Muroc/early Edwards scenery

[delta_lima]

Hello!

I've tried to take Dennis Waggoner's superb KEDW and "retro" it to what would it would have looked like around 1950. The problem is he has a lot of modern textures, buildings, etc. My ideal was to strip it down to just that lovely lakebed texture, and work up (not a lot of buildings in 1950). But tied to the lakebed are a bunch of funky textures and bgls that are needed just for it to be visible in FS9. Here's what I'm picturing:

Being able to add these buildings ....

http://aerofiles.com/muroc-northase1945.jpg

... onto his lakebed ...


For any GW3/Silver Wings users who like fly out of KEDW (Willy?), anyone have a solution for a nice-looking lakebed and period hangars? I can add EZ Scenery hangards etc - it's somehow extracting just the lakebed and working from there.

thanks,

dl

[ian elliot]

Do a search for Sidney Schwartz over at flightsim, he's done quite a few packs of period hangers and other objects for Rwy12/EZscenery, you might want to check out Ted Andrews as well, mainly RAF WW11 objects but that large hanger at the front of your photo looks very close to an RAF J/K type hanger.
Cant help with the lake bed im afriad as i dont have the scenery, but if its on one bmp, you might be able to open it up with paint shop or similer program and tweak it.
cheers ian

[kurt190]

Try stripping out all of the bgl files except edafb.bgl

That should just leave the ground textures and maybe a parking lot.

kurt

[delta_lima]

Yup - tried that, but there is a big disconnect in height - needs one of the bgls to give the right elevation - and with it, comes a bunch of the excess buildings, etc. I posted this problem (never was able to resolve it here on SOH - can't find it, since I think it was pre crash)

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible to somehow create a new bgl of the Rogers and Rosamond lake(beds), with a new texture mapped to it of as high a resolution as would be possible in FS (Dennis' gets a bit pixelated when on the ground). If I then had an exclude bgl to take out all the stock fs9 buildings, shuttle, trees and shrubs on the lake bed, etc., then I could do the rest.

Open to ideas, new approaches, though ... if the finished product is good, will happily share - or will do the buildings, objects, etc. if someone can help me with the lakebeds - open to ideas. I just think if done well, there will be lots of folks who would enjoy this ...

dl

[Willy]

I pretty much skipped over Edwards and installed a scenery for Groom Lake with unmarked AI DC-4s making hourly flights from Las Vegas. While I was at it, I did some "sci-fi" AI for it with some late WWII German and Japanese aircraft, some Luft 46 stuff, late 40s Northrup flying wing bombers, early jets, a XB-58 and a Klingon battle crusier.

[kurt190]

Delta are you running FSGenesis mesh, or any mesh in that area?

kurt

[delta_lima]

Nope - stock mesh, Kurt.

dl

[modelr]

DL, do you have the fixes from Martin Stebbing? He has an afcad that repairs the height issue, and the surrounding textures.

kedw_fix.zip at Simviation.com (I think. No File ID.diz in it.)

kedw_fix_and_afcad.zip at Avsim.com

I don't see anything in the readme about not sharing the file, so I can send it to you if you'd like.

[delta_lima]

Thanks Modelr,

I don't believe I have that - please do - I'll try Kurt's suggestion and adding in the fix you mention.

PM is on the way.

Regards,

dl

[modelr]

:ernae:

[delta_lima]

Kurt,

I messed with this all night. You need all the bgls in the scenery folder - without them, you get uneven heights between aprons, taxiways, runways, and the lakebed itself.

Deleting base textures didn't work either, since these are needed to texture up the bgls - without the textures, you get weird green and black shapes. The upside is getting the fix made the lakebed textures more stable.

I am so bummed .... it looks like I'm stuck with a modern KEDW ... :( .... I'll try again tomorrow.

dl

[kurt190]

Kurt,

I messed with this all night. You need all the bgls in the scenery folder - without them, you get uneven heights between aprons, taxiways, runways, and the lakebed itself.

Deleting base textures didn't work either, since these are needed to texture up the bgls - without the textures, you get weird green and black shapes. The upside is getting the fix made the lakebed textures more stable.

I am so bummed .... it looks like I'm stuck with a modern KEDW ... :( .... I'll try again tomorrow.

dl


OK try running it with edafb.bgl & edastatic_A16N.bgl "live".

kurt

[Terry]

Kurt,

I messed with this all night. You need all the bgls in the scenery folder - without them, you get uneven heights between aprons, taxiways, runways, and the lakebed itself.

