Maskrider?

[MaskRider]

Thank you UT.

Well here go some more screenshots. I spent quite a bit of time last night reworking and obscure little airfield named Babo in what today is West Papua Indonesia.
Included are an overhead shot, a shot parked on the service apron and a couple of shots showing how nicely it can be damaged. ;^)

[MaskRider]

Uno mas-

[Shadow Wolf 07]

Maskrider: Nice screenies and a great (as usual) base. In the last screenshot, how did you get your water towers to burn? Or are they someone else 's oil tanks?

[MaskRider]

Hiya SW-07.

The slightly larger tanks are Lindsay's "LW Water Tower Type B". I remember very clearly that originally they exploded in a huge cloud of water spray. Somewhere along the line, somebody, maybe Pen32Win, redid them and changed the DP to smoke and fire. The slightly smaller tanks with the mottled tops are Pen32Win's "Oil Tank Large Green".

I'll have a look through my old stuff and see if anything relevant WRT the change to those LW water tank DPs jumps out at me.

MR

[Shadow Wolf 07]

Hiya SW-07.

The slightly larger tanks are Lindsay's "LW Water Tower Type B". I remember very clearly that originally they exploded in a huge cloud of water spray. Somewhere along the line, somebody, maybe Pen32Win, redid them and changed the DP to smoke and fire. The slightly smaller tanks with the mottled tops are Pen32Win's "Oil Tank Large Green".

I'll have a look through my old stuff and see if anything relevant WRT the change to those LW water tank DPs jumps out at me.

MR

Sir: I have paired the LW water towers with Ghostpony's napalm effect to get this:

[MaskRider]

Now that is impressive! Something like that might make my old rig to CTD! Is that Rabaul?

MR

[gius]

Chris,
congrats for this and all your other wonderful sceneries; i have a question: are you using Ground2k to make the ground layouts of your last airfields?
Thanks in advance,
Gius

[Shadow Wolf 07]

Now that is impressive! Something like that might make my old rig to CTD! Is that Rabaul?

MR

Yes that is Rabaul. That was during a night raid out of Henderson area waters with Catalinas. It was a long flight.

[MaskRider]

A long flight indeed. Speaking of long flights involving Rabaul, have you ever read the the biography of Saburo Sakai? In one mission, while he was stationed at Rabaul, he flew a zeke from Rabaul to Henderson. He and his ship were both badly shot up and he nursed it all the way back to Rabaul. It is an impressive story of shear will power and courage. He was a heck of a guy.

Speaking again of long missions to Rabaul. I got into making scenery when reading the book "American Aces Speak" by Eric Hammel (?). In that book one of the missions he described in detail was a mission of P-38s escorting a B-24 strike against Japanese installations all around Blanche Bay and Simpson Harbor- flying out of Dobodura (Popondetta). The mission is told through the eyes of the guy in charge of the escorting P-38s. Its a great mission- easy to build from the description- it was very detailed. NE out of Dobodura up around the tip of the Gazelle Peninsula through St George's Channel and then on into Rabaul with some groups splitting off and coming around from the north and others heading directly up Blanche Bay. Anyway I was discouraged because many of the airfields mentioned in the book were not available in CFS2. So I decided to build Dobodura. It was my very first scenery project. And I built that mission and fine tuned it and it was cool!

MR

[MaskRider]

Chris,
congrats for this and all your other wonderful sceneries; i have a question: are you using Ground2k to make the ground layouts of your last airfields?
Thanks in advance,
Gius

Hi Gius,

Yes I am. The screenshots in this thread are of airfields where I relied almost exclusively on G2K to do all of the ground texturing and roads and such. If I recall correctly the only screenshot where I used the method in my tutorial is the Morotai. Morotai has a very complex hardstand, taxiway-runway layout- best done using the method described in my tutorial. But everything else in the Morotai scenery is done with G2k. I still use FSSC for all of the basic airfield stuff- runways, start points, flat areas, NDBs, fuel areas, etc..

MR

PS: Here are three screenshots of the G2K layout window for all of the ground texturing polys for Babo (the background project map is turned off to make it easier to see). The the zoomed-out shot shows all of the shorelines and airfield ground polys- minus the roads. The roads I do as a separate bgl. The land itself is also a different project and bgl- looks just like the shorlines but its land instead. The zoomed in shot shows just the ground polys directly involved with the airfield. The third shot shows what the road layout looks like superimposed over the rest. If I were to start this project today I would very likely do it as a 2 stage project. First the wider surrounding land and shorelines and then a smaller close-up portion of the area just around the airfield. And of course there is also a landclass and a waterclass bgl associated with the scenery- made using EZLandclass usually.

MR

[SPman]

A long flight indeed. Speaking of long flights involving Rabaul, have you ever read the the biography of Saburo Sakai? In one mission, while he was stationed at Rabaul, he flew a zeke from Rabaul to Henderson. He and his ship were both badly shot up and he nursed it all the way back to Rabaul. It is an impressive story of shear will power and courage. He was a heck of a guy.

Speaking again of long missions to Rabaul. I got into making scenery when reading the book "American Aces Speak" by Eric Hammel (?). In that book one of the missions he described in detail was a mission of P-38s escorting a B-24 strike against Japanese installations all around Blanche Bay and Simpson Harbor- flying out of Dobodura (Popondetta). The mission is told through the eyes of the guy in charge of the escorting P-38s. Its a great mission- easy to build from the description- it was very detailed. NE out of Dobodura up around the tip of the Gazelle Peninsula through St George's Channel and then on into Rabaul with some groups splitting off and coming around from the north and others heading directly up Blanche Bay. Anyway I was discouraged because many of the airfields mentioned in the book were not available in CFS2. So I decided to build Dobodura. It was my very first scenery project. And I built that mission and fine tuned it and it was cool!

MR

I believe he was also wounded and blind in one eye - took a cannon shell glancing off his head.......

[MaskRider]

I believe he was also wounded and blind in one eye - took a cannon shell glancing off his head.......

Yes, they were very gruesome injuries. Incredible that he made it back alive.

MR

[UncleTgt]

Chris,

Interesting, do you have G2K running under WIN 7? I've not yet plucked up the courage to look at scenery building since moving to Windows 7.

Also, you were using SBuilder & Cfs2Autocoast when you were reworking Gaudacanal & the lower Solomons chain, any updates on how this method was working out for you?

[dvslats]

Dave, Chris is using a set of water textures included in my Carolines, New Britain or New Ireland scenery packages.

Thanks for the info UncleTgt. I knew they looked familiar. I'll copy and paste then over.

Dave

[MaskRider]

Hi UT,

I am still running WindowsXP Pro on my scenery-making computer. It's not that I have any particular aversion to Windows 7 but just haven't seen any good reason to take a leap into the great unknown. My other computer, the one I am typing on at the moment, is running Windows 8.1 Pro. I don't even want to think about rebuilding my scenery-making infrastructure on Windows 8. However, it might be worth the effort to see what happens. I sort of by-passed Windows 7 although I am familiar with it since my daughter runs it on her computer.

WRT updating how it went using SBuilder and AutoCoast on the Solomon's rebuild, it actually was going quite well. I was having good success getting the results I wanted although at the moment, specific details of glitches and fixes don't come to mind. I really need to get back into it and shake out the cobwebs.

Chris

[gius]

Hi Gius,

Yes I am. The screenshots in this thread are of airfields where I relied almost exclusively on G2K to do all of the ground texturing and roads and such. If I recall correctly the only screenshot where I used the method in my tutorial is the Morotai. Morotai has a very complex hardstand, taxiway-runway layout- best done using the method described in my tutorial. But everything else in the Morotai scenery is done with G2k. I still use FSSC for all of the basic airfield stuff- runways, start points, flat areas, NDBs, fuel areas, etc..

