Around eight years ago, when I was still full steam on scenery creation on P3D, I made a video, just for fun. It had a made up story and the landscape in the scenery had to be adjusted to serve that.
1. Story - Air America, operating in northern Laos. A customer, a CIA field officer, requests to check the road from from L22 in the middle if the Plain of Jars, which is going to LS-20 Sam Thong, and ending at LS-20a Long Tieng. Fly as close and low to the road as possible. The customer probably puked, but at least both side door were open
2. Make a little movie with the scenario, one with music from back then and one without.
FSX/P3D did not have the road in the sim, but still exists today and is available as Opeen Streets map vector data. So back then I downloaded the vector data, took the part which I needed and fed the lines into P3D. Since there was no texture for the road, I created it, which was a bit cumbersome, but it worked pretty well as you can see in the video.
Regarding MSFS 2020/24, just to prove the point:
- Feeding in vector lines like roads into MSSFS 2020/24 is not possible anymore
- Obviously, making a vector road with custome textures is also not possible. You have to stick to what the sim provides you.
- Vector roads are covered with a texture which deviates from the ground image - that can look ugly. There is a trick to overcome that, but not on large distances. Too cumbersome and it has it's drawback, like the effect on vegetation.
Today, the overall scenery looks much better and I made L22, LS-20 and LS20a with all the better knowledge I have. In todays MSFS scenery I will have to get rid of the sim road because if I don't you will see all kinds of Toyota Camrys etc racing across the road (which they don't, of course) and the vector texture look horrible. But I'll make an update on that flight. I am sure some elements will not look as good with the less control as I had back then. I am going to give it a try anhow.
Old Video with music:
(I got into a lengthy trouble with YT with that because of the music, but they never pulled it)....
[Edit]
I tried that flight with Taog's Huey today in MSFS 2020 and got lost a few times, because there are so many roads today which weren't there back then (and also not in FSX/P3D). Oh well, sort of proves the point, but it still was fun, despite the fact that I suck at flying helicopters. Was still fun though.
The scenery is much better after all! Let's see.
[/Edit]
Cheers,
Mark
