RealScenery

Pilatus: PC-12NG Beechcraft: King Air - any of the T-tail models Duke Bonanza: any of the ruddervator models Rockwell: Shrike Commander

This topic was put together by Travel and Leisure magazine. Some of these do look very scary, while others may not be what you would expect. One of my co-workers has been into the Tenzing-Hillary Airport at Lukla, Nepal several times, but it was back before the runway was paved. Most of the airports have videos. For many of these airports, you can find additional videos on YouTube. Enjoy! ;D http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/the-worlds-scariest-runways

If you would like to increase the accuracy of X-Plane's airports, you can use a stand-alone application called World Editor, also known as WED, which is available at no cost. The links to download WED can be found here: Mac: http://scenery.x-plane.com/tools/wed_mac_100r1.zip Windows: http://scenery.x-plane.com/tools/wed_win_100r1.zip WED allows you to align an airport's runways and taxiways to real-world imagery. This is a brief tutorial to get you started and covers several of the "missing links" that are not covered in the WED help, which are really necessary to get started. This tutorial will focus on getting an airport and imagery into WED so you can begin editing. As noted in the WED help, you won't be able to import the default X-Plane airport file, apt.dat, into WED. This file is located in your X-Plane folder in the following directory: < Your X-Plane folder > Resources > default scenery > default apt dat > Earth nav data This apt.dat file is a very large text file. At X-Plane 9.4, this file is over 60MB, too large to load into WED. You will need to open the apt.dat file in a text editor and then search for the airport identifier for your airport of interest. **Be patient: When using a large text file, your text editor may be slow to respond to your commands and mouse clicks! - Copy all the lines of the airport and paste it into its own text file. - At the top of your new airport text file, enter the following header information: I 850 Version - At the bottom of the text file, enter 99 For example, a completed text file for the Calistoga airport would look like this: I 850 Version 1 350 0 0 O58 Calistoga 100 6 1 0 0.25 0 0 0 10 38.57973831 -122.57538414 0 0 2 0 0 0 28 38.57696791 -122.56898841 0 0 2 0 0 0 99 **Important: Delete empty lines within the airport record. Not doing so may result in WED not being able to read your airport file. **Note: This is a very simple airport. Large, complex airports with many runways, taxiways, and other features, may be hundreds of lines long! You may name this new text file whatever you like. One useful technique is to name the text file according to the airport identifier, such as O58.txt, for the Calistoga airport in the example above. Save your new airport text file to any location on your computer. - Start WED and choose your X-Plane folder location from the startup screen. - Click New and enter a new workspace name in which to edit your airport. This will create a new folder in your X-Plane > Custom Scenery folder. - Click Open. The main WED editing application appears. - From the File menu, choose Import apt.dat. Your file doesn't have to be named "apt.dat." You may name it anything you want. - Browse to your airport text file that you previously saved and click Open. On the right side of the dialog you'll see the details for just this airport. You could also import additional airports as well, but I usually work on one at a time and then export it out when I'm done. - From the View menu, choose Zoom Package. You should see your airport runways and taxiways. WED can use three different image types which may be used to align your airport to the real world. These are discussed next. 1. Terraserver: This is the default image source. The main advantage of Terraserver is that this imagery can be streamed directly into the WED application. Terraserver imagery is black and white and very dated when compared to what is available from many online sources available to the general public. However, it is built into WED and for many airports it will provide all of the information you need to create or align an airport. Due to the vintage of this imagery, it will not include newer airports or airport features such as recent runways, runway extensions, displaced thresholds, or ramp areas. However, because using this image source is very easy, you may want to start with this to see if the Terraserver imagery will be useful. - To see the Terraserver background, choose View, then click Toggle Terraserver. Sometimes the Terraserver imagery won't appear. Oftentimes this is because you need to zoom in to a larger scale. Sometimes saving your WED document and then exiting and coming back in will also solve the problem. Since this data is streamed into WED from an online server, you will need to have Internet access while using WED with Terraserver imagery. 