Should have done this long ago.

[Bone]

Today, on the recomendation of Falcon409, I got the Airport Faciltator X (AFX) utility. Thanks Ed. I should have done this a long time ago. Being a die hard photoscenery simmer, I just can't take seeing two sets of taxiways (photoreal vs. AFCAD) and misaligned runways any longer. Now, I have to go to "ground school" (yet once again) and spend some time with the manual.

Then, one day, I'm going to have to learn how to make photoscenery. It's a huge world out there.

[stovall]

Bone, don't forget Airport Design Editor. I have both and use both. Probably use the ADE more. Both are great design tools. Find it here.

[n4gix]

Bone, don't forget Airport Design Editor. I have both and use both. Probably use the ADE more. Both are great design tools. Find it here.

I like the price of ADE9X: free! It's also a program that's under constant improvement, with incremental updates and new features added frequently. It is also 100% SDK compliant.

[Bone]

Thanks. Tools of the trade, the more the merrier.

[Meshman]

Thanks. Tools of the trade, the more the merrier.

It depends upon what you are trying to accomplish and then getting the best tool to do the task. For matching an airport to photo scenery I would suggest Airport Studio, made be the same developer who did AFX. http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=apstv1

The benefit to Airport Studio (AS) is that you're working "in-sim" and can accomplish more, given the time spent working. Either of the full-blown airport editors will yield the same results, but that dictates getting a background image and aligning things, compiling, adding to FSX and then seeing how it looks. With AS you see the results right away.

Since AS is not a full-featured editor you can't do some things that other tools can. It becomes a question of whether that's important enough to matter. Like all Flight1 products, it comes with a 30 day money-back guarantee and works as a demo in and around Seattle. As Bill mentions compatibility with the FSX SDKs for one editor, AS and AFX use their own compiler to make BGL files. Haven't seen an issue about that in over 5 years. But I've told certain people in the FS development community that I will not discuss their work, so I'll try to adhere to that.

[Bone]

It depends upon what you are trying to accomplish and then getting the best tool to do the task. For matching an airport to photo scenery I would suggest Airport Studio, made be the same developer who did AFX. http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=apstv1

The benefit to Airport Studio (AS) is that you're working "in-sim" and can accomplish more, given the time spent working. Either of the full-blown airport editors will yield the same results, but that dictates getting a background image and aligning things, compiling, adding to FSX and then seeing how it looks. With AS you see the results right away.

Good info, all to be considered. I was just reading in the AFX manual that you can now edit airports 'in sim", with AFX and FSX running side by side. This is version 1.04 of AFX.


EDIT: Here's the section from the manual. Please let me know if this is different than what you're talking about.

Using AFX with Flight Simulator
Airport Facilitator X can interact with Flight Simulator in a number of ways in
order to make editing the airport easier.
Starting
It is recommended to start AFX before Flight Simulator. Both AFX and FS use
the graphics accelerator and compete for it’s resources. If you start FS before
AFX, AFX may not get enough resources from the graphics accelerator in some
cases, which may result in a very slow display or the program hanging up.
Using the FS Preview function
The FS Preview function of AFX allows you to see the airport you are editing and
all your editing actions “live” in Flight Simulator. The look in Flight Simulator will
closely resemble the view in the AFX map, but it will be projected onto the real
scenery.
To enable or disable FS Preview, use the
View|Preview in FS menu command,
or the
Preview in FS toolbar button.
After enabling FS Preview, you may want to reload the scenery in Flight
Simulator in order to get rid of taxiway signs, moving jetways and fences drawn
by Flight Simulator. AFX draws these elements itself with the FS Preview active,
and having Flight Simulator also display them may be confusing. For example,
after moving a taxiway sign, you could see it both at the old location (drawn by
FS) and at the new location (drawn by AFX).

[dougal]

Good info, all to be considered. I was just reading in the AFX manual that you can now edit airports 'in sim", with AFX and FSX running side by side. This is version 1.04 of AFX.


EDIT: Here's the section from the manual. Please let me know if this is different than what you're talking about.

