Missing Hangars and Buildings

[ronald falzon]

Thanks to all at MAIW for populating the skies of FS9 with MILITARY aircraft! One of the MAJOR deficincies in FS9 has been resolved..

Prior to installing ANY addon scenery, I reconnoitre the area to check out what it looks like...to enhance my appreciation of the NEW addon scenery AFTER installation.

As a rule, I've noticed that MAIW packages add AFCADS, and AI planes. Sometimes with special, tailor-made sceneries included. But not often. So what one sees is an airport with a superb AFCAD, excellent AI to liven up the airfield...but NO buildings of any sort!! What a pity...

This morning, I've just installed MAIW Oman Hawks...visited the two airfields...and again NO visible buildings. Which DOES detract from the overall effect. Sometimes, I've noticed that the hangars/buildings placed there by Microsoft are missing afterward...and no replacements supplied by MAIW.

Please, don't get me wrong....MAIW is dedicated to populating the SKIES with AI traffic...NOT designing Airport sceneries. Which is great!

But what's the harm of adding a few scattered buildings/hangars(even default objects would suffice) to project a 'semblance' of a simple airport...NOT a bare one, undressed from any buildings?? After all the effort and trouble and care MAIW goes to fill in these HUGE gaps left by Microsoft...what's a few more hangars, huts etc. ?? Yet they WOULD make quite a difference....for instance, the Oman airfields seemed rather bare and unreal without a SINGLE building in sight...except for the Control Tower.

After installing and flying around MAIW packages like the Hill AFB, which is so rich in scenery details...and Fightertown USA etc. , I cannot help feeling the HUGE disparity between Hill AFB and Oman... One airport is magnificently constructed and enhanced....whilst others by MAIW are completely devoid of ANY buildings..

Nonetheless, I do enjoy the extra AI traffic and am indebted to every one at MAIW for dishing out all these amazing packages....as FREEWARE !!!

Sincerely,
Ronald Falzon (Island of Malta - Mediterranean Sea - EUROPE)

[CelticWarrior]

There's nothing to stop you going ahead and start designing scenery

I appreciate that you're not criticising, but if you want improvements, who do you think is going to do it? It takes people to join in and help, none of the contributors are paid professionals and none were trained in doing what they do. They all decided to learn the skills necessary to produce what we all reap the benefits of.

So, if you want more - do more

[Firebird]

Hi Ronald, I will try an answer that if I can.

We all produce packages because we are all users of FS9 and want to see the highest possible quality military AI on our systems. It just so happens that a lot of other people enjoy it too .

Now like everybody we all want to see good, realistic scenery as well. The problem is that like good, realistic AI aircraft we need modellers to create them. It is something that we have historically been short of, especially for scenery.

You will notice that we adding more scenery with our newer packages, this is because we are slowly building up a libraries of models that will enable us to produce more scenery.
What we will not do is produce scenery that is made up of random buildings or of the wrong type, so pictures are also a factor here and pics of military bases are not always easy to come by.
So the more scenery modellers we have, the more scenery we can produce ourselves. This scenery will not be as good as the more established scenery builders that work with us but will enhance our packages.
However, time and resources being what they are older packages are unlikely to receive scenery unless the packages are updated.

So as CW hinted at if you are a modeller and wish to contribute we would be happy to welcome you aboard.

Sorry for the long post but I think it covers everything.

[MIKE JG]

Ronald, welcome to our forums!

As one of the few scenery guys here at MAIW, I can tell you that scenery is much more time consuming to create than an AI aicraft is. Creating AI aircraft models is a bit more complex, but you're essentially perfecting a single model and making slight variations of that single model.

As an example, the current scenery project I've been working on has over 70 custom designed objects. Each of those objects has to be designed, textured and placed accurately. Once I finish all the custom objects, I will then fill the scenery in with objects that have already been produced and compiled into a library. That saves some time but still each object has to be placed individually. Once I'm happy with all of the obejcts and their locations, I then need to add light effects to some of the objects for nighttime hours. Adding effects again, takes place one effect at a time and takes quite a bit of trial and error to get them placed correctly. Then there's the afcad that has to be created and accurately matched up to the scenery that I've done. The afcad alone takes a long time to get finished. Once I get the visual look of the afcad the way I want it, I then have to add all the parking spaces for the aircraft. Each parking space then must be connected to the taxi network and checked and re-checked for errors. In addition to all that, there are background polygons to be created and objects to be excluded. That's done using a completely different set of programs. Oh and I forgot about adding taxi signs. Same project has 74 individually placed taxi signs.

So once all that is done, then the scenery has to be tested and retested for errors and all the bugs worked out. Once all that is done, then and only then is it ready to be used in a package.

Now that I've bored you with the details of what all is involved in a scenery design I've got great news for you. If you get a copy of either EZ Scenery or Instant Scenery (both payware about $30/US) you can skip most of that work I just mentioned and populate any location on Earth inside of FS9 with ANY object that exists on your computer.

So litterally you could take any scenery object from any MAIW package, or any other addon scenery you have and place it quickly and accurately with the use of one of those two programs mentioned above.

Then completely on your own, you could fill in any of these areas that you are talking about. It's a great deal, a scenery designer does all the hard work and you simply place the objects anywhere you want in about 10 seconds, that's all the time that it takes. With either of those two scenery placement products I mentioned, you get to actually pick the object you want to add, you see it right in FS as you are adding it, you can rotate it, scale it or easily move it, then once you are done, you don't even have to reboot FS9 just enjoy the new scenery you've created. You can litterally create an entire airbase from nothing in about 10 minutes, it's that easy IF you already have objects to work with.

As Steve has said, we can't possibly do scenery for every package. We can get to some, especially those that we have good information on, but we will not guess to just add some filler to a package. That goes against what we do here. But you can make scenery using our objects to your heart's content, just requires getting one of those two scenery design tools while you are at it.

So I would strongly encourage you to get one of those two programs, I prefer Instant Scenery by Flight1. You will not be disappointed.

[BadPvtDan]

Man you could have made a great start on that scenery in the time it took you to write that reply.

[MIKE JG]

I know.........