2. Custom imagery: The second image source available to you is your own custom imagery. If you would like to use your own imagery, you will need to identify the geographic coordinates (longitude and latitude) of each of the four corners. A variety of image formats can be used including JPEG and TIFF files. - To load your own image, click View, then click Pick Overlay Image. Next, you will need to register your image. Image registration is the process by which you enter coordinates to tell WED where your image is located on the earth. - If necessary, click the white arrow, the Vertex editor, from the tools palette on the left side of the WED window. - Click the image to select it. Notice the square graphics on each corner and center of the image. These are "handles" that allow you to click and drag the image. You don't want to resize your image interactively. Rather, you will enter the coordinate values for each of the handles located at each corner of the image. - With the Vertex tool, drag a small box around one of the square vertex handles. On the right side of WED, in the lower window, you should see the properties for the handle you have just selected. This window will always show the current properties for any object you have selected. - Click in the blue highlighted area corresponding to the latitude and longitude values and enter the real-world values for this corner of your image. -Repeat this process for the other three corners of the image. When you're done, the image should be located in the correct geographic location. 3. GeoTiff: The third type of image which you can import into WED is known as a GeoTIFF file. This is a standard TIFF image format, but has the coordinate information, similar to what was just discussed in number 2, embedded into the header of the file. The advantage of this format is that you don't have to manually register your image. **At this point, you should have your airport and an image source loaded into WED. - From the View menu, choose Zoom Package. This will zoom the WED map window, on the left side of the WED display, to the extent of both your airport and the imagery. **If you imported your own image, it may be drawing on top of your airport. - On the list of airport features on the upper-right side of the WED window, click and drag the reference for your image file to the bottom of the list so it is below all the airport features. **Very important: To make sure you don't accidentally drag your image on your map and change its location, click the pad lock icon next to the image to lock its position. You can also click the icon that looks like an eye to turn off the visibility for that feature. This is often useful when you have several overlapping features and need to simplify your map display. You should now see both the airport geometry and the imagery. Now you can click and drag the airport into position and start editing vertices as necessary. By clicking on any of the airport components, you can change their properties, like lighting, pavement type, etc., for that component. Remember that the properties are shown in the lower right window. For compete help with the tools on the tools palette, choose Help, then click WED User's Guide. - When you're done editing your airport, click File, then click Export apt.dat. - Browse to the workspace that you specified when you started your new WED project. **Make sure to save the file as apt.dat. X-Plane will look for this file name when loading your new airport. - Save your WED project by choosing Save, under the File menu. - Exit WED, by choosing File, then Exit. To fly with your new airport: - With your operating system, Mac or Windows, create a new folder in your X-Plane Custom Scenery folder. You may name this folder whatever you like. For example, if you made edits to the Calistoga airport as shown at the beginning of this tutorial, you could create a new Calistoga folder. - In the Calistoga folder, create another folder called Earth nav data. - Copy the apt.dat file that you exported from WED, into the new Earth nav data folder you just created. When X-Plane loads, it should override its default airport file with your new improved one. Go fly! This tutorial is meant to cover some of the basic startup information necessary before using the WED editing tools. The WED help covers the use of these tools very well and I would encourage you to spend a few minutes and read through the help file to familiarize yourself with the use of the different tools available. The best way to learn is to start experimenting with the tools on your own. As long as you don't save or don't export, you can't hurt anything. One very useful WED resource, in addition to the native WED Help, is Robin Peel's scenery Web pages: http://data.x-plane.com/designers.html Scroll down to the Hints and Tips section of the page, which has many excellent suggestions for editing with WED's tools. Another useful resource is the X-Plane scenery guidelines page. http://scenery.x-plane.com/library.php?doc=apt_guidelines.php **Useful tip: The most useful WED command is the Undo command under the Edit menu. ;D Enjoy!