Using AFX with Flight Simulator
Airport Facilitator X can interact with Flight Simulator in a number of ways in
order to make editing the airport easier.
Starting
It is recommended to start AFX before Flight Simulator. Both AFX and FS use
the graphics accelerator and compete for it’s resources. If you start FS before
AFX, AFX may not get enough resources from the graphics accelerator in some
cases, which may result in a very slow display or the program hanging up.
Using the FS Preview function
The FS Preview function of AFX allows you to see the airport you are editing and
all your editing actions “live” in Flight Simulator. The look in Flight Simulator will
closely resemble the view in the AFX map, but it will be projected onto the real
scenery.
To enable or disable FS Preview, use the
View|Preview in FS menu command,
or the
Preview in FS toolbar button.
After enabling FS Preview, you may want to reload the scenery in Flight
Simulator in order to get rid of taxiway signs, moving jetways and fences drawn
by Flight Simulator. AFX draws these elements itself with the FS Preview active,
and having Flight Simulator also display them may be confusing. For example,
after moving a taxiway sign, you could see it both at the old location (drawn by
FS) and at the new location (drawn by AFX).

Wow, I see there's a demo version for download too.

[Meshman]

Good info, all to be considered. I was just reading in the AFX manual that you can now edit airports 'in sim", with AFX and FSX running side by side. This is version 1.04 of AFX.

Here's a couple of grabs to illustrate what each does. AFX projects/displays the current status of the airport file in FSX, but there is no editing inside FSX or FS9. You need to switch back and forth to see the changes. With AS there is no other application to switch to, as it runs inside the game and all editing is done and shown inside the game.

For someone like me who makes photo scenery, AS is or will be a BIG time saver. No more going and grabbing background images and loading them into the editor and working from them. While all imagery is "suppose" to be the same amongst the providers, it appears that Google Earth is slightly off. So when I revise an airport using GE as a background I will invariably have to go back and "nudge" things to line them up as I want them. Now I'll just have to fire up FSX, go to an airport and start editing. But there is a caveat, in that changes to an airport can be more than visually related. When I did photo work for West Virginia it included the lengthened runway at KMRB. One end, I think it was runway 9, had an approach that needed to be changed to reflect the current status of the lengthened runway. That wouldn't be something changeable within AS. More techie than what most people would want to hear or consider, but I'm sure you can appreciate having an accurate GPS approach to call up?

[Bone]

OK, thanks Meshman.

[falcon409]

I may not understand exactly why AS is different from AFX. In AFX, I can sync with FSX "in-sim", tell it to show in FSX and I get the same thing the AS screenshots show on the AS products page. Using the top-down view in FSX, I can move rwy's, taxiways, redraw parking ramps, etc. right in AFX and see the immediate results also.

[Meshman]

Using the top-down view in FSX, I can move rwy's, taxiways, redraw parking ramps, etc. right in AFX and see the immediate results also.

I highlighted the difference. With AFX you can set a preview in FSX (or FS9) and see the changes you've made in AFX [Alt-Tab], then go back to AFX [Alt-Tab] and make more changes and check them in FSX [Alt-Tab] and so on. With AS there is no separate tool or switching between the game and airport tool. The editor in fully contained in FSX or FS9. Need to move a vertex on an apron or the apron itself? Start up AS, just like Instant Scenery and start changing the AFCAD (used generically). No more switching, no more background images if working on photo work. I'm sure you've grabbed backgrounds, probably out of SBuilderX? Not much to it really. SBX saves that nice little text file with boundary coordinates and you just cut and paste them into an editor. Now do that for 500+ California airports or 300+ North Carolina airports or any number of airports for what's on my HD to work through and you can see the time savings when thinking about a couple thousand airport files to tweak. Couple that with GE's small, but important variance in their photo background images and needing to tweak aprons or runways or taxiways 15, 20, maybe 30 feet and there's some more time savings.

Absent photo scenery, being really precise isn't that much of a concern. Use it with photo scenery and there will be some time saved. There's a demo available that works around Seattle (50 miles I think?). Make a quick SBX photo file BGL for KPWT (there was a nice FS9 scenery for this airport and I flew in and out of it a lot!), see how the airport lines up (I have no idea TBH) and then see how quick you can use the demo to align things and have a new BGL file made.

[n4gix]

For what it's worth, there are folks who're using ADE9X in conjunction with Airport Studio to provide the "instant in sim view." It's a marriage made in heaven so to speak... :ernae:

[Meshman]

I dunno, Bill. I've been patiently waiting for Leaming Field to appear, but right now I'm beginning to think it's vaporware...

[jdhaenens]

I use AFX and the first thing I do with an airport I'm building is lay down the photoreal background as a template. I used to have a problem between AFX and Instant Scenery. You couldn't do both in the same session. I lost touch with ADE back when it was in the Beta stage so AFX has become my default. I can see how Airport studio could come in handy as it sounds like both can interact through it's in-game interface. At the same time, ADE and IS may be able to interact as well. That would save some time workflow-wise, but I tend to work Taxiway/runway/tarmac issues last to avoid working under a deftult tarmac by mistake. I might have to go out and check it out.

