NAS Ft Worth, JRB Carswell Field

falcon409

falcon409

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Taking shape, but it's slow going right now. The AFCAD is a bear because it's so intricate as you can see from these shots. Lots of left over areas from the SAC days that are utilized by the Marine and Navy folks. Right now the 301st area on the North end is where I've spent the most time (naturally, lol), the Navy area is just taking shape as is the Tower and Fire Dept. A lot more to do just in those two areas, then there's the C-130 area to the west of the F-16's, the Bomb Dump farther to the west and then Lockheed Martin across the rwy. It'll be quite awhile before it's ready and with my luck, about the time I finish, someone will announce that they've done Carswell with all custom 3D buildings, individual jets with the correct tail numbers and animated figures that launch and recover the 16's, lol. This is being done using the object libraries for the MAIW packages, so whenever it is done, those that download it will have to have those libraries to see anything.
 
Lookin' good Falcon. I'll bet that you were stationed there at some point in your career.

In the early 70s when I was stationed at Fort Hood (3 hours south), I used to go to the BX on Carswell while visiting my Uncle who was stationed there with SAC.

Watching a gaggle of Buffs blast out along with their KC-135s was a sight and sound that will live with me forever. The sky was black from the water injected exhaust of all those engines at maximum take off thrust. Oh yeah, there used to be fair bass fishing on the lake on the north side of Carswell.

When flying my AS/Virtavia B-36, I generally take off from Carswell and fly up to Eielson AFB in Alaska and then often over to Thule in Greenland before heading back to Texas.
 
Jagdflieger said:
. . . . . . Oh yeah, there used to be fair bass fishing on the lake on the north side of Carswell. . . .
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Yep, that's Lake Worth and I'm guessing that we still have guys who park their boats at the Marina in the morning on the way to work and after they get off around three. . .they head to the lake to go fishing till they can't see anything any more, lol. . . .excellent fishing out there.:salute:
 
I was there for a couple of months for FTD back in 1985! Some buddies and I rented a car to look around Ft. Worth. We got lost heading back to base and ended up on the far side of the runway, so I got to see the Peacemaker that was parked there. I also remember seeing the delta-winged F-16 being put through its paces at one point. (Didn't General Dynamics share the runway?)
 
Tom Clayton said:
I was there for a couple of months for FTD back in 1985! Some buddies and I rented a car to look around Ft. Worth. We got lost heading back to base and ended up on the far side of the runway, so I got to see the Peacemaker that was parked there. I also remember seeing the delta-winged F-16 being put through its paces at one point. (Didn't General Dynamics share the runway?)
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I got there the following year Tom and yes, General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) shares the runway with the base. I liked working days because during the week, the test pilots would take a 16 up to run it through the acceptance and it was quite a show and it was right over the rwy so I always had a great view.
 
Carswell AFB/NAS

For those that haven't had the luck to see Carswell up close and you haven't already seen "Strategic Air Command" with Jimmy Stewert, rent it or download it. It will give you some great footage of Carswell from the air, the old WWII wood frame structures as well as absolutely wonderful footage of Peacemakers and Stratojets. You'll even get an idea of what a B-36 sounded like as it flew over and rattled windows for miles all around.
 
I've been bogged down with this ridiculous AFCAD, namely the arrival and departure networks so that aircraft in the 301st and Navy areas arrive and depart without "push-back", so I wasn't doing much to move forward with the scenery itself. Here are some updated shots for those who are interested. They show the 301st Flight Line, the Life Support/Egress/Security Police/AGE/Fire Dept area then the Navy Ramp and finally the C-130ANG Ramp and Bomb Dump (along the shoreline north of the C-130's).

I finally purchased Instant Scenery2 and it makes object placement much faster....a tad cumbersome with some options, but still much better if you decide to try it out. I am hoping that with this new version, I'll be able to knock out the remainder of the placements necessary to have a few beta testers try it out.
 
Sheesh, these pics will not show as I uploaded, lol. . . .anyway images 1 & 2 are backwards.:isadizzy:
 
Well, I have run into an old problem. I have started this AFB twice before thinking I could alleviate the inherent problems with FPS hits and was never successful then and it has become a problem again. With still the C-130 Hangar and offices area, the Bomb Dump and the remainder of the LM complex across the rwy undone I have hit the FPS wall even with the new system I have. If this was a smaller base it probably wouldn't be a problem. . .also if I was able to custom design the buildings I could produce them in groups which would help a lot. As it is I must rely on the objects produced by MAIW and a few others and when combined over the expansiveness of this large base it has killed the framerates. I will continue to add the necessary objects and see where it ends up but I don't hold much hope that it will be usable when I'm finished.

I have looked at items I could remove and still keep the "flavor" of the base, but I actually haven't done anything beyond the aircraft ramps and associated buildings. If I were to do what others have included in their renditions of other bases (adding barracks areas and such) it would grind to a halt for sure. So for now and probably the future, I'm afraid this will be a dead project unless I can find a way around the fps problem and I don't see that happening after two other unsuccessful attempts.
 
I'm afraid this will be a dead project unless I can find a way around the fps problem
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That would be a shame as it looks like great scenery already, the way i approch scenery is to represent the important elements first, mostly the control tower and main hangers, the heart of an airfield, then work backwards with the detail with the frame counter on, one thing im working on at the moment is a 1955 version of Fairford with B-47 AI, there's no dedicated B-47 out there so i have to use an old Ray Lopez model thats rather hungry for frames, so my scenery is just Afcad, CT and Hangers but the 47's only at the moment , no way around it at the moment but its just enough to get flying with B-47's which is what i want,
When i look at for example ACG scenery, Duxford, Marham ect and the new Gutersloh ( not an ACG project ) thats on finals, i often scratch my head and wonder at how much detail they can produce, i think the secret is in how the objects are made and texture'd, but it dose'nt put me of making my own and i hope to flying out of Carswell sometime soon.
looking good so-far, cheers ian
 
Hi there.

I have to agree, it's already looking awesome. It also happens to be one of "those" bases for me.....I've been waiting for such a project for a while. :jump:

The one I use now is pretty detailed and still yields normal framerates, but yours is more ambitious.
Have you tried posting on the MAIW forums? The folks there are eager to help and you could get advice about the use of their library objects. (my thought @ first glance would be to try and reduce the number of power carts, air start units and bomb carts you have under some sheds, as there seems to be quite a few. They're usually the kind of objects you want to keep for last)

Depending on the complexity of your AFCAD, you might want to try and split the nodes into different "virtual" bases if you haven't aready. It seems to help with this type of issues, assuming that's where the drop comes from.
 
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