Hi Maxter, Our textures are not seasonal and are from late spring / early summer. All of the normal X-Plane overlay objects are included and supported with RealScenery. As you saw above, the new transparent roads will also be included, allowing for X-Plane vehicle traffic to travel on the roads in the imagery. Thanks for your interest! Eric

Hey Jack, Congrats on your night flying! My plans for the existing scenery packages are to upgrade them to the Enhanced scenery standards over time as new imagery becomes available. These upgrades will include: - New higher-resolution imagery - Improved image processing techniques - Edited airports that match the underlying imagery - Enhanced road network - Night textures Thanks for your interest! Eric

Thanks for the suggestion. New areas are developed based on availability of imagery, image quality, suggestions like yours, and other factors. I agree that these would be interesting areas to develop. Maybe even Austin would like scenery covering the Carolinas. Eric

Here are some very cool screenshots of the San Francisco HR scenery during the day time. Most of these were taken between 1800 feet and 3000 feet AGL. The last two screenshots were taken from 6000 feet. This is great scenery for just exploring or even for practicing in the traffic pattern. Enjoy!

I wanted to post some very cool screenshots for the new release of RealScenery San Francisco HR (High-Resolution). This scenery package will feature night textures and completely edited airports that align exactly with the underlying imagery. Testing and development is almost done and this should be released very soon! Below are some daytime and nighttime screenshots taken from the same position. The night textures are produced using the underlying daytime imagery as well as other data. The result is realistic nighttime lighting based on real-world features such as roads, buildings, parks, water, etc. These textures are so incredible when you fly over them in X-Plane! Enjoy! ;D The following link will open an overview map of the area covered by the San Francisco HR scenery: http://www.realscenery.com/gallery/NORCAL/SF_HR/SF_HR_index.jpg

Hi Inktomi, Glad you feel this way. This is one of the reasons that the X-Pilot community was formed; to provide an alternative for those wanting a different atmosphere for X-Plane discussions. I believe that all of the developers here, as well as most of those registered on this site, are active in this community for the same reasons. Eric

Inktomi and Kiedels, You are correct. RealScenery airports are layouts only, and the new NorCal imagery will have full airport edits to match the underlying imagery. You can use Overlay Editor to place generic buildings and gates at any airport you choose. There are also ways in which you can import 3D objects from MSFS as well. I cannot cannot resell any MSFS conversions since these are not my products and I don't have rights to do so. However, many people have successfully converted scenery. Some examples are here: http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?topic=183.0 http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?topic=392.0

Northern California has been on hold for a while because I have been working with X-Aviation and another developer on algorithms for creating night textures. After a few months of work, and lot of testing, I am happy to announce that night textures will be a part of the Northern California release! Some screenshots of a small test area around Sacramento Executive Airport (KSAC) are shown below. I am still tweaking the lighting values, but this should give you a good idea of what to expect. These night textures are unique in X-Plane in that they are not generic textures. They are built from real daytime imagery and other data to provide lighting effects that you would expect to see when really flying. We have been able to simulate the relative lighting among different types of roads, from large, multi-lane interstate highways to small residential streets. Several categories of features are included in the lighting algorithms including several different categories of roads, stadiums, parks, schools, rural and urban areas, and many others. With the lighting algorithms complete, we expect a release of Northern California by mid-January. Several other high-resolution packages will also be released within the Northern California area. These include: Sacramento San Francisco and the East Bay Napa Valley Monterey Fresno Also, I will be releasing a high-resolution package for Reno, Nevada which will cover the greater Reno area including parts of Lake Tahoe and Carson City. We hope to have all of these released about the same time. We have also upgraded our imagery since we were able to access much nicer quality imagery than shown in this forum. NorCal and all of the high-resolution packages will include night textures and edited airports that exactly match the underlying imagery. Enjoy! Looking east. Florin Road is on the right side of the image. Interstate 5 is the large freeway at the bottom of the image. Looking west. Interstate 5 is the large highway on the far side of the image. Looking north. Interstate 5 is on the west (left) side of the image. Freeport Blvd is runs along the west side of the airport with Florin Road running along the south side.

This was a big week for Boeing with the first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. I only live about an hour's drive from this big event and it was the leading news story for those of us that live in the greater Seattle area of Washington State. For those of you outside of the United States that may not have heard about this milestone in commercial aviation, I have included a link to Boeing's Web site which has several excellent videos of the first flight. These are longer videos with commentary by Boeing. Once you load the URL below, click the Webcast link at the top right to view the videos of flight, takeoff and landing. http://787firstflight.newairplane.com/ffindex.html There are several excellent videos from local television news stations in Seattle. These videos are much shorter and show the highlights of the flight. Takeoff from Paine Field in Everett, Washington: Takeoff and first flight highlights: Landing at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington: The wing flex on this airplane is amazing! Can't wait to fly on one! Enjoy!

Hey Wynthorpe, Thanks for your comments. One of the perceptual issues with image-based photo textures is their flat appearance at low altitudes. Even if the imagery is nice and sharp with high-res textures, at low altitudes we expect to see objects with depth (i.e. a three-dimensional house). In my own opinion, imagery is most useful in the simulator only at altitudes above 2500 feet AGL or so. Obviously, this is a matter of opinion and will certainly vary in different areas. For example, flying over cities, even at high altitudes, you would expect to see 3D buildings, and X-Plane's autogen buildings fit the bill pretty nicely here. In rural or suburban areas where there are limited building structures, and those that are present are typically only one-story in height, the image-based textures are very effective. Regardless, image-based textures are a huge improvement over default scenery for adding realism to your sim experience.

Hi Mike, As Cameron stated, you should get very good performance with the RealScenery files. Many conversions use a series of overlays on top of the terrain, which does not perform well. RealScenery is created by actually "baking" the imagery into the terrain mesh, similar to how many of the great aircraft designers on this site bake their textures into their 3D models. As an example, the new Sacramento High-Res scenery will have somewhere around 8000 images! The San Francisco Bay Area will have even more, but they will be divided among several scenery directories. Even with this volume of images, the frame rates in X-Plane are silky smooth ;D. The only trade-off is that the initial time to load the scenery is longer when you start up the simulator. Other than that, you should expect very good performance.

Awesome work, Javier. I've traveled all over the U.S. on regional jets and don't recall a layout of 3x1 for this aircraft. Out of curiosity, I searched the following airlines for the seating configuration of their 200 series CRJ: Air Canada/Jazz Delta Connection Mesaba Skywest Atlantic Southeast Comair Mesaba United U.S. Air Express Air Nostrum All of these seating configurations were 2x2. However, some of the larger CRJ models do have first class which is a 2x1 configuration. Here is the only configuration for Air Canada Jazz CRJ-200: http://www.aircanada.com/shared/images/common/fleet/seatmap/crj.png

As a supplement to the Northern California scenery, high-resolution scenery packages for both Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area will also be available. I just loaded some test images for Sacramento and wanted to share these initial screenshots with you. They are pretty amazing when loaded into X-Plane! Most of these were taken at altitudes ranging between 1,000 - 1,500 feet AGL. You can even see the painted stripes of the parking lots and tennis courts. The higher altitude screenshots were taken from about 4,500 feet. This imagery is still rough and hasn't undergone full processing yet, but the source is of high quality, which makes these initial screenshots look really good with only minimal processing. Enjoy!

Mike, All of the X-Plane water is used to "cut" into the imagery. In most places, the water aligns very well with the imagery. The X-Plane water will provide all of the same reflection effects as you have in the default scenery. Also, this will allow you to land on water in the sim if you happen to fly sea-planes. If you check out some of the gallery shots on X-Aviation or in the other RealScenery postings here on X-Pilot, you may be able to see some examples of how water is treated in the simulator. There are also a couple of HD movies that are linked both here and at RealScenery.com where you can see the water as well. The roads, as well as all other default 3D objects, are also included if you wish to fly with them. Personally, I always leave these off because I would rather see the roads and buildings in the imagery, than the X-Plane roads and buildings. However, if you're flying at night, you may want to turn them on. Hope this helps.