Jim

[Victory103]

Almost a review, and as a long time user of Lee's AFCAD2, I had hoped the transition to ADE9X would be smooth. Turns out there is so much more I can do with it, but I agree I wish I could see my changes in the sim real time, probably my only complaint. I am still very much a beginner and just got the photo background down to make very accurate airports for FSX. Biggest plus for me with ADE is the ability to add/update approaches, a constant task as they change over time or new GPS approaches are added real world.

[kilo delta]

Can any of these programs "grab" the photo tiles in program in order to overlay the airport details? If not, then what program should I use to get and generate the photo scenery...SbuilderX?

TIA

[Meshman]

None of the airport tools have live feeds for a background image. Airport Studio works inside the game, so there's no way to feed imagery in, unless it was something like Tile Proxy or the likes?

Getting a background image to add into an airport editor can be accomplished using SBuilderX or even simpler is to go the the primary site for SBuilderX and click on the Get a Map link. There you will get a satellite display and the coordinate information needed to add the image into the airport tool. To get a good Map or background image I open into a new window and can use a add on screen shot utility for Firefox to capture the entire window.

Main site for SBuilder(X): http://www.ptsim.com/index.php?optio...d=53&Itemid=57

FireShot screen capture add on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-Us/fir...ddon/fireshot/

Any more, I get by backgrounds out of SBuilder as I can make them as big as I need.

[Bone]

Are you refering to the ability to see live/real time edits you're making to an airport? If you are, then you can with AFX using the "preview in FS" button. It's a green looking airfoil shaped thing on the right end of the tool bar. I've been putting FSX in windowed mode on the left half of my screen (top down view), and AFX open on the right half. After clicking on the preview in FS button, the image is then totally editable while viewing it in FSX. I put the cursor on the AFX window and move it, while looking at the FSX top down view to see where the cursor is actually tracking.


The first pic is with the preview in FS disabled, the second is with it enabled. The third image is the raw photoscenery.

[kilo delta]

Thanks for the help guys. I've been playing with Sbuilderx all evening but the maximum level of zoom provided isn't as good as in G**gle M*ps....leaving the textures very blocky.

[Meshman]

Make sure you have the latest Google "grabber" done by Rhumbaflappy. Should be in a pinned thread at the SBuilderX sub-forum over at FS Developer.

[kjb]

I've been using Global Mapper to download, re-project and save images as geotiff for photo scenery projects. It's expensive, but sure makes it easy. A lot of times I'll just enter the airport coordinates and tell Global Mapper to download an area X miles from that center. Since I generally work with large areas, I have it export at 2m/pixel. If it's a large file, I can set Global Mapper to break it up into rows and columns of equal size.

Global Mapper also works with N, S, E, W coordinates which came in handy recently. On my current scenery, I started with 60 miles x 60 miles centered on KPRC (Prescott). After running resample, I noticed it was really close to Sedona, so I used the N, S and E coordinates of the existing area, then gave it a new E coordinate to add. The new scenery is 60 miles x 83 miles and extends well past Sedona. Then I noticed I was awfully close to KFLG (Flagstaff), but resisted the urge to expand the scenery again.

Global Mapper exports geotiffs and can also export a "TFW" file with the information. This makes is easy to edit a geotiff (color correction, night textures, water and blend maps), and make it back into a geotiff when finished. Just import the edited tif with a TFW file of the same name and Global Mapper makes the correct projection. Then export a new geotiff.

Instead of importing from Google, Global Mapper can download the image from pay sites or USGS (free).

[kilo delta]

Yep...I've the latest G**gleserver.dll file (Dec '11).

[Meshman]

Global Mapper exports geotiffs and can also export a "TFW" file with the information.

Nice to see you back active, Kevin!

I don't know the dates for the imagery tthat GM may grab, but if it's NAIP then it will be fairly current. NAIP is going to be compressed data, which is generally OK. If you're a stickler for detail, there are some sites that have AZ imagery in their pure GeoTiff format. Downloading all of Kalifornia was a long process and still fills the majority of a 2TB HD.

Also, if you're doing a large area and there are many files and there are many TFWs, I wrote a small little program to read all those TFWs and make INF files for use in Resample. It's been a while since I used it and I would have to go back and re-familiarize myself with the spaghetti code. But if you have a lot of files and don't want to cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste, it can be a time saver.

IIRC, Kalifornia is 12,000 files and there's no way I would cut and paste that many files! :isadizzy: