Posts by emfrat

It's so sad that forum members who demand things to be added to AFS2, and complain that they do not appear overnight, then criticise and generally attack the IPACS team, do not seem to understand what is needed to meet their demands

AI Traffic in a flight sim is not just moving scenery like cars on a road or active airport service vehicles.

Ai traffic needs to be supported by active, automated ATC. That needs to interact with live real weather information - two major projects to be completed before AI traffic is possible, and then the whole thing has to be integrated into the sim so that we can interact with it - two more major projects.

I am confident that IPACS can provide this. I know they do not have a huge team of coders fed by a multi-million dollar budget, so I will have to wait a while. That's fine by me.

Quote from IZ0JUB

PS. Not as easy as I first thought.

So, everything as usual, then? Hang in there!

Michael, this has long been greatly needed. I let the members at NZFF know that you had released it. I created some locations around my Auckland, following Kristoff's method. Please feel free to adapt them to your scenery. You should still have access, but if you don't, let me know. and I will send you a fresh link. Sad to say, someone - not you - seems to have passed on the earlier link, without permission.

Thanks and best wishes

MikeW

Airports are not flat, and runways are not level from end to end. They are not visible from 100km, either.

For years we begged flightsim makers to give us realistic naturally sloping runways. AFS2 does that. Why make it all artificially flat again?

I wish we had access to the sort of satellite imagery that can read the number plate on your car, but that is only available to the military, so we will have to live with the very low-res appearance of the surface when the plane is on the ground.

MikeW

Quote from DingOfHud

Well instead, does anyone know how to generate elevation files or create a flat elevation where the airport is.

Also, where am I supposed to put the file for https://afs2-editor.nabeelamjad.co.uk/

As I said earlier:

There are plenty tutorials here: https://www.aerofly.com/dokuwiki/doku.php/sdk:scenery

No worries - I think I learned that from IZ0JUB. I also built on an idea from Krystoff, to create location markers for airstrips which can be seen in photoscenery but are not in the AFS2 database, so that I can start from there, and also see them in the moving map etc. You just use a bare-bones tsc file.

It will be a while before we get 3-D models of individual homes, so cultivation has to be more impressionist than factual - but it makes a huge difference at night. Same with 'landing on the photo' - if you like to surf the wake 50m behind the plane, ground operations can look ugly, but from the cockpit the view is quite restricted and the far end of the runway does not look too bad at all.

FCloudport airports generally do not use more than one runway object because runway objects which cross, or even parallel ones which are too near each other, will cause display problems, usually flashing textures.

You can get around this by disabling the line in the .tsc file which calls the object. You do this by adding // at the start of that line. Naturally this will only work if you have photoscenery covering that location. You can land 'on the photo' - it may not look pretty when you are on the ground. but it looks much more realistic from the air. You can create a hi-res photo background for an airport, but that will make the airport area flat.

There are plenty tutorials here: https://www.aerofly.com/dokuwiki/doku.php/sdk:scenery

Many thanks, Michael - that's great news

MikeW

just a few pics to let folk see the sort of things we have to fix. My old source has some faults, especially in coastal waters. ArcGIS is much better on coastlines, but it is not perfect either.

https://i.postimg.cc/nzZYhFKc/…ot-01-20210630-122855.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/mgvyKNt9/…ot-04-20210628-153221.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/VNXWwrCV/…ot-05-20210630-123257.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/5035Hhp5/…ot-13-20210629-153125.jpg

Creating scenery is not a simple matter of going to the Play Store and downloading some app which will do it all for you.

MikeW

Michael, thanks for your interest. Using crispy136's Guide, after experimenting I standardised on the following:

Base - tile size 9, zoom 16 AFS levels 9, 11, and 12

Top - tile size 9, zoom 17, AFS level 13

Urban - If necessary, I use 13 -18 - 14 for general developed areas, and 14 -19 -15 for airfields.

I like to land 'on the photo', so I use Cloudport airfields with the runway object disabled. Otherwise I use the NZ AIP charts to place a location marker and parking spot(s) so that I can select those fields as starting points.

I left an ArcGIS-based Auckland area scenery cooking overnight. If you like, I will privately send you links to both versions. At the moment none of my work is available for general distribution. Sad to say, there are too many uninformed critics in the forum.

