Airport surrounds

[aeromed202]

As I do more with Afcads I was wondering what determines the outer geometry of FS airports. All default ones have an encclosing area of generic grass with no additional texturing or trees and I want to be able to create or alter those if possible. I can make flattens and excludes but they will keep whatever ground texture there was in that area and I want to make those areas look like the default grass areas FS makes. Am I missing a tool somewhere, I use mainly ADE9. Thanks.

 

[ian elliot]

Ive been using SBuilderFS9 for a while now to do just that, and with the help of this tutorial---
http://www.militaryaiworks.com/newforum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=7676--- im finding it no problem, only took me a couple of times practice to get good results.
Hope this helps, cheers ian

PS, I use this side by side with ADE9, gives me all the tools i need

 

[MIKE JG]

That's a great tutorial!

 

[ian elliot]

It sure is Mike
cheers ian

 

[falcon409]

As I do more with Afcads I was wondering what determines the outer geometry of FS airports. All default ones have an encclosing area of generic grass with no additional texturing or trees and I want to be able to create or alter those if possible. I can make flattens and excludes but they will keep whatever ground texture there was in that area and I want to make those areas look like the default grass areas FS makes. Am I missing a tool somewhere, I use mainly ADE9. Thanks.

Ian's got you all set looks like. I sometimes use satellite imagery as the ground texture which eliminates the need for "Airport Boundary poly's" and also let's you incorporate season trees rather than tree "objects" which aren't seasonal. Availability of satellite images is sketchy a lot of times so I tend to use the Airport Boundary. . .but I still will import the satellite image using SBX and then trace the airport boundary poly to match what I see on the image. I've found that a lot of default AB's are much bigger than the area shown in the satellite images. I'll also use those images, imported into AFX (Airport Facilitator X) to lay in the taxiways, parking ramps, etc. (I work in FSX, but the general usage is the same in both sims).:salute:

 

[UKVoodoo]

Is there any tutorials about getting background images into SBuilder?

I dont want them in FS9 itself just as a guide in SBuilder as I find using AFX or ADE9 background images to mark things in SBuilder rather time consuming

thanks
Matt

 

[falcon409]

Is there any tutorials about getting background images into SBuilder?

I dont want them in FS9 itself just as a guide in SBuilder as I find using AFX or ADE9 background images to mark things in SBuilder rather time consuming

thanks
Matt

I just typed for like 10 minutes giving a detailed description of the steps and when I clicked to post, it came back and said the server is busy right now try again later, grrrrrr. So I'll make it even shorter. . . .
Once your in SBuilder with a new project name set, (you should have your airplane sitting in FS9 at the airport you'll work on) click on "View", "Show Background" (this brings up a random satellite image), next click "View" again and select "Show Aircraft". This brings up the satellite image of the area you're sitting at. . .zoom in until the airport is showing clearly in the box. Now select from the "File" drop down. . ."Add Map", "From Background". This changes the window to one with a graph-like overlay and zoom factors on the right side. Select something lower than 17, draw an area around the airport that get's everything you want to use and select "ok" or whatever wording SBuilder uses. It will process the image (shows the status in the lower left of the screen), when that's complete you'll need to select "ok" again (not sure what the wording is in SBuilder) and at that stage, the area you selected is processed and presented as a finished image in the window.

Hope you can use this plus what you see in SBuilder and figure out what goes on in between.