Deleting base textures didn't work either, since these are needed to texture up the bgls - without the textures, you get weird green and black shapes. The upside is getting the fix made the lakebed textures more stable.

I am so bummed .... it looks like I'm stuck with a modern KEDW ... :( .... I'll try again tomorrow.

dl

Have you tried using JABBGL_134445 to reset the default elevation to match the texture you want to use?

[delta_lima]

Hello,

The issue is not elevation - it's to figure out how to disassociate JUST the lakebed bgl (and associated textures) from the all the other static buildings, the funky flagstone finishing around the taxiways, aprons, and parkings, etc.

So in a perfect world, I'd have just the lakebed bgl, its textures (which I believe are .bmps 027-067) and nothing else. I'd build up the new (old) base, and if need be, adjust the elevation(s) as needed.

The problem is that Dennis' new base has (correctly, of course, from a modern point of view) all the sprawl of parking and hangars that extend northward along a long arm abutting the west end of Rogers Lake. The images I have of the 1945-50 Muroc show the majority of the hangars clustered around where the main hangars are, abeam RWY 22/4, in normal airport fashion. All that stuff that reaches north-east-ward up to and including the Shuttle processing facility was added in later years.

Ditto with the North Base, which has a bunch of modern cargo-era planes that should be excluded.

Thanks,

dl

[delta_lima]

OK - Kurt, I think I know why they pay you the big bucks ... :medals: :applause:

taking out all the bgls except those two got rid of everything I wanted from Dennis' - but kept just what I wanted, which was the lakebed and it's textures. I'm going to have to delete a few more textures that are still around, but I'm almost at the "clean slate" I wanted.

And as Terry pointed out, now the elevations are out of wack: the afcad file is 30 or so feet below the level of the lakebed and surrounding textures. So, what is the best way to

1) correct this? Should I be bringing the AFCAD up or somehow lower the edafb.bgl & edastatic_A16N.bgl ?
2) exclude the default FS9 stuff - shuttle, silly default buildings, etc.


Thanks guys!

dl

ps: Anyone have any recent contact info for Dennis Waggoner? If he'll agree, and if this all turns out worth posting, I'll share here ....

[Willy]

Relooked at it and I did muck about with Edwards when I was doing my military AI, but all I did to the base was to do up an AFCAD and then populate it with late 40s early 50s AI aircraft.

Sorry I can't be of any more help on it.

[modelr]

As Terry suggests, use JABBGL. Using any aircraft, (the default 172 is best for this) and Shift+Z to bring up the elevation while sitting on the tarmac, then either correcting the elevation in the afcad, or the mesh elevation with JABBGL, which will also correct the surrounding area. The instructions are pretty straight forward. (Haven't used it in a long time, but it does work.) :kilroy:

[kurt190]

OK - Kurt, I think I know why they pay you the big bucks ... :medals: :applause:

taking out all the bgls except those two got rid of everything I wanted from Dennis' - but kept just what I wanted, which was the lakebed and it's textures. I'm going to have to delete a few more textures that are still around, but I'm almost at the "clean slate" I wanted.

And as Terry pointed out, now the elevations are out of wack: the afcad file is 30 or so feet below the level of the lakebed and surrounding textures. So, what is the best way to

1) correct this? Should I be bringing the AFCAD up or somehow lower the edafb.bgl & edastatic_A16N.bgl ?
2) exclude the default FS9 stuff - shuttle, silly default buildings, etc.


Thanks guys!

dl

ps: Anyone have any recent contact info for Dennis Waggoner? If he'll agree, and if this all turns out worth posting, I'll share here ....


Delta,

I use the freeware FS genesis west coast mesh. With that you need to edit the AP916190.bgl. This is located in ....../scenery/world/scenery folder. It is the airport information for the whole area of that part of California. If you use a utility called JABbgl (available at the usual places) you can edit the height of the airport. With the FSGenesis mesh the height for Edwards in my set up is 694.4.
If you have the standard mesh then I guess its the afcad that needs editing. It probably needs to be set to 701.7.

kurt

[Terry]

Another useful tool which will give you exact elevation of the ground your sitting on is CHPLUS.zip = Crosshairs Plus. Using an aircraft to get elevation adds some error.

[modelr]

you're right. I had forgotten about that one.

Been a long time since I done any real changing around of things. R/L doesn't leave any play time anymore. Get the downloads done, go to bed. :crybaby: :banghead::mad: