Mercer Airfield coming

C

Condor61

condor61
I have been working on Mercer Airfield for several years. It is located in New Zealand 65km south of Auckland. It has a long history as a small Airfield
In a farming area. In the last ten years a large ex airforce hangar has been built there. This has given it a whole new feel. I have built into it MSFS2024
Features like walking around inside the hanger including being able to go up stairs to the mezzanine floor. There is an old area of maintenance hangers and a Backpackers motel with a Cafe which you can enter. Mercer is centrally located so it is an excellent for Tiger moth flying.
I'm Greg Law
My history in flight sim creation goes back to CFS3 Groundcrew group and Regs hanger.
 

Attachments

  • mercer airport.jpg
    mercer airport.jpg
    235.3 KB · Views: 52
  • BP motel and old hangers.jpg
    BP motel and old hangers.jpg
    651.6 KB · Views: 50
  • Tiger in Hangar.jpg
    Tiger in Hangar.jpg
    259.5 KB · Views: 49
  • RCclub1.jpg
    RCclub1.jpg
    165 KB · Views: 44
Last edited:
It's very quiet there these days. When I first measured it several years ago it had a busy aircaft maintenance firm located there.
Unfortunately things didn't work out for them. Now it's feels very quite. The big hanger is locked so it has a ghost town feel. However,
They still do flight training there.
Have a look at the sim version. It is really terrible. When I saw it I knew I had to get back to the build and finish it. I had to do a lot of terraforming and sort the stream out. I replaced the bridge, so now you can taxi over it. I have placed a starting point in the old hangar area which adds a lot of interest to the Airfield. You can only use smaller planes from that parking spot. In reality only a few plans use it. The road is a little steep, but unusable. I'm working on the access road and entry area at the moment. The roads are hard to deal with, it's a case of case of accepting a few wonky sections. I've made all the signage that is on the main road corner, so if you drive from Kelly Airfield you will be able to find the corner.
This week I will send the build to the owner to get approval for me to release it to the public.
 
Epic! I'll be able to get my lot to practice their competition flying in the sim for the next regional competitions - I'm Gavin, CFI of Auckland Aero Club :)
 
I should be making good progress over Easter. I have a few signs to do, A small issue with one of the Hanger LOD's and lighting needs a lot of work.
I can't seem to get Blender lights to work. In the end I might have to use the MSFS2024 lights. Once released I will still be working on improvements. I'm looking for someone to give me advise on texturing dirt into the hanger walls. I use Blender.
I see I had a typo in my earlier post. The road between the bridge and the old hanger area is a bit steep, but useable. I enjoy using the bridge.
The bridge is 90% accurate to the real thing. After Patch1 the stream shifted a bit fortunately the right way. now the link road works as it should.
 
Last edited:
Greg, you wouldn't consider an FS20 version while you're tinkering maybe?
Many are still dwelling there...
 
Condor61 said:
I can't seem to get Blender lights to work. In the end I might have to use the MSFS2024 lights. Once released I will still be working on improvements. I'm looking for someone to give me advise on texturing dirt into the hanger walls. I use Blender.
Click to expand...
I could help on both issues. PM me what is your trouble.
 
The is a progress report.
I have completed all the modeling of all gates and entry points. This means 99% of the modelling is done. The only thing I have to do
Is add dirt to the external hangar walls.
The lighting of the buildings are done. I'm thinking of adding some lights at the entry to the apron. These don't exist in reality but it will help you to find the Exist point in low light. Also on the bridge for obvious reasons.
 
It's getting closer everyday. The big hangar now has dirt on the main external wall. It looks much better as a result. I spent a good part of the day rescuing the cafe building after it's blender file was twice corrupted by me adding an advanced spotlight. In the end I used the quick light version and it worked. I added the blue threshold lights this afternoon, but these will need some work tomorrow as they disappear to quickly.
The runway got attention as well. I found it was 17m wide when it should be 12m. The MSFS on is still there under my one. I will have to remove that.
I still need better people if anyone can help with that. DIRTY HANGAR.jpg
 

Attachments

  • Hanger lights3.jpg
    Hanger lights3.jpg
    530.8 KB · Views: 12
  • old area lighting.jpg
    old area lighting.jpg
    388.4 KB · Views: 11
I have just noticed that flightsim.to has a version of Mercer Airfield. I applaud the effort that person put into.
Unfortunately it isn't an accurate rendition of the Airfield. My new one is as it was in 2022 when I started the project. I was on site a month ago and not much has changed except for it being very quiet. It felt like a ghost town compared to the activity I saw in 2021 / 2022. As a result I'm setting the project period to 2022. I call them the happy days.
The only thing the other build has that mine doesn't is the Rocket lab testing site. The reason is it is a secret establishment and I'm told it is in the process of being moved. As a result I decided not to include it. I placed a few containers on the site.
I will be looking at putting it on Mathias's site all going well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top