NSTU and American Samoa Development Thread

[Colin S]

Just basically an introduction to what I'm working on...

 

NSTU is Pago Pago International Airports. I apparently have a knack for finding airports that no one, in real life or in X-Plane wants to fly into... Anyways, I'm doing the entire dependency (ie, country, for those of you who aren't American) of American Samoa in orthophotos, custom buildings, coastlines, forests, etc. This project isn't as far fetched and slow moving as PHNL simply because I don't have an airport the size of a large city to build, and it is already more than 15% complete. I have finished the airport layout for Pago Pago, but am restarting using that as a footprint. I intend to make a freeware scenery package for a country that competes (I don't like that word, but alas, it must be used) with the unfortunately aging XPFR Îsles de la Société (http://xpfr.org/?body=scene_accueil&sc=166). Although this scenery certainly does not address an archipelago the size of the French Society Islands, I intend to make it a more realistic flying experience. As you can see in the following screenshot, I was doing extremely well with the airport layout... but it was to X-Plane 9 scenery quality standards... not quite pretty or realistic enough for X-Plane 10. Everything has a nice smooth solid edge, the pavement is blurry...

 

 

My goals for the next two weeks (other than move into my first home away from home and get more violin practise in) are to create a complete set of custom textures for the pavement, yellowish square things (whatever you want to call them on the side of the runway and taxiways), and especially the runway markings.

 

I would post screenshots of progress, if I had any. Seeing as I have restarted the graphical part of the project (the design and layout is almost complete), it would look a lot like this:

 

 

Also, here is a pre-development picture I took a few months back when I first decided to try out doing this area for X-Plane. Please note that essentially nothing has been done in this screenshot other than some minor colour correction of the orthophotos and placement of the orthos, no forests or objects (duh). 

 

 

I am in need of some volunteers. Unlike people who just help me out by giving suggestions, you are considered part of the team (so far, two people, myself and one of the other XPAviators). Any help whatsoever will be appreciated hugely, this is a big task, and university kicks into gear in two weeks.

Timeframe? None. Hopefully Christmas, if pigs fly. Don't expect it that soon though. Anyways, cheers.

 

Colin Stepney

Pacific Northwest Scenery Development Project

[Zach Decou]

When I first got into simming, I had FS9 on a Walmart special PC that was made for bean counting. American Samoa was one of the few places I could fly with settings wide open and get decent frames. Good memories. Looking forward to getting back into it and checking this out when it's done!

[Colin S]

I'm glad someone's looking forward to it! That's one of the reasons I chose American Samoa (other than availability of resources) is because it's small enough that my computer may ever be capably of running the final product (at low settings, mind you).

[Colin S]

So far this package will be huge. I'm going to be releasing a demo (like a small, pre-release version, not that the final will be payware) of it soon (I hope).

[Colin S]

I would like to, at this time, extend thanks to Aerobridge and, specifically, Peter, for resources that have inspired me to completely restart this project and make it near payware quality. Forget everything that has been seen and come back in about March for updates. Just kidding - I'll be restarting, but the Christmas preview file will be available for those so inclined, to the quality of the rest of the scenery package.

[Colin S]

Here's a mini-update for the poor souls who waste their time reading my development threads:

NSTU layout work will restart next weekend, with the entire airport being reworked. I'm currently throwing together custom line files to replace the chunky and unrealistic default X-Plane ones and I am also sifting the the CGTextures website for all the pavement I've ever needed. 

 

Orthoimagery touching-up is in progress, I still haven't put anything into X-Plane. There is one spot where I don't even have an image (the USGS screwed up their data somehow, and the tiff file for the area is solid black). In the meantime, I'm putting together a map of the airport objects to send to a friend to have them built in Blender or SketchUp or whatever he uses. 

 

A demonstration of the scenery package will be released on December 24th, 2013. This demonstration will include the entire island of Tau, with NSFQ Fiti'uta Airport, capable of handling small regional flights. This island will include examples of naturally forested land, cultivated land, towns, coastlines, and a gravel airstrip (HI36 Tau, defunct in real life and unusable). The earliest plausible release date for the entire package, currently, is February 1st, 2014.

 

Thanks for reading if you actually did.

 

I would like to make a mission statement with this project:

 

"The goal of the American Samoa Countrywide Project for X-Plane 10 is to create a realistic flying environment that is free and appropriate for professional sim flyers and casual X-Plane users, and allows exploration of unique environments from above."

[Colin S]

After finally coaxing the HD Mesh that Andras kindly provided me into working (by literally replacing the original files in the default world scenery after a clean install of XP10, It works. No photos of that as it really doesn't look like anything but a default scenery area with no beaches. This post is mostly an update on assets:

 

 

I'd like to thank Peter T for pointing me towards CGTextures for resources, I'm remaking the entire project from the textures up. I will be creating taxi lines, hold lines, custom everything. I would also like to thank Peter T for allowing me to make use of some of the Aerobridge textures, I'll be using one or two of them in the final release of this. I'd like to point out that the photo above is only a preliminary test of the low-resolution runway signs, the lines are XP10's crap default lines (sorry, they just look like swiss cheese without enough holes. This airport will look nothing like this come January 2014, the pavement will all be custom (again thanks to Peter T for the recommendations). By November you guys should be able to see some preview shots of what the preview will look like (previewception), on the island of Tau. After doing a couple of midterms, it's relaxation night and I'm sitting back with a nice cup of hot chocolate, eating the last piece of my birthday cake, and starting to work on NSFQ Tau Airport. Shots of that around midnight, probably. 

 

Cheers! Proof that I still exist and that this project is still underway! Yay! Exclamation point! Maybe I should just get some sleep........

[Colin S]

One last update tonight: Taxi sign for NSFQ.

 

[Colin S]

Ok so much for that being the last update. X-Plane wants to watch the world burn in the form of Colin's rage turning into a fireball when I found out that I will have to do some serious messery with this area to put the airport up on the flat area where it's supposed to be. The orthophoto i this picture is the real life location, but I know nothing of how to modify the mesh, and even if I did, there would be a weird old hole in the side of the mountain. 

 

[Colin S]

FLAT OUT PAUSE

 

Ok that's about it. I've put the project on pause as midterms are here. Very little has been accomplished recently with the project, and I will have to do a ton of work before even the demo is usable or distributable. On that note, however, Christmas still seems like a very reasonable timeframe. I need to go make an omelette now. See y'all on the flip side.

[Colin S]

Well, my computer finally recovered, and I have a long weekend ahead of me... after only about 7 hours of tweaking, I have my template to do the coastlines of Tau, the island that will be released in the demo. Here it is... (It has since changed a little, the imagery isn't so "hazy" looking):

 

 

Cheers, and this project is back on track  

[Colin S]

More development from after hours last night ... (don't ask about the three runways, it's the airport which is a separate scenery file)

 

 

Here are the modifications to the airport imagery I had to make:

-Relocate airport by approximately 900 feet.

-Move runway within the airport boundary to avoid a cliff.

-Add a completely new road from scratch.

-Add another completely new road from scratch.

-Remove a plane from the tarmac (and that was the easy part).

 

Edited November 9, 2013 by Colin S

[Colin S]

Another screenshot.... 

[Colin S]

Good picture of what is finished so far: 

 

[Colin S]

New Website: http://amsamxp.weebly.com/

[Colin S]

IT'S CRUNCH TIME! 

 

Exams are over, I'm on a three week break... I have a lot planned out but nights are for AmSamXP! Expect lots of screenshots in the next week, and still hoping for release on Christmas for all you weirdos who use X-Plane on the 25th.