MR

PS: Here are three screenshots of the G2K layout window for all of the ground texturing polys for Babo (the background project map is turned off to make it easier to see). The the zoomed-out shot shows all of the shorelines and airfield ground polys- minus the roads. The roads I do as a separate bgl. The land itself is also a different project and bgl- looks just like the shorlines but its land instead. The zoomed in shot shows just the ground polys directly involved with the airfield. The third shot shows what the road layout looks like superimposed over the rest. If I were to start this project today I would very likely do it as a 2 stage project. First the wider surrounding land and shorelines and then a smaller close-up portion of the area just around the airfield. And of course there is also a landclass and a waterclass bgl associated with the scenery- made using EZLandclass usually.

MR

Hi Chris,
thanks for the reply: very interesting and exciting techniques indeed: personally, mainly working on ETO, i dont need often to work with G2k for ground
particulars, but this way can be very uuseful in building airfields, except the case you must use the method described in your tutorial...congrats again!
Perhaps we can have better detail with Sander's Autocoast package..
As far as OS issues, i'm using G2k in a VMWare Xp virtual machine on a rig running Win7 32 bit since i've encountered the same problems described
by UncleTgt...
Cheers
Gius

[MaskRider]

Gius and UncleTgt,

I have been out of the loop for a while and am not really up to speed on the conflicts and glitches that have arisen between CFS2 and the newer, post-XP, versions of windows. However, I am approaching the point where I will be wanting to build a new computer for the scenery and simming. Windows 7 is as far as I am willing to take it, I think. So, I guess soon I will be looking to pick your guys brains to sort things out if necessary.

Chris

[Shadow Wolf 07]

Now that is impressive! Something like that might make my old rig to CTD! Is that Rabaul?

MR

It probably won't. I did it years ago on my XP system or maybe even on my ME system before that.

[dvslats]

Hi Chris,

Was googling maps and found the modern day Babo.

I'm guessing the circular holes in and around the area are bomb craters from seventy one years ago. Pretty amazing.



Captain Kurt did missions for this area. IIRC, 9th Air force. This was a nasty place for US bombers and strafers in 1944.

oh, BTW, I found the .dp's made by Pen32win. They're include in his af_bb_pak.zip. This one has the files for leroy10's objects including the Water tank to Oil storage tank .dp.

Dave

[MaskRider]

Alright, Dave! Thanks for the pic of Babo. Good work on those dps! I had a look around my archives but wasn't able to spot them.

Another airfield not too far from Babo- about 35 mile WSW was Sagan. If you look close bomb craters are still visible there, too, along with quite a bit of detail of the taxiway, hardstands and dispersal areas. There even a few revetments still visible as well as what appear to have been gun emplacements or some such thing. It was a bit difficult to find in Google Earth because there is no modern day airfield at the location. But it is still possible to glean a pretty accurate layout from the Googfle Earth picture. I also had a photo from Pacific Wrecks to work from.

FYI Am making good progress and having fun reworking the DEI pack. Sometime in the next fews days I will get something ready for beta testing.

Here are a few pics I have. One is a wartime image of Babo from the Australian War Museum. The other 2 are of Sagan: one from Pacific Wrecks, the other from Google Earth.

BTW here are the coords of Sagan from Google Earth: 2°39'52.82"S 132°57'56.22"E

[MaskRider]

One more of MR Sagan- canted over with N at a 45 degree slant. I actually just starting upgrading this airfield earlier tonight.

MR

[gius]

Gius and UncleTgt,

I have been out of the loop for a while and am not really up to speed on the conflicts and glitches that have arisen between CFS2 and the newer, post-XP, versions of windows. However, I am approaching the point where I will be wanting to build a new computer for the scenery and simming. Windows 7 is as far as I am willing to take it, I think. So, I guess soon I will be looking to pick your guys brains to sort things out if necessary.

Chris

Chris,
i'm always ready to help...
Congrats for your works again!

[MaskRider]

After finishing up a rework of Nabire Airfield I decided to take a little hop from Nabire NW up to Ransiki Airfield- about 160 miles, with ActiveSky running. For my plane I chose one of my favorites, Akemi San's ki-45kai "Toryu". It was a screenshot worthy flight.

