USS Iowa: Seeking help with scenery placement for museum exhibit

1st Official Post

    Hello, I am a volunteer aboard the USS Iowa Battleship Museum in Los Angeles.

    We are hoping to create an VR flight experience for our visitors using a licensed version of Aerofly. As a non-profit, we are seeking cost-effective ways to create great experiences for our guests. We would love to have a model of the USS Iowa placed in its current position in San Pedro. If anyone is willing to help, even just with the placement of the model, please let me know, you will be credited in the exhibit.

    Thanks,

    Pacific Battleship Center

    • Official Post

    Welcome to our forum. Let's see if a talented member of the community is up for the challenge.

    If you have access to a 3D model of the USS Iowa already (either 3DS Max or AC3D) it would be easy to get it into Aerofly FS2 in any location you wish to have it.

    As for making it from scratch, this may be a bit challenging as these ship models tend to be a bit tedious.

    Let's see how this goes first, and we can go from there.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    ussiowa - Pacific Battleship Center,

    I am sending drhotwing, our coordinator, the ZIP files, that will drop in C:\UsersYOURUSERNAME\Documents\Aerofly FS 2\scenery\places\USSIowa and will be the model of your ship in the correct position at San Pedro. Jeff will make them available to you. The model was done as freeware by Mr. Gary D. Shetter III.

    Thanks for your service

    Dave W.

    • Official Post
    Quote from ussiowa

    Hello, I am a volunteer aboard the USS Iowa Battleship Museum in Los Angeles.

    We are hoping to create an VR flight experience for our visitors using a licensed version of Aerofly. As a non-profit, we are seeking cost-effective ways to create great experiences for our guests. We would love to have a model of the USS Iowa placed in its current position in San Pedro. If anyone is willing to help, even just with the placement of the model, please let me know, you will be credited in the exhibit.

    Thanks,

    Pacific Battleship Center

    Your request was added to the download library. You can download it HERE

    Enjoy.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    Thanks you guys! So a bit of background:

    - First there are 2 of us posting under this name, Alex and myself (Michael), from now on we'll also sign our name too to try to avoid confusion

    This original post was posted by Alex and he thanked you above, so this si not a "weird repeat".

    The first thing we did when we flew this simulator was trying to find the ship. We couldn't find it in San Pedro, so I spent a lot of ours flying trying to figure where it could be.

    See the ship originally was in mothballs in the Suisin Bay (San Francisco Bay), was then taken out and moved to Richmond for refurbishment and conversion into a museum, then towed to Los Angeles for its current station as a museum ship.

    Well it wasn't in Suisun bay, and it wasn't in San Pedro (I didn't know about Richmond at the time). And finally I found it in Richmond (go find it, fairly easy to spot)

    From an anecdotal point of view that dates the scenery as it was there only for a few months.

    We are a volunteer organization and expect to contribute some things to this software. We are working at figuring out the SDK as we speak. I can create any 3D object needed in sketchup if some have the needs (like more stuff at Pt Mugu, etc...). Of course our primary interest is military (bases and vehicles).

    I'd be willing to help develop airplanes for sure, so anxiously waiting for a way to do that.

    Michael

    • Official Post

    Hi Michael,

    first off thank you for your support of Aerofly FS2. As you can see, a lot of work goes into this product and you can also see that the entire team is filled with passion and dedication. We will be glad to assist you guys any way that we can, and you can expect the tools (SDK) to only get better from here. If you take a look at the Aerofly FS2 SDK section under downloads you will find all of our current tools that are free for you to download and use. There is also our Wiki located HERE that you can find tutorials and information related to scenery, aircraft, and airport development.

    Also, this forum is a good place to post any development questions that you have; there are a lot of talented people around these parts that will solve just about any issues you face.

    Then you have us, the development team. We will also assist you and guide you through some of the software available where needed.

    We look forward to anything you put together for the product and the community, and hope that you upload your creations so that I can get them onto here to share.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    Hi Michael,

    The 3D model and textures from Mr. Shetter (obtained from simviation.com )needed to be converted to a 3D file format that is supported by the FS2 IPACS SDK. That file format is called "AC" and is utilized by an $89 tool called AC3D which I used to prepare the model. The Latitude/Longitude location that I determined from GoogleEarth had to be adjusted just a few feet to appear correct in Aerofly FS2.

    If you want to add any models yourself, you might consider adding buildings near your ship - otherwise the ship is alone on top of the aerial imagery. A freeware tool called Model Converter X from fsdeveloper.com can convert from Sketchup to the "AC" format.

    I would be glad to help develop your VR station (I personally have the Rift) and quite a few 3D FS2 models - I am the creator of the Pt. Mugu scenery on the IPACS User Scenery content forum:

    The content cannot be displayed because it is no longer available.

    and I have developed a large number of military aircraft models for use in Aerofly FS2. I live less than a hour away and would be glad to help on location .

    Dave W.

    I already downloaded Pt mugu :) that was a must. I've been doing blue angels routine there (alone unfortunately :) )and regretted not having hi res NAS, now it's done yeah!!!

    Yes I was thinking the same thing, we have buildings, the VT bridge the new long beach cridge coming, some cranes, etc.. It will come I'm sure.

    For the rest, awesome, I'll send you a mail, this is going to be fun.

    Michael

    Should you guys need a slight detour from the project at hand, I have a suggestion.

    We could use a 3d Superdome for downtown New Orleans. The happens to be just outside the pilots window when on final to the Big Easy's Louie Armstrong airport. Currently the Mercedes Benz Superdome looks like a flat saucer rather than a commanding eye catching dome.

    Of course, the dome is surrounded by skyscrapers that comprise the central business district of New Orleans. Hint. Hint.

    I will have the New Orleans area scenery available for uploading as soon as we have a means and location available. Three major airports will be included.

    Just a thought for those with the special talents.

    Regards,

    Ray

    OK I'm on it, I'll get you some kind of 3D objects.

    2 questions for the experts, I will look it up but maybe someone knows already:

    1- Does it have to be real size of just proportionate and the real size is set up when inserted? If yes I will need one dimension in that picture, maybe I can extrapolate from the length of a car or something.

    2- How does one define the lights for the night scenery?

    Oh and send me the hires of those picts, I'll send you an email.

    As you can tell, from this post, I don't know yet how to place and/or modify the format with the FS2 tools. I can create a 3D object with texture (sketchup or export format), then someone else can do the placement and what not.

    MIchael

    Quote from ussiowa

    First quick draft, waiting for hi res picts

    Hello Michael,

    What took so long? ;) S/b correct proportions. PM with dimensions and HD images sent. Thanks a million or more.

    No idea about lights. :( Will have to figure that out at a later date.

    Everything is breaking new ground with AF2 scenery right now.

    Regards,

    Ray

    Hi,

    the object needs to be in real size in meters. You can measure distances in Google Maps by right mouse click.

    aerofly cannot import sketchup. That's a pity, because there exist so many free 3D models in the sketchup library.

    But I read, it must be very difficult to import the original sketchup file format for all other 3D software.
    So we have to use the export feature of sketchup. Best is to try different formats and select the best working one.

    Next step is to import this file into AC3D, and then export it into aerofly object format. Additionally the position and rotation has to be entered for the object. This is documented in my tutorial in the wiki:

    https://www.aerofly.com/aerofly_fs_2/d…/sdk:scenerydev

    But of course people like whitav8 or myself do assist you for the import step. Just send a pm.

    Lighting will be published soon with a new feature and a new tutorial, combined with generic buildings and trees.

    It's great to have you onboard!

    Rodeo

    OK thanks for all the info.

    Yes I knew about sketchup and the fact that it doesn't work directly or even easily indirectly for FS2.

    Here is my latest version. I'm having issues with texture on faces I cannot project to. I will find a solution

    Also I tried to export to OBJ, so far not sure it worked right, working on it. Once in OBJ, it should be a breeze to work with if the export function worked right. Actually sketchup can export in a variety of formats with a bit of tweaking. between the plugins and the double transformation (export into one format, then another software to change format) I think almost anything can be done. I haven't found a easy path from skp to tgi but AC3D will do the tgi, so now it's a matter of having a good import file into AC3D.

    Sketchup can do OBJ, DXF, STL, Colladia, all kind of formats. The main difficulty is the textures integrity. Working on testing. I'm pretty sure we can do Sketchup to Blender.

    Michael,

    This is amazing work. Looks like the real deal, with all the details. Sketchup to Blender would be a big step forward.

    Thanks a million or more for doing this side project. It might turn into something for all to try.

    Regards,

    Ray

    • Official Post

    Once complete, I can always add it to the downloads section. It could prompt many users to geoconvert New Orleans :)

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    Quote from drhotwing1

    Once complete, I can always add it to the downloads section. It could prompt many users to geoconvert New Orleans :)

    Just a few high rise buildings for the central business district and a few barges and tug boats in the river and we will be in business. The approach to KMSY is almost directly over downtown New Orleans and the Superdome.

    3 airports and very high resolution scenery might add an attraction to come see. :)

    Nice.

    Regards,

    Ray