Let's be grandiose - Polyarnyy to Arkhangelsk

[Ford Friendly]

People, including family, friends and those who haven't much of a clue about me, have told me that I have delusions of grandeur. I guess that I am about to prove them right. So, grab a bit of your favorite beverage or hallucinatory drug and let's take a trip down fantasy lane.

I was somewhat "inspired" to start this thread and project by the "Oh dear....." thread in the UKMIL>General Scenery Talk forum (http://www.ukmil.org.uk). If you haven't read it, I highly recommend that you take the time to do so as the author has a way with words.

Not content with having numerous projects in various stages of completion because I've run into one problem or another with each of them and because I am far more intrigued and inspired by large scale projects than by minutiae, I decided to try my hand at a fairly large-scale scenery project. I mean, I've got about half a dozen scenery/airport/air base projects that are just plain stopped or are proceeding at a snail's pace for various reasons already. Some I've become bored with. Others I can't decide what needs being done next. Still others have hit technical stops because I don't know how to do what I want to do - yet. So, why not shoot for the stars and really go for something on a grander scale than even I usually think is possible.

Where I am starting.
I'm skilled enough to create airports from scratch via Afcad/AFX/ADE. I've been capable of creating my own flightplans by hand for about 1-1.5 years now. I have some historical knowledge and interest in the Sov/Russian Air Force and Navy in the Kola Peninsula and White Sea areas. Microsoft has essentially ignored the area in terms of providing many of the real-world air bases in the area of my interest. Recently, I've gone from 0 skills to mediocre using SBuilderX for photoscenery and landclassing. I'm as capable as the next guy who can use RWY-12, EZ-scenery or Instant Scenery in placing ready-made objects from object libraries. Finally, as far as I know, no one else is currently "working on" the area of my interest - either for FS9 or for FSX.

One of the things that strikes me time and time again while flightsimming is that the ratio of aircraft modellers and painters to scenery designers/providers is weighted towards the aircraft people. That's understandable as this is a FLIGHT sim community. But I like a bit of the whole thing - eye candy on the ground as well as in the air. With aircraft, there's pretty much 4 areas - modeling, FDE tweaking, flightplanning and painting (that might be a simplification, but that's how I see it.) With scenery, there's afcadding, modeling, and ground cover - which includes photoscenery, landclassing in order to place autogen objects, and manually creating and placing them. The last area includes "painting" equivalent to aircraft painting - except that few people upload their scenery object creations for others to use/enjoy in making their own or modifying existing sceneries. It seems to me that most scenery people are much more proprietary than the aircraft people. To put it another way, there appear to be far fewer scenery designers than aircraft modellers and/or repainters. Those that I have contacted have a markedly different attitude than most aircraft modellers I have communicated with. YMMV and note that I did say "most", not all.

Hopefully, this diary of the project will inspire someone else the way that "Oh dear....." thread did me.

Anyway, hold your breath now because here's where the fantasy becomes concrete.

I decided to work on an area that spans from Polyarnyy to just SE of Arkhangelsk.

Continued in the next post.

[Ford Friendly]

Hmm, you already/finally stopped laughing? Well, if the audacity of the ego declaring himself committed to such a project as mine hasn't killed you by laughing, there's hope for us both yet. Shoot for the moon and you might get 100 miles; shoot for 100 miles and you might be content at just 10 feet. I choose the moon.

Anyway, off we go.
The project needs a name. Needing a better one than "I am God, hear me roar", I have decided to call this one Polyarnyy to Arkhangelsk after first leaning towards Project Kola. The first has an image of movement and movement means progress while the second just makes me want to go to the fridge and drink.

Rather than beating a dead horse, let's just say that MS didn't do a good job on this area in FSX and that the FSGenesis landclass for this region leaves much to be desired. So, I can sort of treat the area as a blank slate without really destroying anything worthwhile. I really did like the "I am God" title as opposed to being seen as a wannabe or a person who only knows how to be a critic or a "nuker-of-worlds". In other words, anything I do will be better than what I have in "my" FSX-world right now.

Anyway, I took a flight from Arkhangelsk to Murmansk and was sorely disappointed to find there were no emergency abort airfields. Now, I can deadstick a light plane as well as the next guy, but engineless F-4's and MIG-29's glide like rocks dropped off cliffs and I certainly can't glide a flamed-out TU-160 over 100 miles from any reasonable altitude! But the trees on the Kola Peninsula were sure pretty in the summer.

