Military AI Works

Good evening John,

I’ll throw in Ian’s name in here too because I believe he was part of your ACG posse back in the day was he not? ORBX has just released their first photo real regions of great Britain south for Prepar3D V4.4. I am going to download it as soon as I get home from work tonight, with the intention of integrating all of the good top-quality sceneries you guys did back in the day. Top of my list are Bentwaters and WoodBridge. Off the top of my memory, this has a PR base that cannot be separated from the scenery is this correct? Is there any possible way to do a color match or blend for that original PR? Or is there anyway to turn it off? Obviously there are a ton of beautiful Airbases that I will be plugging into the sim, and checking results. Do you guys want to do some testing with me, and post some screenshots here?

-Woog

I use the ACG Bentwaters and Woodbrigde in P3D and have the photoreal underlayer removed. I can't remember the name of the file ( i am not on my P3D pc atm), but is was located in the scenery folder and the filename contained a lot of random numbers, remove that file and the photo scenery is removed,
Maybe if you post a screenshot of the scenery folder I can point out the file.

I used the same method on the ACG Marham scenery

Cheers
Randy

The PR ground files are Bentwaters_TM35_.bgl and Woodbridge_TM34_.bgl Woog.

Marham is TF-70_.bgl.

John

I am currently downloading the ORBX south photo scenery as we speak actually.

The Twin bases is a case of removing the files John mentioned and my Coningsby should be simple to remove the photo tiles also. I think its named CGY_PHOTO.bgl.

Lakenheath and Alconbury has higher (I imagine at least as high as ORBX) resolution imagery than the Twin Bases and Coningsby for that matter. They were built differently (P3DV4 coded Ground polys) to our ACG scenery and are heavily edited and also feature night lighting which will be lost if you remove them.

My WIP Honington and Coningsby P3DV4 update will also feature similar designs.

Thank you gentlemen for the replies. I am loading in the Twin bases as we speak in their original form. I want to see how "off" they look before I remove the Photo-real. I am one of the "retro" guys. Love me some 1980's cold war action. I am so greatful for Ian's drive to change with the times, utilizing the new methods of airbase construction. Military airbases have never looked better!

-Woog

Ok, turning off the PR does make the two air bases blend better for sure. Alignment with the ORBX PR is pretty close so no real concerns there. The disadvantage though is that now we have ORBX buildings occupying the same space as the custom ACG ones. Not horrible in most cases, but not pretty either. The most simple solution I think, would be new color matched PR files for the old scenery. I will have to live with it for now. On to test more. Thanks again Gentlemen for the advice.

-Woog

Woogey wrote: ↑08 Feb 2019, 21:02 Ok, turning off the PR does make the two air bases blend better for sure. Alignment with the ORBX PR is pretty close so no real concerns there. The disadvantage though is that now we have ORBX buildings occupying the same space as the custom ACG ones. Not horrible in most cases, but not pretty either. The most simple solution I think, would be new color matched PR files for the old scenery. I will have to live with it for now. On to test more. Thanks again Gentlemen for the advice.

-Woog

That is the autogen buildings displaying . The photo tiles would have excluded them.

I am having the same issue with Alconbury. I have autogen buildings all over the place as the photo ground poly does not exclude them being custom ground polys.
It would be a case of creating a autogen exclude for each of them. I am experimenting with Honington now.

Alconbury was the next airbase I installed. Haha, Love that scenery. After seeing the sad state of its appearance in the Regional scenery, it was a must to get your version installed! I found the same autogen issue that you spoke of.

Ian, did you get a weird red and black blob-artifact North West of Alconbury with your ORBX install? You are the only other person I know of that has the new ORBX region. I am just wondering of the source of this. It is approximately the size/area of an airport.

-Woog

Woogey wrote: ↑09 Feb 2019, 17:39 Alconbury was the next airbase I installed. Haha, Love that scenery. After seeing the sad state of its appearance in the Regional scenery, it was a must to get your version installed! I found the same autogen issue that you spoke of.

Ian, did you get a weird red and black blob-artifact North West of Alconbury with your ORBX install? You are the only other person I know of that has the new ORBX region. I am just wondering of the source of this. It is approximately the size/area of an airport.