ATB, MikeW

I have been working on scenery for NZ, and it looks well draped on GeoffKiwi's mesh. I also have perokee's work which covers the southern part of the South Island. What I have done is WIP, not fit for general release. The biggest problem is that my preferred source of orthophotos creates a zig-zag of tile edges at coastlines, with no colour blending at all for the water. I found more or less by accident that ArcGisS orthophotos do not seem to have that problem, although they do create huge areas of little grey tiles with "No data available" written on them. That is easier to fix, but still very time-consuming, and better than hand-painting thousands of tiles in GIMP to make a good blend. So I am now redoing my stuff using ArcGiS ortho for the coastal areas. That means all the coast of SI from Cape Campbell round to Hokitika, by way of Cape Farewell.

The same applies to the area around Wellington and up to Kapiti Island, and another area around Auckland. It all takes time and a great deal of patience. I did some cultivation for the Auckland area, but the OSM data is pretty sparse and Auckland City needs some 3Dmodels of distinctive structures. It is not something which can be done overnight

MikeW

PS - Why are so many scenery devs called Michael?

Or a few thousand head of cattle, to be mustered by a chopper? Round them up, cut them out, drive them in to the stockyards?

MikeW (to avoid confusion with all the other Michaels)

Quote from paranovski

Why does the banana have two ends?

or

Who came first, the egg or the chicken?

A chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg

ATB

MikeW

Hello Jan, thanks for your quick response

Well, a partial victory I suppose. Thing is, can you now fly to a greater range than before?

ATB

Mike

Hello Nick - in lj45.tmd, starting at line 500 there are descriptions for the fuel tanks.

//fuel center shows the Fuselage Fuel Tank has a Mass Full of 1228.3 and a Fill Level of 0.0

//fuel left shows the Left Fuel Tank has a Mass Full of 761.12 and a Fill Level of 0.8

//fuel right shows the same numbers as fuel left.

I would try changing the Fill Level of the Fuselage Tank to 0.8 as well. ***IGNORE THIS - Didn't change indicated Fuel on Board***

Hope this helps

MikeW

Thanks, Thomas - I remember Nick saying he was going to be extremely busy with what he does for a living, but it does no harm to ask.

Cheers

MikeW

Hello Nick - Thanks to your Aeroscenery tool, I have been happily making scenery for NZ using the 1.1.3 beta version. Unfortunately, the Linz Data Service is being de-commissioned and will be replaced by the LINZ Basemaps Service. This is from the email LINZ sent me:

"What you need to do

Explore the LINZ Aerial Imagery Basemap, open the menu and open the WMTS or XYZ tile URL (your 90-day API key is included in the URL) or follow the Contact Us link to request an unlimited Developer API key.

Then create a new connection or replace the LDS tile services URL in your software using the LINZ Basemaps tile services WMTS or XYZ URL. For more details, see the specifications of the LINZ Basemaps service.

Tip: Make sure you replace the entire tile services URL, including the embedded API key. LDS and the LINZ Basemaps service are managed separately, meaning you cannot use your LDS API key in LINZ Basemaps APIs or vice versa."

So I had a look under the bonnet but my coding skills date from the last century, and I couldn't get a result. Could you please, when you have some time from your paying job, add the new service to your Aeroscenery ?

Technical info here:

https://www.linz.govt.nz/data/…nz-basemaps-documentation

Thanks in advance for any help/advice you can give.

ATB

Mike

I discovered by accident that I can drag a URL from my browser (PaleMoon) into my download manager (Free Download Manager) , then pause the FDM, close the browser and tell FDM to resume. This gave much better d/l speeds ( up to 5.5 MB/s ) than anything I saw with the browser also running, or just d/loading via the browser alone.

Hope this helps someone. `

Quote from Tomfa

Thanks for your help Mike, but having said that, I already knew that, however my keyboard is QWERTZ - CH, and nothing changes ???

Pascal, I was pretty sure you would have tried it, but I am a great believer in checking manually that my mouth is open, before inserting a toothbrush

I am still trying to get two ( or both) pilots to appear.

ATB

Mike