Hi Mike, Glad you like the Arizona High-res scenery. It's a lot of fun to fly with this scenery in X-Plane. My goal is to create the same type of scenery for the new Northern California package as well. I am currently working on two areas: 1. San Francisco Bay Area that will cover both the City of San Francisco, the South Bay, and East Bay. This will include a lot of airports including the three major air-carrier airports of San Francisco (KSFO), Oakland (KOAK), and San Jose (KSJC). 2. Sacramento metro area that will cover the capital city of the state of California. All of the major Sacramento airports will be covered in this high-res scenery including Sacramento International (KSMF) and Sacramento Executive (KSAC) among others. I will get some screen shots posted as soon as the images have been processed an brought into X-Plane.

After a couple of months and many hours of manual editing, the airport layouts for the new Northern California scenery are complete! ;D I've included several examples of the "big three" airports, San Francisco (KSFO), Oakland (KOAK), and San Jose (KSJC). Look for the product release announcement from X-Aviation very soon! Enjoy! KSFO looking northwest near sunset: KSFO looking north: KSFO looking south. Golden Gate National Cemetery and the I280/I380 interchange are in the foreground. The famous fog of San Francisco: Oakland International Airport, KOAK, on the east side of San Francisco Bay, looking south at sunrise: KOAK, looking north: San Jose International Airport, KSJC, looking south: KSJC looking north toward San Francisco Bay: KSJC looking south near sunset: KSJC looking northeast with the Nimitz freeway, I880, along the south side of the airport: KSJC looking south near sunset:

More airports have been completed for northern California as the editing continues. Hope you enjoy seeing the progress. Bishop: Red Bluff: Susanville: Spaulding - a very cool little strip on the edge of Eagle Lake in northeast California: Spaulding from the opposite direction: Rogers, on the edge of Lake Almanor in northeastern California: Cedarville: Los Banos, a small town in the heart of California's agricultural region. Reid-Hillview, near the city of San Jose.

Several more hours of editing have been done on the airports for northern California. Below are posted several of the completed airports with the new scenery. I've included a variety of different airports in this posting. Enjoy! Calaveras County: Dunsmuir looking northeast toward Mt. Shasta at sunrise: Fresno-Yosemite International: Notice the approach lights fit exactly within the imagery. Lake Tahoe: Lake Tahoe at sunset: McClellan: The old taxiways to the left are closed and no longer used. McCloud Airstrip looking south toward Mt. Shasta Petaluma: Porterville, in the San Joaquin Valley: Moffett Field, south of San Francisco: Monterey at sunrise:

RealScenery Northern California is currently nearing completion. With this release, all of the airports will be aligned with the underlying imagery. This includes runways as well as taxiways and ramp areas. I have posted a few screen shots of the airports. A total of 33 scenery files are included in the new Northern California scenery. The scenery extends from the California-Oregon border to south of San Francisco near the Monterey/Carmel area and east to Bishop and Death Valley. The images below show some of the preliminary airport edits on top of the Northern California imagery. All of the 265 airports included with the new scenery are being edited. I'll post more screenshots as the airport editing progresses. Enjoy Arcata, looking north along northern California's Pacific coast: Concord, east of San Francisco, looking north: Concord, looking south: Half Moon Bay, southwest of San Francisco, looking south along the Pacific coast: Sacramento International, near the city of Sacramento, the capital of the State of California, looking south: Sacramento International, looking northeast: Sacramento International, near sunset, looking northeast: This is a sample of the level of detail included in the edited airports from within the editing software. In this image, you can see the runways, taxiways, and ramp areas under the transparent vector overlays. This is being done for all 265 airports in the Northern California scenery. Editing time ranges from a few minutes for a small dirt strip, up to about three hours or more for the very large airports like San Francisco, Oakland or San Jose.

In looking at the two demos, the only difference that I see is that AZ spans two DSF files and contains a few more images than WA, but neither of these should be significant enough to affect the high-end hardware that you're using to fly the sim. If you still have a previous version of X-Plane, you might see if you have the same results, in which case this may point so something different in X-Plane 9.31.

Hi JimmiG, A few things could be causing this. Some more likely than others. 1. Windows7 is not commercially released software yet. It is far enough along to be in RC status, so most likely this is not the cause, but may be worth looking into. Also, you might check with Laminar to check the status of X-Plane support on Windows7-RC 2. The most likely cause is that the demo uses PNG image files while the commercial scenery uses DDS. There could be some difference in how X-Plane handles PNG vs DDS files. DDS files typically offer much improved load times and framerates. 3. You might try setting your windows profile to a different setting. In Vista, the Aero profile, which puts shadowing and other visual effects around windows, gives horible frame rates in X-Plane on my development machine. If I set my profile to Vista Basic, I get much higher framerates and smoother performance. Windows7 probably has some similar settings. If you can fly the commercial Washington scenery smoothly in Windows7, then you should also expect the same from Arizona. You might try the Washington demo, which is also in PNG format and see if you have the same results. We have not had other reports of this behavior with the demos. That doesn't mean it isn't affecting others, but people may just not be reporting it. Also, I don't know how many people are using X-Plane under Windows7. Hope this helps. Eric

Hi Jimmi, Lots of good questions here. Let's see if we can get them all answered for you. Cameron's post hit most of them and I'll provide a few more details which I hope you find helpful. First, let me say that both OR and WA are equally beautiful places to fly. Oregon is a bit more rural with Portland being the only large urban area. However, WA has the entire Puget Sound area which is highly urbanized. Both feature the Cascades Mountain range and the high-desert lands of the east side of the state. The eastern side of WA is more agricultural that Oregon is. Pixel resolution is only one parameter on which to evaluate scenery. Our state series has pixel values of around 3-5 meters which of course varies with latitude. Our state series scenery is meant for cross-country VFR flying at altitudes above 4000 AGL. I'll defer to Cameron's previous post about MSFS scenery performance. Generally, you should get very good performance with the scenery, especially with your system that has 4GB RAM and 512VRAM. The scenery will take longer to load initially, but you should have very good framerates. Cameron also mentioned that X-Plane's scenery architecture is very stable. I have been involved in making scenery for X-Plane since 2004 when X-Plane was at version 7. There have only been a few major changes in the scenery environment since then, both of which were huge benefits to scenery capabilities and performance. Nearly all of the additional capabilities with new X-Plane versions (both major and minor releases) have to do with aircraft and don't affect the scenery system at all. Overall, the runways at larger airports, and even smaller municipal airports, are aligned very well with the imagery. However, smaller private strips may not align correctly due to their positional information often being interpolated from map sources and not through actual survey measurements. With different X-Plane addons, available for free, you can certainly modify any of the airports and add buildings and static aircraft to customize your home field if you wish. Many X-Plane customers have already edited many airports in the default X-Plane database, so you may find that your airport of interest aligns very well with the underlying imagery. Cameron also mentioned our HR (High-Resolution) scenery. This scenery is meant for low-altitude VFR flight, including touch-and-goes, pattern work, and just flying around the city. Currently we have HR packages covering both Phoenix and Tucson, with more in the planning stages. I would also encourage you to view two of our HD movies which area currently linked through our home page at RealScenery.com. This will also give you a good idea of what to expect when flying with RealScenery. Only you can be the judge as to whether the scenery would meet your needs and expectations in X-Plane, depending on the type of flying you do. I would encourage you to download a demo of any of our packages (they are all available through X-Aviation). We can give you all the specifications, but ultimately it is up to the end user to decide if the scenery is going to enhance their flying experience. Hope this helps! Eric