Okay, so let's take a cursory look at the scale of the project from the point of view of what I noticed on the flight.

***Key locations***
Kola Peninsula/Kola Bay area
1. Polyarnyy - need to make the sub base, sub repair facilities and some
housing
2. Severomorsk - need to make the town including the dock areas. Also activate the following airbases which do not currently exist in FSX
Severomorsk-1, ICAO-ULAK, 69* 1' 54"N 33* 25' 6"E
Severomorsk-2, ICAO-none, 69* 0' 54"N 33* 17' 30"E
Severomorsk-3, ICAO-XLMV, 68* 52' 0"N 33* 43' 0"E
3. Murmansk - tweak the existing/default Murmansk commercial airport, ICAO-ULMM, 68* 47' 1.68"N 32* 45' 21.41"E) and re-landclass the area from Murmansk to Murmansk airport (which is actually 24km downriver from the city)
4. Redraw the Kola Bay/Tuloma River coastlines from Polyarnyy to just south of Murmashi and east of Murmansk airport.
5. Activate the non-existent in FSX Monchegorsk Airbase, ICAO-none, 67* 59' 12" 33* 01' 6"E
6. Activate the Kirovsk-Apatity commercial airport, ICAO-ULMK, 67* 27' 48"N 33* 35' 18"E
7. Identify and activate the airport 2 miles SE of Rechnoy
8. Activate Umbozero Airbase, ICAO-none, 67°31'0?N 034°18'36?E?
9. Identify and activate the airport 2 miles SE of Umbozero AB
10. Activate the Khibini commercial airport (also called Umba Northwest) located 78 km south of Apatity, ICAO - none, 66* 53' 24"N 33* 53' 0E. It services Tu-134 in summer and An-24 in winter.

Arkhangelsk area
1. Tweak FSX default Arkhangelsk-Talegi airport, ICAO-ULAA
2. Relandclass/redraw Arkhangelsk and Severodvinsk city areas and the river delta & coastlines
2a. Redraw at least a portion of the White Sea coastline from Arkhangelsk to the Barents Sea
3. Activate/tweak Vaskovo Airport, ICAO-ULAH, N64* 26' 30.28" E40* 25' 23.43"
4. Activate Lakhta AB, ICAO-none, 64°23'0"N 40°43'0"E
5. Render/draw abandoned Katunino airbase (Google shows it as dirt, possibly turned into tank gunnery range), 64* 21' 13.68"N 40* 34' 08.81"E.

None of the individual local areas will be as detailed or accurate as either UKMIL's sceneries or John Stinstrom's or Jim Dhaenens, all of whom I admire but have different interests, skill sets, talents and abilities than I do.

to be continued...

[Keith Jones]

That's a hell of a project, Ford. I wish you every success with it.

[Ford Friendly]

The process has begun - I've opened GoogleEarth and zoomed in and out, around and about the Polyarnyy to Murmansk area. This series of images gives an overview of the scale and scope of the project, orienting you to the area as well as showing the key locations for this project.

Overview of the geographic area

Note the vastness of the area involved - but I am basically only concerned with a "wide corridor" of major places/airports along a relatively straight line.

The rest of the pics are oriented/move generally from North to South along the river.
Polyarnyy to Murmansk - more geographic orientation

Lots of coastline to redraw. I probably won't go into any real detailing more than a mile inland in the areas I don't consider important.

Polyarnyy itself - didn't concentrate on the sub pens/docks in this pic.

I will need another to cover that area.

Severomorsk - town

Like the picture above, you can see some of the difficulty that I could face
in terms of using or creating photoscenery from GoogleEarth. Even in the
sepia toned views, however, there is a lot of detail.

Severomorsk 1 and 2. 1 is still in use. 2 is thought to be "abandoned" though a zoomed-in shot in GoogleEarth shows the hard surfaces are in relatively good condition.


Severomorsk-3

Operational! Now I don't need to flightplan just TNG's for the area!

Murmansk - town

How could I do anything with the airport and not at least try to do the city
some justice?

South of Murmansk heading towards ULMM

Shown just for a sense of distance to the airport - but there is the "suburb"
of Murmashi that is separated from both the airport and Murmansk itself. This type of separation is what makes things "feel" accurate to me when I fly in FSx.