-Woog

That was from the FSX version of Lakenheath. If you have the P3D version it should not be there.

Goodday Gentlemen,

Ian thank you for making me aware of the P3d specific version of Lakenheath. It is again a one of your masterpieces. However, there is an texture issue at the end of the Runway. There is a large untextured grey square present. It looks as though this area was meant to be excluded as it is just a square jutting out from the contoured background poly. I tried a fresh download with the same result. It also appears that this area has a strange specular shine at certain angles. I removed the scenery to check the area, and the abnormality disappeared as well. When you get a chance if you could take a look at this that would be most greatly appreciated. Such a beautiful scenery with just this one weird issue.

-Woog

Woogey wrote: ↑10 Feb 2019, 21:48 Goodday Gentlemen,

Ian thank you for making me aware of the P3d specific version of Lakenheath. It is again a one of your masterpieces. However, there is an texture issue at the end of the Runway. There is a large untextured grey square present. It looks as though this area was meant to be excluded as it is just a square jutting out from the contoured background poly. I tried a fresh download with the same result. It also appears that this area has a strange specular shine at certain angles. I removed the scenery to check the area, and the abnormality disappeared as well. When you get a chance if you could take a look at this that would be most greatly appreciated. Such a beautiful scenery with just this one weird issue.

-Woog

Thanks . Yep I am aware of that issue with the ground poly. I have fixed it but have not uploaded the file.

Kind of re-opening this thread as the New simulator has lead me to visit all of our favorite Cold War Airbases. Alconbury has seen a ton of construction with condos and homes being built all over the old base. This will be a case of a need still for custom PR /Ortho to be included with the Airbase to properly backdate to our wonderful Cold War era. As GlowingHeat are hard at work for the SR-71 for MSFS2020, I believe Alconbury was their UK home was it not? Also we will have an F-15 soon as well from DC Designs. I am also seeing quite a few mods pop up of old FSX models F/A-18, IRIS A-10, so the knowledge base is growing for the new sim. With it my excitement level for the first Military airbase/Ai projects. I am assuming it won’t happen before the end of the year, but I am excited nonetheless.

-Preston

The SR-71s were based at Mildenhall. The U-2s were based at Alconbury.
My earliest memories of actually seeing WZ was with the RF-4Cs and F-5Es based there. When I was on 56 we used to do DACT with the 527th there.

Woogey wrote: ↑12 Sep 2020, 20:41 Kind of re-opening this thread as the New simulator has lead me to visit all of our favorite Cold War Airbases. Alconbury has seen a ton of construction with condos and homes being built all over the old base. This will be a case of a need still for custom PR /Ortho to be included with the Airbase to properly backdate to our wonderful Cold War era. As GlowingHeat are hard at work for the SR-71 for MSFS2020, I believe Alconbury was their UK home was it not? Also we will have an F-15 soon as well from DC Designs. I am also seeing quite a few mods pop up of old FSX models F/A-18, IRIS A-10, so the knowledge base is growing for the new sim. With it my excitement level for the first Military airbase/Ai projects. I am assuming it won’t happen before the end of the year, but I am excited nonetheless.

-Preston

When I convert Alconbury the ground poly sat image will sit on top of the in sim sat image. I have already done this Coningsby and it works fine and I have it set so the in sim grass comes through. The only thing I am not sure about is how to create a new airbase with a new ICAO in this sim.

So the afcad in 2020 doesn't have the same properties as previous sims?

It has the same properties, I just don't know if I can create a new one as EGWZ will not exist in the sim. I will see if I can port over the Alconbury ADE file.

If it has the same fields, and you can amend them, try a simple adding EGWZ as the airport ID. I always try the simple things first just in case they work. After all the ICAO is a simple search id and the positioning is by lat and long so it may well work.
I would have thought that as long as EGWZ doesn't already exist you should not have any issues.

The problem with ICAO codes is that MSFS seems to have randomly re-allocated disused codes to unlicenced strips and other landing grounds that it's included, and people are finding that they can't 're-appropriate' the ICAO code to a retro airfield. Obviously, you can invent your own code (and the sim will take 5-character codes), but that's going to be a right pain for flight planning and AI purposes. I believe it's been raised with Asobo, but no solution as yet.