH. Great stuff Mike !!! Maybe you, Mark and I can share some of our work to 'populate' other WW2 areas as well? Having said that, YOU guys are the ones with the skills, I just have ideas mainly.... :biggrin-new:
Hoping to get back to my D-Day work soon.....
 
AnotherOneJustGreat said:
Loving this, too! A place for the P-40 to feel at home, I feel there isn't much love for it around the Solomons (judging from the disparaging comment in Jolly Rogers ;) ).

Any good books about the air ops in the African theater?
Click to expand...

Re the P40 and the Solomons - there were a lot of them stationed there, in the later stages mostly operated by ANZAC forces. They were mostly used in ground support roles.
I like to fly it in that arena!

Cheers,
Mark
 
As said it looks great, however one small comment. I think after the lessons learned at Pearl Harbor the aircraft would not be parked aligned this way. One good strafing run would destroy the all...

As the pictures below show the Germans parked their aircraft in a circle or protected by sandbags. I assume the allied did the same.

Cheers,
Huub



 
huub vink said:
As said it looks great, however one small comment. I think after the lessons learned at Pearl Harbor the aircraft would not be parked aligned this way. One good strafing run would destroy the all...

As the pictures below show the Germans parked their aircraft in a circle or protected by sandbags. I assume the allied did the same.

Cheers,Huub
Click to expand...

Huub, very valid point and one I actually thought over. in my mind I also took into account what we (most) do in FS, we fly the plane, most from the cockpit. The main purpose of most scenery is to create a believable immersion into that moment at that place in that time, right? So basically when designing you want as much focus on your view from the cockpit since this is what most will see. Thus, if I did the paced out circles with sand bags around the place, the main thing you see when loading a flight is the sandbags around you, at least till you taxied out LOL. I figured starting a flight with statics on either side, a few vehicles and personnel in view would work better for FS. If a majority agree with the circles and sandbags, I can make this happen with the starting point at the furthest landing area so you can taxi past all the others, just let me know.

I wanted to do more camo netting over objects since i see that alot in images, but in order to "drape" the mesh around an object, the mesh needs to be of a higher density/poly count to get realistic looking folds and then to decimate it after so it is small enough in polys to work is a fine line.


Francois, great link, thanks for that. I had a few of those, but there are lots more to explore.
 
That's exactly my credo, Michael. We scenery designers are a bit like film regisseurs, who design a scene so it has the most satisfying impact for the onlooker. Sometimes we don't have all the liberties we need because of compliance to the real world, but in the case of ww2 field sceneries we can or must use our imagination and work with impressions we get out of old photographs or written accounts rather than stick to the few "hard" informations we have on hand.
Regarding the placement of aircraft on airfields, I have the impression that on many fields, regardless of the nationality of the operators or the whereabouts of the field, the aircraft and installations were scattered over a large area around the airfields to avoid multiple damages in case of an attack. We could stick to that that in the scenery design, but the scene would get boring and empty. My own approach is to saturate the immediate area with much diversity where the action is, and fade the scenery population out toward the edges.
Expecially with photoreal ground, where we can draw the ground by hand, we still can give the scarcely populated area some nice details like tracks, vegetation or other ground textures to make the area interesting and diverse when looking from above. We also can "terraform" the ground with elevated flatten polys or even a custom mesh. What I'm trying to say is that these airfields are not only comprised of static objects, other elements also can be put to work.

Cheers,
Mark
 
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