Murmansk civilian airport

Finally, an airport actually represented already in FSX. However, it's one of those "default" representations, so it definitely needs tweaking of the
runways, taxiways and aprons at a minimum. Building placements and static scenery objects will also liven it up. Gotta keep the "silly-villias"
represented and happy!

So far, that's 4 afcads and 2 major urban areas and 1 minor urban area to design/landclass - and I have only covered 36 miles of the 380 mile length! Has anyone got a free shot of vodka for me? 2 maybe? I know that I could use one right about now.

--
The basic process for each area involves defining which areas need to have autogen objects excluded, which areas need to be flattened, and what the relevant landclassification for various areas should be/is. Land classification, for those not "in the know", is what determines which
autogenerated objects and what textures are places where. It also relates to the seasonality of textures - green in spring/summer and browns in autumn for example.I'm getting a s****y just thinking about it!

--
**I like big words - the next paragraph has a couple of my favorites.

It would be egregious of me not to acknowledge that those whose tools and tutorials I will use and have studied to make this project a reality -
whether it turns out to be a success or failure is "all mine" not a result of
the tools and "tute's".

SBuilderX - Luis Sa
SBuilder/SBuilderX tutorials
- Airfield regression - Jon "Scruffy Duck" Masterson
- Land and lines - Jon "Scruffy Duck" Masterson
- Using Textured Polygons - Jon "Scruffy Duck" Masterson
- Adding 3D Objects to your scenery using SBuilder - Jon "Scruffy Duck"
Masterson
- Tutorial - Making FS9 Object Libraries available in SBulder - Jon "Scruffy Duck" Masterson
- Tutorial: Modify Landclass and Add Roads with SBuilder - Jon "Scruffy
Duck" Masterson
- FSX SBuilderX Tutorial v1 - Scott Smart
- Airport Terrain Modification with Sbuilder - Scott Smart
- Terrain Design for Flight Simulator X - Luis Féliz-Tirado

Tutorial - Using the Autogen Annotator - Luis Féliz-Tirado
Afcad-Some Tips and Tricks - David "Opa" Marshall
Creation of an "Invisible Runway" - a Step by Step Illustrated Tutorial -
David "Opa" Marshall
Using the ExcBuilder Program - An Illustrated Tutorial - David "Opa" Marshall
Designing and building an airport - Tim Clayton
Simple Instructions for Modifying Land Class - Luis, scenery design forum
AI_Traffic_Lakes - Harold L. Ball
Tutorial - XML Editing for Placement - Todd Lucas
Airport Design Editor Tutorial 3 - Using Background Images - Bob Keeshan/ADE Development Team
Illustrated Guide to Extrusion Bridges - Luis Féliz-Tirado
All of these are available on avsim.com

Tools that I may or will use other than SBuilderX
AFX
Background Image Downloader - Paul de Kort
Bgl Analyze for FS X - Winfried Orthman
KML v1.10 - Matthew Styles

Okay, enough of the tedious stuff, however important it is.

I'll get a pic of the Polyarnyy sub-pens and docks for the next entry.

[Stevo]

Hi Ford Friendly,

Glad you have been inspired by Nigel's (unusualsuspex) 'oh dear' post, I certainly have been impressed by his way with words and how far he has come in such a short space of time considering he hasn't done it before.

I'll look forward to reading more of your posts for your project.

well done

Stevo_ukmil

[Ford Friendly]

Wellm a short post because I need to go back and beat myself with some wet noodles - umm, do a bit more research I mean.

Turns out that there are some FS9 sceneries related to the area of interest which might be modifiable to FSX use. Add to that, there is a beta version of an Arkhangelsk-Talagi scenery and things get interesting --- not, hey this cans the project interesting, but "get your facts straight before continuing" interesting.

Back in a bit --- probably this afternoon, CDT.

[MIKE JG]

Ford I'm going to move this over to the "Your Projects" forum.

[sprocky]

Ford,
hopefully I have a new HDD when your project will be available. I am running out of space due to AI aircraft and scenery textures But I guess this project will keep you busy for some time.

[Mike_UKMIL]

Heh, I suggested awhile ago on ukmil forums that Murmansk scenery with AI ships would be awesome; if you can find an interested model maker, I could make textures for something like that.

[Ford Friendly]

Moved? Pffft. I intended this as less a "my project" than as an exploration of scenery design and what all is involved on a large scale, but what the heck.

