Simple question about ADE

[P38man]

I have just started using Airport Design Editor to alter existing stock airports.

As I love to fly in Japan I want to write in big white capital letters the name of the airport next to the runway but cannot work out how to do it.

Anyone got an idea?

By the way - I have and can do basic things with modelconverterx, ade, bglanalyze, conTEXT and scasm -
mostly been editing fs2002 and 2004 terminal BGLs (http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showpost.php?p=124964&postcount=14) to take out cars and trees and then altering the stock airport to have the tarmac in the right position relative to the terminals (as 2002 terminals cannot be seen in ADE - have to go backwards and forwards a lot - startup fsx test then close and back to ADE etc) then adding a few objects like a parking lot, trees, parked plane, birds and boats. Also learned how to use the flatten exclude polygon (the longest name one). Only takes a few hours of mucking around before anyone can do these things.

[Dimus]

I think there are two ways of tackling this. The first one, which is what developers usually follow is to create a photoreal background which will include the airport name on the image as appearing in reality. It is not hard to do but first you have to obtain a good resolution aerial or satellite image. I am myself just learning this stuff and can not expand more in this post. There are good tutorials out there as well as the SDK instructions. Theoretically, the image could be just the small airport name but placing it on the right coordinate will take some trial and error procedure.

The second method would be to create a 3d-object having a very small height above the ground which will be placed on the location you wish. You will have to play around with the height so as not to make it too bumpy but also not to be too close to the ground and cause flickering. If you are not into yet into making 3-d objects it might be a good and easy start for you and will open up a lot of new possibilities. If you don't wish to get into that it would be easy for me to make one for you so that you can try it out, just show me a picture of what you want to do.

[falcon409]

There is already a set of "Letters, Numbers, and Markings" for just such occasions made available by Lance (and yes, I just forgot his last name, lol) who has LCSims. I believe I found them at flightsim.com and I used them extensively when I did the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Airports. They can be placed on anything, at any angle and any elevation (like rooftops). Pretty handy.:salute:

Lance Tucker: "rwy_mark.zip"

[P38man]

Dimus - thank you so much for the explanation and offer! That is most kind of you.

falcon409 - I didn't know that existed! Thanks a bunch. Thanks for explaining that too.

I will look into both of those and see how they progress, guys.

Yes I can see the modelling would open a whole another area....I have been enjoying using ADE far more than I expected. Enjoying the process not just the end result and then additionally being pleased (so far) with the end result. However the biggest immersive factor for me is the airport terminal building being correct. So I have been finding a bunch to insert. Will look into it.

I have been amazed how well an area and an airport can be improved with freeware mesh (esp 10m), landclass and customizing an airport with objects (also use fscene textures).

[P38man]

OK I have worked out how to put those great big white letters saying the airport name on the grass near the runways that they have in almost all Japanese airports eg NAHA.

- I installed google's sketchup
- I zoomed in and then rotated the airport in google earth so i could easily see the airport name against the scale (need to choose scale in google earth and the name be vertical).
- in sketchup choose to enter 3D text type "N A H A" (in the case of Naha there is an extra space in the middle) and I chose a close enough font of Arial Narrow Bold and typed in the vertical height of the letters eg anywhere so far on all the airports I have done from 7 metres to 14 metres - set the 3D height to 20cm.
- export the file as a .dae
- use modelconverterx to import the file
- export as a .bgl to the scenery directory of the airport you are editing
- load up ADE and the airport you are working on and choose the library objects manager - add the .bgl file and save to the library
- add the object to your airport and adjust position (can have google earth open to easily see - only takes 2 seconds to do this step)
- set the height of the object above the ground to 0.2 metres.
- compile to the scenery directory of your airport
- save the airport as well.

Done!

I have been really enjoying using modelconverterx and ADE. So easy to do things.

Probably no-one else wants to do this but I just want to encourage people to have a go at using ADE - takes a few seconds to add boats, animated dolphins and any 3d object.

[Dimus]

Excellent!

That would be exactly what I would do. You just discovered a new creative toy. Now you can explore your possibilities in adding custom objects to your sceneries. Also check the capabilities of ModelconverterX in handling the material properties. You can control shine, transparency, reflectivity etc. You can build virtually anything in Sketchup and make it an FSX object.

[P38man]

Excellent!

That would be exactly what I would do. You just discovered a new creative toy. Now you can explore your possibilities in adding custom objects to your sceneries. Also check the capabilities of ModelconverterX in handling the material properties. You can control shine, transparency, reflectivity etc. You can build virtually anything in Sketchup and make it an FSX object.

Your advice about 3D objects really helped me Dimus, thanks a lot, buddy!

Didn't know that about those material properties....really interesting. Will definitely check that all out.

Sketchup rocks!

Wonder how hard it is to make a custom building and slap on 2d pictures of say a hotel on it and how good it would look ???

[Dimus]

Not hard at all. You just need to create a new material in sketchup and load the photo. You can then paint the surface using the photo and stretch/scale it to fit your shape. There are also a lot of textures already in sketchup that you can use. The important thing is that the textures have to be square and of size 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024 etc. in order to be read by FSX. MCX can do this conversion for you automatically and will also convert the textures in dds from whatever format they are.

Every building and non-aeroplane static object you see in the thread below was done in Sketchup and painted using either photos of the real thing or textures created from those photos. MCX then manipulated the materials to create reflective surfaces and transparencies. Some of the textures need an alpha channel for the transparency control, like the mesh in the fences, but you can learn this stuff on the way.

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?68374-Fantasy-of-Flight-v1-0-uploaded-to-library&highlight=fantasy+of+flight

[P38man]

Now I see who you are Dimus...the creator of that wonderful fantasy of flight airport (just speechless looking at it)

I had a bit of a go and some research. I may do an airport building at some stage but I am finding sketchup hard to do buildings at this point.

I will start off with other small objects first and see how I go.

Thanks again! Have a lovely day to you,