Colin S

If you do Canada, I will officially declare your the awesomest overlord of X-Plane that ever walked the face of this earth. HOLY CRAP THOSE LOOK AWESOME. Looking forward to... well... EVERYTHING............ omigod.

Oh... my... god... that... is a real photo, get out of here Amazing works!

Well, I'm starting on Kamloops Airport and Langley Regional (CYKA and CYNJ, respectively) as it is more appropriate, as I will be living in the towns of those two airports.

And a really quick reply to that......... I'm dead. I have lost the PHNL file. My DropBox backup is about 40 hours behind where I am now, which is about the beginning of March on my timescale. Anyone who was hoping for this to go somewhere, I apologize so much, I'm almost in tears seeing 4GB and over 200 hours of work lost just like that. I'm going to be using a file recovery program to see if I can scrape up the leftovers. In the meantime I'm starting on doing Kamloops Airport. RIP 200+ hours of my life and my work. Well, that ended quickly. At least it didn't hurt too much, it just disappeared. Thank you. Onto greater things.

Bad news, folks, if I'm not done by July 20th, it may never be released. Here's why: On July 2nd, I begin Summer School. This gives me about 1 week to get more done than I've done yet. Luckily, I have no school until then, meaning I can devote literally all my time to X-Plane work. I would say I could finish after Summer School... but I'm moving out! I'm moving to Kamloops for university. I will still be developing airports for X-Plane, but not as much as I hoped. Let's see if I can get this stupid bloody airport DONE AND OUT OF MY SIGHT. AND THEN... there is the problem of file size. About 4GB of problemo so far. No downsizing possible at this time, so I need suggestions for how to make this file available to people. Everything is welcome - including help! Colin Stepney

Hey Everyone: I have been gone one month. I will be moving to Kamloops for University now. Things have changed. HOWEVER, I will be working on PHNL again (I haven't been for OVER a month), and I should be able to release it BEFORE August. I haven't even been online for a month, so I need to check out what's new... and see if my X-Plane will even still run. I'm back! (Unfortunately)

Ok, I'm not usually this blind... what happened to the B2 Spirit that used to be in X-Plane?

The only tiles I have are important I wish I could do this, but my work is only airport area, not the surrounding scenery. I understand what you're talking about, but every little last tile is important. Thanks for the help though!

IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT Again, I had a hardware malfunction. I am never again going to start a major project with a computer in the twilight of its service live. My hard drive crapped out on me yesterday morning, meaning I lost the WED.xml file again. I am going to start backing that up. Anyways, it essentially means I have all my project still but I need to put it back into WED, and with final exams just around the corner, this puts release somewhere in August, not July. The good news is, I'm almost done the taxiways. This airport is a huge son of a mother. I have had to start from scratch with my computer, meaning that it will be at least 4 days until I can actually do anything, as I'm reinstalling my 300GB of applications onto my MacBook Pro - again. I need some help in one area: Currently, the project measures almost 5GB (that is without the very few custom buildings, like the control tower, the old terminal, etc). This is all from the orthophotos. They are already compressed into DDS format, most of which are using 1-bit Alpha as they only converge with land, not water, meaning that they are only 11.2MB. They are all 4096x4096 and a drop in quality means the craps for my project. Any suggestions? I've thought of a DropBox link in the download, but that would take up the better part of my DropBox and I need it for a future project. Suggestions?

Tomorrow morning I'll be getting on board a bus with all the other idiots (I am one of them, hence the 'other') from my school choir and band, heading to Banff National Park. Ok, seriously, who cares? People have been messaging me lately - however, over the next five days (until Sunday) I will be away. Don't message me. I will be working on PHNL, I have about 21 hours of bus time to waste with something (although my computer might die after 5 hours), so I'm not using it as an excuse. Adios!

No, the avionics, not the iPad app.

That's what I thought. Is there still a webpage for that? (btw thanks Cameron)

Alright, as I'm not a frequent visitor of useful webpages (I limit myself to Stumbleupon) I didn't know about Xavion until right now. Then I remembered - like a year or two ago Austin was busy making an actual certified avionics system that would do the same thing - is that still around?

Phase? Well, at the moment, I'm still alying out taxiways - PHNL is very large and I am working alone. The airport buildings will be lego brick based, as well as almost all the objects - however, I plan to create a few custom builings, notably the control tower, the old airport building, some smaller components such as electrical boxes, military buildings and some trees. I will be releasing a non-ortho version for people with computer's like mine (that bag 2fps if you have more than 2nm of vis). Thanks for your interest.

Please note the greenness. PHNL 08R/26L is built on a non-fertile coral-dredge island. Look in the background carefully, there are plants. The south side of pretty much all the Hawaiian Islands (I've been to almost all of them now) are pretty barren of plant life as the the mountains cause convection rain to fall on the northern coasts. Don't worry, I've already gotten the ortho colours correct. Google what it looks like from the sky.

I included that in the tutorial, second to last page. (get the updated tutorial)

And then screwed around in the Herc for awhile. I have never flown it before and I'm, as usual, irritated that as soon as the gear is up, the refueling boom starts deploying. Whatever, it's cool to fly the plane I see going over my house every day!

Flew out of PHNL to see what my airport looked like the skies, and it's not looking to shabby.

Some pretty development screenshots (it's almost at a usable stage, I've gotten four quads done this week).

Lol smoking in the chopper.

FSX Videos can go sulk now. Finally.

NEW VERSION: 2.0 - Added gritty texture detail. So I recently (like a month ago) had a user ask for instructions on how I made my airports look realistic... so I created this tutorial only a month late! I hope this helps. If you make orthophoto scenery differently, don't call me stupid, I prefer this way, as I know there are TONS of other ways that are quicker/simple/smarter/better/more reliable/more politically correct than this one. Download the PDF