Okay, enuf of that.

sprocky, Mike, appreciate the comments. Any "release" on my part will be FSX-oriented and probably not be a "complete" package but a combination of "old-style" download this, this and this along with some things I come up with. That's so far down the road, right now, I'm not sure of an end date. But it's nice to know there's interest by others.

--- ---

On a project this size, preparation and planning are key. Part of plannig is research, research, research and more research. Obviously, Google Earth is one of the simplest tools for research - but remembering to check all other flight sim-related web sites is another source of info, especially on something this large. When one of those sites is not "in English", well,
let's just say that search engines aren't always (used) perfect.

So, I've now confirmed that there is a beta FSX-scenery for ULAA out as well as FS9-versions of Severomorsk 1-3, and Olenegorsk/Olenya. That would all be good news if they fit right in - it'd save me time and effort in "reaching the finish line" - whoa, wait a minute.

This isn't a race. It's a "diary" (to use unusualsuspectx' label on UKMIL) of the thought process and progress or lack thereof. I don't mind showing the warts - though I do regret illustrating what might appear to be inattentiveness or ineptitude. Then again, the wheel was probably invented at multiple places. So, enjoy the warts if you can.

So here's the result of the additional research. Most of it was "to be expected" considering that most were "for FS9".

The FSX beta of Arkhangelsk has tree transparency issues.

This could be a result of being designed for FSX-RTM, FSX-SP1 or a misunderstanding of FSX SP2 transparency implementation. But otherwise it's nice. More pics of and comments about this scenery later in the project.
Edit-oops, didn't trim that screenshot... too much work to go back and do it now. But now you know I have a wiiiiiiiiide screen setup.

Severomorsk-1, 2 and 3 all have elevation-flatten and exclude issues when installed on my FSX system as-is.

Severomorsk-1


Severomorsk-2 (can't see the forest (um, airport) for the trees?!?! Me either.)


Severomorsk-3


Olenegorsk/Olenya has elevation/flatten issues if installed into FSX without modification.


Also need to check the landclassing of the area as it seems kinda barren on first look. More on this later in the project.


So, no matter what, none of this is "acceptable" to me without at least some modification. That's not a criticism of the scenery authors - it's a recognition of the differences between their systems and mine.

The "Goldilock's porridge reality" for me is that very few sceneries look "just right" without a bit of modification for my eye/system. That may vary from adding a flatten, an exclude or an object to disabling a bgl within the scenery. Something I will NOT do is adjust the scenery density slider to accomodate a particular scenery. I've set that slider where I want it and it stays there.

Call me lazy but, if a particular scenery cannot be adjusted to give acceptable visuals and FPS at that setting, then it doesn't stay on my system.

to be continued.....

[Ford Friendly]

You guys getting tired of exposition? Me too.

So, here's a picture of some work I've completed on defining Kola Bay-Tuloma River coastlines.


The blue represents polygons representing water I've drawn over satellite photos using SbuilderX. The thing is you can't always "just do that and voila, it's done". Depending upon the underlying structure, you might or might not be drawing on top of a "water polygon" that actually has land on it.

Let me explain a small bit after you get a BIG freaking drink.

You're back? Okay, take a deep breath, cross your eyes and give me a break if this is not 100% accurate - it's my understanding of the system.

Think of the FS world as an onion or a multi-layered candy. It's got a solid land core and on top of that is a layer of water. The world gets overlaid with a grid system most refer to as LOD, meaning various Levels of Detail. LOD8 is a huge rectangles while LOD13 is much smaller and there are a bunch of LOD13 rectangles within a single LOD8 rectangle.

So, a water polygon might be larger than the land mass you want to show in a certain location - but you still need water surrounding it - oh yeah. That's the definiton of an island, right? Cool. So, you need to cut a hole through the water layer to show the land. Sometimes.

I say sometimes, because what if the location of the island actually spans the boundary between two different water polygons? Then you have to cut a hole that crosses the boundary and redraw the area that should be water. Peninisula's add a certain level of complexity to that concept, but generally it's the same.

Okay, take another swallow of your drink. That was the hard part.

What I am doing here is essentialy the reverse. My concern is defining the coastline, ensuring that Kola Bay and the Tulomon River are represented relatively accurately. The inland land mass is already mostly exposed.

What kept happening as I worked was I would draw the "water" and it wouldn't show. So, I'd have to cut holes in the underlying water polygon and then redraw both land and water polygons.

This shot shows the eastern coastline looking south from where Kola Bay meets the Barents Sea. The straight lines on the right of the pic are areas not yet worked on.

In case you missed it, the red crosshair in the top pic is the spot from which the lower pic was taken.

Now I need to get that drink. Enjoy.

to be continued....

[Ford Friendly]

One of the things you learn when using software is each program has its own pluses and minuses. And then there are the unexpected "gotchas".

I thought that I was maybe 4 miles from completing the coastline from the Kola Bay-Barent's Sea entrance all the way down the Tulomon River past Murmansk. Notice the "I thought" at the beginning of that sentence?

One of the gotchas was that I had been making changes and progress so successfully that I'd begun making 2 or 3 quick modifications at once before saving them, knowing that each time I did save, SBuilderX made a backup of the project file. Then I got over-confident and made 6 or 7 changes without saving and one of those changes had a hugely unexpected result. So I figured that I'd just go back to the last backup and all would be fine, right?

Well, the SBuilderX gotcha raised its butt-ugly head and I've essentially got to start over. The program doesn't make the backup files only when you save. It makes backups, overwirting the previous backup when you "compile" the project to implement the latest change. So, I'd been overwriting my backups by repeatedly compiling even without saving the changes. The last known "safe" backup of changes was/has been overwritten at least a dozen or so times and that's nearly half the length of the bay/river water area.

So, I've got to start redefining the coastlines completely. The only thing I can recover is the photo-image that I was using to show me where the coastline actually is.

Pfft. Anyone have a keg of something strong that I can have "for cheap"? It's going to be a long night/next couple days and my attitude is going to suck until I get back to where I was.

Then again, I now know exactly what NOT to do.

to be continued....

[Ford Friendly]

As you can see, awake in the middle of the night/early morning.

Then again, I now know exactly what NOT to do.

Brave words that now seem way too over-confident. Sigh.

Creating coastlines has become both tedious and a pain in the royal ptootie. I've twice more hit what appears to be the same snag but in different places - needing to add just a few kilometers more coastling in an area winds up crossing water polygon boundaries. The only way I know how to continue from there causes a massive amount (think 20-40x what I thought I had left in that area) of new coastline/landmass definiton to be fixed/worked on as the "problem" creates/extends into a new, "now-waterless" area.

So, what seemed at first to be a project progressing at the speed of the Orient Express going downhill with a tailwind is much slowed for now. The initial excitement of apparent success has become tedium and drudgery for now at least. So, I am limiting my coastline work to two hour periods in order to not decide to jsut walk away. After two hours, I DO stop and walk away, regardless of progress in order to avoid burnout/over-confidence leading to the creation of more errors.

I can't yet work on anything like (re)landclassing cities/towns/settlements on along Kola Bay/Tulomon River for few of having to redo that work as a result of the above problem.

OTOH, work has not stopped. My interests have broadened and my work effort have shifted a bit as I continue to research the "broad corridor" outside of those two hours of coastline work. The initial "corridor" of interest from Polyarnyy-to-Arkhangelsk has widened to include more of the bases of the Leningrad Military District in order to have places to send the aircraft for the bases I'm reactivating.

Trivial bits of knowledge from my past have also become actual places and items of interest as Google Earth and Interent research turn up now-unclassified information. In a couple cases, formerly "black knowledge" is freely available -with reasonably detailed pictures- for inclusion in the FSworld. For instance, the Russian Hen House EW/OTHT radar installation in the Kola region is in "the corridor" while the Kola Nuclear Power Plant isn't but could be with a bit of corridor widening. With a little artistic license (remember I am not a gmax modeller), these could be included as VFR points of interest/objects. Add a few more AI aircraft destinations and quick searches of the surrounding areas turn up even more bits of VFR trivia.

So I find myself with an ever-increasing cornucopeia of riches to choose from and work on in my down-time from coastline c**p.

By the end of today, I'll probably have finished some interim landclassing and flattens/excludes for the sceneries I found for Severomorsk 1,2 and 3 and hope to have some Mig-25, SU-25 and TU95/142 and TU160 AI flitting around just to add incentive to keep on working. Really preliminary testing showed me that my system could handle 25 of those low-poly but single LOD MG-25's I found on avsim.ru on the ground at Severomorsk-2 at the same time I have some less FPS-friendly TU-95s on the ground at Severomorsk-1 or 3 and some AI MI-8's doing their thing. All this was done with quick-n-dirty flightplans courtesy of RPP's Excel flightplan genrator - after I did some modifications to those Severomorsk afcads. An inch of interest/progress in one area seems to lead to "distracting progress" in another. Preliminary pictures to come this afternoon - hopefully.

And there was the temporary non-project downtime of installing a Sokhol-Sakhalinsk scenery that included a traffic pack with the aforementioned Mi-8's and some MiG29's (or was it SU-27s). As there are more SU27s/Mig29s than Mig25/31s in the Leningrad Military District, taking the time to install that package had the side benefit of evaluating the impact of those models on my system in a previously undeveloped area - had to create yet another quick and dirty afcad (near Vanino) to see the traffic pack work though. Inch leading to miles again.... LOL.

By "rewarding myself" this way, the project will advance more slowly in the orginal direction while continuing to progress on a broader front. Can we say OCD? I knew that we could. TMI.

So, enough with the "diary"... back to work.

to be continued...

[Ford Friendly]

Didn't get around to making pictures yet today.

Been looking for some AI models and found one of "real" interest hiding amongst some other files on some long forgotten backup CD's - I don't know where I originally found it.
R. Kreibich apparently made a 5-LOD AI Mig-25 and then apologized in the readme "Sorry, 5 LODS only and far away from perfection". And he included a "paintkit" - but it's only a BMP image. I'm definitely sticking this one in my sim until something better comes along.
Edited to add: Oops. IT's an Algerian paintjob only. But I may be able to stick red stars on it to make it look russian. Did a quick search on the name on avsim - it's available there. Filename: ai_mig25.zip for those interested.

So, after installing this and doing some flightplanning for them being based at Monchegorsk (ULMG), I'm going to concentrate for the rest of the evening on populating and flightplanning Severomorsk 1 and 3 after seeing what I can do with SBuilderX to make the FS2004 sceneries from avsim.ru for these bases work at least temporarily in my FSX sim.

Pictures WILL follow. Tonight, probably just a bit late.

to be continued....

[Ford Friendly]

Okay. Yesterday was a day of "one thing after another" interfering with plans, progress and even just plain thinking.

Here's what I actually did get done - I managed to get that FS9 Olenegorsk AB scenery to look "almost normal" in my FSX installation. There were some issues. But first a couple pictures.

Spring

Note the HAS's the scenery author has included. Simpler than most UKMIL or MAIW HAS's but effective enough in this generally barren area of the FSX world.

Winter

A better shot of the numerous HAS's under wintery conditions.

The thing that made this both interesting and frustrating was that FSX doesn't have a stock airbase at Olenegorsk (aka Olenya), but either UT Europe or the default MSFS landclass has a huge grass landclass defining the area. Normally that wouldn't be a problem - fire up SBuilderX, make a polygon and define it as Remove_All AB boundaries - done. The grassy area would be gone and replaced with whatever that grass area you see at most FSx airports is actually overlaid on (some other landclass).

But, even after 2 hours of messing with it, I couldn't get the dang grass landclass to disappear. Usually, drawing a polygon that intersects any part of an airport boundary polygon would remove that grass area. But that just didn't work this time.

I also ran into a bit of an elevation issue - mostly self-inflicted, but not 100%. Probably related to the airport grass area, I had to fight to make a flatten "stick"/take effect like I wanted. I did learn that you can get really weird elevation results - including floating runways, sunken grassy areas, and really nice, almost natural looking undulations when you accidentally set different altitudes for overlapping polygons. As you can see from the pictures, the flatten is mostly completed but it's much larger than I believe it should have to be.

Spring

Showing the quality and details of the included buildings.

Winter

Similar view to the first picture, but in winter.

So, this TU-22 base is basically ready to host some traffic - which I hope to get around to today.

One of the cutesy things that happened while I was working on this was I "looked up" and saw a MIG-25 flying towards another base. This alleviated some of the frustration I was experiencing while "fighting the uncooperative flatten".

So, not what I'd planned and written that I was going to work on. Definitely more trouble to get it to this point than I'd anticipated. Later to reach a point of ~80% completed than I'd hoped. But all in all, it will do nicely until something better comes along and until I find the time and inclination to complete the final 20% that would really make it fit into FSX like it was made for FSX, I think. Don't you?

to be continued...

[Ford Friendly]

Another pic of Olenya but with TU22Ms.

These are Kaz Ito's TU-22P flyable aircraft being used as AI. It just dawned on me as I write this that I hadn't deleted the panel from the Simobjects\TU-22 folder, so the 8.1 FPS I noted in the picture should be a bit higher.

Note>>> As I have written elsewhere, FSX FPS is different than FS9 FPS. It's apparently reported differently and the numbers definitely don't have direct correlations from one version to another. I find that my installation allows the default aircraft to be/feel flyable down to 6-6.5 FPS where in FS9, 10 FPS would be an unflyable, stuttering pain in the monitor. FWIW, my system is an HPa110n AMD6400x2 @2.3 GHz, 4GB RAM, nVidia 6800 GTS (320MB). So it's effectively middle of the road in today's gaming market. And I run Vista SP1, usually simultaneously with AVG antivirus, 1-3 Internet Explorer separate windows (with 1-2 tabs each) open, 2-3 Windows Explorer sessions open and even SBuilderX and/or Google Earth and FSX is still flyable for me.

TU22s in bunkers

to be continued...

[Ford Friendly]

As I've become slightly "gun shy" on the coastline redefinition issue and am progressing much more slowly than before, I thought I'd provide this update on what I have been able to accomplish other than "fixing" Olenegorsk/Olenya AB to work with my FSX installation.

I went to scramble.nl (the reference of choice here for AOOB it seems) and got a list of the airbases and their locations for the Leningrad Military District (LMD). Then I GoogleEarth'd their locations and cross-referenced that with a listing of MSFSX airport facilities on my system - paying special attention to the Polyarnyy-Arkhangelsk "corridor" I've identified as the area of primary interest for this project.

The scramble AOOB is somewhat outdated when compared against aircraft actually visible on the ground in GoogleEarth, MSVisual Earth or Yahoo satellite pictures, so I've taken this to allow me some "artistic license"/leeway in deciding what should be/is based where. Aircraft woudln't fly only to the list of bases along the corridor, so the entirety of the list of airfields in the LMD will actually be used/is useful.

So, I have created at least preliminary airport facilities at the following locations (using AFX and saving them primarily in FSX-format):
Belushya-Guba/Rogachevo (on Novaya Zemlya)
Kilp Yavr
Kotlas-Savvatiya
Lahkta-Katunino
Murmask
Monchegorsk

I have already installed and modified sceneries/airport facilities at the following locations:
Arkhangelsk-Talagi
Severomorsk 1, 2, and 3 (mostly just made the necessary flattens and added some custom excludes to allow the FS9 sceneries to work at least temporarily. Sev-1 definitely needed the most work/consideration due to the slope of the terrain there.)
Kipelovo
St. Petersberg-Pushkin
Olenegorsk/Olenya (shown in previous posts)

This leaves a few bases "close in" to/along the corridor and a number of bases much further out but necessary to create a complete "presence" of military ai activity --- I mean, TU-160's aren't based in the LMD but I do want to have a few visits from them, for instance. And TU-142/95 basing is limited in the LMD but again, I intend for them to visit other locations rather than simple out and backs.

So, up next, are the following locations (whether to install/modify exsiting FS9 scenery or to create new FSX afcads myself is undetermined):
1. Afrikanda, Alakurtii, Apatity, Kachalovka - and the "airport facility re-population" of the Kola Peninsua will be "complete"
2. Pechora - to bring back the A-50 and SU-24 basing
3. Leningrad/St. Petersberg area - Pushkin-3, Prybolovo, Kasimovo, Gromovo, Gorelovo-2, Siversky
4. Staraya Russa, Pskov and Lodeynoye Pole - because the first is "huge" and the second is needed as an SU-27 destination/source

That should be nearly 85% of the LMD military airport facilities so I can flightplan to my heart's content while finishing the coastline work.

Speaking of which, if you haven't tried to do this yourself, you really can't appreciate the entirety of an accurate scenery in a harbor/on the water - like JFK, Boston Logan, etc. Straight lines stand out like sore thumbs amidst irregular shorelines - to me, they are an anathema to a natural appearance.