Taking off from Nabire

[MaskRider]

Thank you, Akemi for the enjoyment you are still giving!

Four more:


Passing Moemi heading for Ransiki

On approach to Ransiki

On Final

[MaskRider]

On this project, which I went traipsing off on thanks to dvslats inquiring about Boela Airfield, I am current concentrating on the newer DEI airfields clustered on and around the Vogelkop, or Bird's Head, Peninsula of Western New Guinea or what was Dutch New Guinea. Many slightly older fields, because of the way they were made in the first place, prior to Rhumba's Mesh and Mask, nevertheless fit in fine with his mesh when it was released.

Not all of the newer fields have required reworking, mainly just the ones that were not quite as G2K-intensive as others. For instance, Ceram-Amahai, Hate-Tobako, Lolobata, Jeffeman Island, Middleburg Islanfd, Mar-Sansapor, Pulau Gag and Wadke Island were all pretty much OK as they were.

The first thing that came to mind when I first decided to do this project was to change the roads from textured VTP1 polys without shores to VTP1 lines textured with Jean Bomber's nice road textures. The reason I originally made the roads using polys W/O shores was that at the time there was no decent road texture available that held up well visually. JP came up with some textures that changed that.

Another thing niggling me was the way I had sort of jury rigged river miouths in man of these sceneries. Many of these Islands I had reworked using AutoCoast with the result that they had an unbroken shoreline, which meant that the rivers always flowed into the ocean through a line of sand and waves. So “opening up” river-mouths are another thing I have been tweaking.

Also, when using LWM water polys for rivers, as I usually do, the rivers naturally take on whatever water class value they find sitting under them. Near shore this is almost always going to result in bright sky-blue rivers- when they should be duller and muddier looking. So, I wanted to tweak the river water-class colors.

Another little oddity that arose when Rhumba’s Mesh and Masks were adopted is that new land locations uncovered what had up until then been “hidden” expanses of default “1” water-class along the coasts of many Pacific Islands. This value basically yields a surface that reacts like ground to bullets and more importantly to floatplanes- they get stuck in it. You will be floating along nicely, come to a blended zone border between “1” and “7” water-class, and suddenly flip over onto your nose! So, I also wanted to fix outcroppings of “1” water-class.

Finally, as far as I recall at the moment, I wanted to thin out the GSLs at many of these airfields. Not, surprisingly, simple tweaking has many times turned into major reworks. Sangihe Island, which I am just finishing up, is such a place. I never liked it. So in addition to tweaking it river water classes and opening up its river mouths, I basically trashed the original field and replaced it with one that will be considerably less elaborate but much nicer looking, IMHO, when finished.


So here is the deal. The first batch of of reworked airfields will be released some time soon. I won’t put any hard firm date on it. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I will want some beta tester volunteers to make sure I haven’t overlooked anything.

The list of fields in this first pack: Ceram-Amahai, Ceram-Boela, Ambon-Laha, Babo, Biak, Fak-Fak, Hate-Tobako, Lolobata, Jeffman Island, Mar-Middleburg, Mar-Sansapor, Moenmi, Monakwari, Morotai, Noemfoor Island, Nabire, Pulau Gag, Ransiki, Sagan, Sangihe, Ternate, Utarom-Kaimana, Wakde.


Pretty much all of the airfields in the mr_dutch_east_indies_090912.zip . But they will definitely look different and the file-names will be different. Thus the need for some beta testing to work out any glitches.


Only Noemfoor, Sangihe and Utarom-Kaimana remain unfinished.

The second pack will be a rework of all the DEI fields that were only built for stock CFS2 mesh and masks. I will redo these for the new mesh and masks.They will include: Dili, Kendari, Koepang, Laboera, Langoer, Manado, Namlea, Selaru, Singosari and Waingaipoe.


Cheers,
MR

Find two screenies below showing the old Sangihe Island and vs the in progress new Sangihe.

Old Sangihe:


New Sangihe:


Another of the new, from the NE