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ACG - Creating a Virtual Record

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Greg
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ACG - Creating a Virtual Record

Post by Greg »

A new developer blog from John Young outlines the aims, the achievements and current situation following the recent closure of Airfield Construction Group (ACG). Follow the link below for a wonderful look behind the scenes of scenery design!

Link to article

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Woogey
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Re: ACG - Creating a Virtual Record

Post by Woogey »

I just finished reading this article with great interest. As an American boy (11 year old) during Desert Storm, I grew an appreciation for the Coalition aircraft and USAFE in general. I quickly started collecting books in the Superbase Series from Osprey Publishing. Unfortunately, these books don't really show much of the bases themselves. Years later, I discovered ACG, and finally found a way to explore these very important locations. To a young boy, these airbases were every bit as mysterious and magical as King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

I really appreciated ACG, and it is great to hear Lakenheath is back on as well. I think it is fair to say most people use FSX and P3d in single player mode, but there are a fair amount of us who like to jump online, and do co-op missions. The advent of TacPack has finally brought a Tactical mission capability to the FSX series of platforms. The issue here is that Ai do not populate the Multi-player world. When we log on, we will see empty airbases. A great work around, is to have a mix of Static aircraft models, and Ai assigned. Ideally, Ai aircraft masters could create static place-able scenery objects from the Ai, and this would give a nice uniform appearance to the aircraft on the ramps in both Single and Multi-player. Of course, this is also a lot more work as it adds a few more steps to be done before a scenery could be considered feature complete.

I would like to thank John Young, and the rest of the former ACG team for all they have contributed. Bravo on your accomplishments. I look forward to see what this new chapter under the banner of MAIW brings. I would love to see it galvanize the group, and help motivate the transition towards P3d.

-Woog
Mark_Fox
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Re: ACG - Creating a Virtual Record

Post by Mark_Fox »

I clicked on the link and started scanning the pictures.

Talk about a way-back machine: I have actually stood where the pictures of the Bentwaters WSA were taken. 1985-1987. For some reason I always got the Danger Building duty. I have been standing spread eagle on the long concrete wall on the right because misread the authentication grid to the Security Police. I watched the OIC with a remarkable resemblance to Charlie Brown turn beet red when he noticed a footprint on the upper item of a stacked bolster!

Thank you guys for making the effort and sharing! I may not say much, but it is appreciated.
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John Young
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Re: ACG - Creating a Virtual Record

Post by John Young »

Thank you Woog. I do sometimes spin off static aircraft from my AI models - probably takes an hour or two each time. The difficulty is retaining individual aircraft identities because textures can't be assigned with an aircraft.cfg file.

It's lovely Mark when people who have first hand real-world experience of a retro scenery can re-live a memory and relate it here. Thanks for your post.

John
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