Anyway, back to the realm of 2 steps forward, one step back coastline stuff. One of the difficulties being that IE/GoogleEarth background images need truly accurate "calibration" in order to work with the GE tiles downloaded through SBuilderX - some of which don't get downloaded so you/I need to use the former to fill in the gaps of the latter method. (If you didn't understand that because I wasn't clear, don't worry. What I was trying to describe is basically how you/I need to resize and orient imagery from multiple sources to fit together (nearly) seamlessly so that I can do the landclassing and coastal definition better.)
(It strikes me that all of my posting about this may actually set a level of expectation about results that won't be lived up to or that I may be viewed as somewhat sel-fserving/egotistical just by writing this. What I am really trying to describe is the method, process, successes and foibles that are occuring as I go along so that someone else will do something similar and I gain a "partner in crime" like the aircraft modellers/"group" - whether MAIW staff or not - have sort of formed. I'm certainly no expert, but, like unusualsupex over on the ULMIL forum, am still excited about a project/goal I set for myself.)

And, of course, I need to begin to research and download the ubiquitous Russian cargo plane traffic to provide the same type of ambiance that C-130 and C-17 traffic provide. (Fighters, ASW and bombers are what attracts me most but airfields certainly seem artificially dead without the cargo/personnel movers.

to be continued...

[Ford Friendly]

Very minor update on the status of the project...

Have completed the coastline redefinition from Polyarnyy to halfway between Severomorsk and Murmansk. Learned big lessons concerning the use of TMFviewer, LOD grids, QMID grids and the relationship of water polygons to the above (don't worry, that's definitely Greek to 99.9% of people who don't mess with scenery and 99% of those who do!) So, now I understand why I was having SbuilderX giving me unexpected results after doing exactly what I wanted for huge swatches.

Have completed basic afcadding for roughly 75% of the Kola Peninsula airbases. Of those, 50% have required re-landclassing and I've completed the vast majority of that.

Concerning the city/town/docks of Polyarnyy itself, re-landclassing and defining the town itself is not going to be a major issue. What will be an issue is the lack of static or AI models of any Russian submarines. All I've found are a couple of very basic models Los Angeles class subs. There are 1 or 2 "flyable" subs that might be substituable - except that they are not Russian either. There are also zero models of any Russian military ships. So, populating the naval aspect of the area in any reasonable likeness is proving to be quite the challenge.

Basic flightplanning for combat aircraft for those bases for which I have at least 75%-complete afcads has been completed. Still need to work out the cargo/transport "load" that the project area can handle.

The moral of the story to this point:
Think big.
Go bigger.
Trouble will definitely ensue.
Walk away for a while and work on something else.
Repeat the last step.
Return and try again using what knowledge has been gained from the last 2 steps.
Backup, backup, backup your work - early, often and in different places.
Patience is a virtue -with yourself, when facing setbacks, when you think that you've futzed the entire project to the point of setting fire to the computer.

to be continued....

[Ford Friendly]

Very minor status update.

I've been "playing elsewhere" mostly of late (JRB New Orleans, Singapore, a bit of Thailand), at least in terms of actually producing anything for my sim. Sometimes what is involved in projects like this produces nothing "physical" or I get to feeling "too close" to something and back off to get perspective - which is what happened here.

So, what is the status?
- Afcads for the entire Kola Peninsula and Arkhangelsk as far as military bases go are all 95% or more completed. By completed, I mean to include required flattens, exclusions and at least minor landclassing for the area immediately surrounding these airfields. Some minor things like taxiway designations or minor exclusions/flattens, landclass adjustments are what is included in the other 5%.

Also completed additional 7 afcads in Leningrad Military District for "atmosphere"/"ai flightplan-required" desinations (places that I know flights went to, but I wouldn't normally fly to in FSx myself). [I have this thing about if an ai flightplan includes a destination airport, there HAS TO BE a valid afcad with sufficient parking or I won't include that entire flightplan in my sim - I don't just ignore or delete that line/route. I know, I'm strange. ]

- Coastline for Kola Bay/Tulomon River is complete from Polyarnyy to Murmansk. Need to extend it southward about 15km to Murmashi and that will be that.

- Polyarnyy. This is at step 1.1 of maybe 100 steps. Still researching, looking for submarines models, dock models, key buildings, etc. The plan is to hand-place numerous buildings and other objects. It's going to be a "project in itself". So, preparation and planning is key.

- What's already available research. Have completed looking at all FS9/FSX scenery files for the area of interest listed on all major sites. That includes d/l'ing and testing over a dozen sceneries. Also looked at roughly a dozen "ai models" and have dl'd/installed over 35 aircraft and texture paint schemes specific to Russia/Soviet Union//units in this area.

So much for the "minor status report". [Maybe I need to figure out what "minor" really means?!?! ]

I need another break/drink now.

[jimrodger]

Any updates?

Really looking forwards to this one