1.12 What software tools are the best for scenery and aircraft design?
From FlightSim
Q:
I HAVE BEEN USING JEPPESENS TO FLY AROUND DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORLD IN FS98, AND I'M DISAPPOINTED BY FS98 NAVAID COVERAGE IN THE MORE REMOTE AREAS. I WANT TO DESIGN MY OWN MATERIAL. WHAT ARE PEOPLE USING TO DESIGN SCENERY/NAVAIDS IN FS98? AND FOR THAT MATTER, WHAT ARE AIRCRAFT FOR FS98 BEING DESIGNED WITH?
A:
Glad you're interested in covering some of the more neglected areas of the FS98 world. There are several freeware or shareware programs out for scenery design along with some commercial programs. In fact some of the commercial programs are licensed version with some enhancements, of shareware or freeware programs. In the freeware/shareware realm you can find Airport 2.02 by Pascal Meziat, it has been through several iterations, and is almost a standard amongst designers. It has a graphical interface for object placement and a substantial number of objects are available to use in your scenery, many as macros developed either by hand or with the help of another good program VOD2.7 or Visual Object Designer by Rafael Sanchez. VOD can also be used to 'build' scenery, but perhaps its main use is creating objects to be placed by Airport 2.02. Airport is soon to have an update called Airport 98, but that is somewhere about late Feb. If you're inclined and computer language gifted you can use just the compiler portion of Airport 2.02, a program called SCASM (Scenery Assembler), but I'd say the learning curve is time consuming. Another good scenery designer in the public domain is FSASM, and many good sceneries have been built with it. The library objects are different in FSASM so the scenery produced has a different look too, but that's fine...it gives some variety. Personally, I've only used FSASM a time or two, not because it isn't a good utility, but because I learned on Airport. One very good scenery builder that creates excellent terrain such as coast lines and inland areas with all the roads, rivers, lakes, etc. is SCBuild, it uses the U.S. Geologic Survey database to build scenery, and can add rudimentary airport objects like runways and polygons for taxiways but 3D objects must be added with another program as an 'overlay' or add-on .bgl file. The other restriction is that you're limited to U.S. scenery because of the data base. In the commercial category you'll find one program that uses this SCBuild as it's base and can add some of the macro objects. Many of the commercial sites that support flightsim.com have these programs and for quick and painless scenery they have much merit. The newcomer to the bunch is called FSWOW from Tekmate and heralds itself as the easiest to use.
No matter which version you use, this forum has a number of scenery designers who can provide ready help if you encounter difficulties, primarily if you're using one of the freeware/shareware programs. Good reference material exists to supplement your efforts and can allow very realistic design of scenery.
Good luck, looking forward to seeing your efforts posted here.
Bleuzzmann
You're not as far behind as you think. The only tool for designing
aircraft is still Flight Shop for FS5.1. It is getting a bit long in
the tooth, but the real masters are turning out some beautiful
aircraft.
Scenery is another matter. Let me give you the two I prefer. On the freeware side, you'll be hard pressed to beat Airport 2.02 for WIN95. It is complete and very comprehensive. And there are thousands of add-on scenery pieces available.
On the "buy-ware" side, they don't come much better than Abacus' Airport and Scenery Designer (ASD). Almost the same story as Airport - indeed they use the same compiler. It is a bit easier to do remote region navaids with ASD because it is map-based.
The folks who do lots of scenery a lot have both - and then some. Can't miss with either one.
Regards
Pete
