Any Pearl Harbor retro scenery out there?

[ian elliot]

Just wondering if there's been any retro scenery for this area, dont have any interest in doing it myself, but wonder'd if anyone else has done the hard work

[huub vink]

Golden Hawaii has Pearl Harbour scenery. But that is the only scenery for fs9 I'm aware of.

[Mick]

Golden Hawaii has Pearl Harbor scenery. But that is the only scenery for fs9 I'm aware of.

Yes, and like much of Bill Lyons' scenery, it's mostly fanciful. His Ford Island isn't remotely like the real one; it's depicted as a grass field with an old, beat-up hangar and a blimp base with an AI blimp. Nice, but the airfield was paved (virtually the whole island was paved, not just the airstrip) and there were no blimps in Hawaii, much less blimp bases. Battleship row, which was on one side of Ford Island, is located nowhere near there in GH, the ships are all out in the harbor away from the land, and the wharves on both sides of the island (battleship row on one side, carriers and tenders on the other side) are completely absent. The aircraft are all late 1920s and early 1930s types that were out of service before Ford Island became a fleet air base, and the battleships are configured with the old plow bows and cage masts that were mostly removed and replaced with tripod masts and cruiser bows long before the fleet moved to Hawaii, which it didn't do until the spring of 1940.

It can be fixed up better if one wants to put the time into it, and if one has a scenery object placement program and knows how to use it. I updated my Pearl Harbor in Golden Wings using the Golden Hawaii version as a starting point, but there's virtually nothing left of the Lyons version except the basic shape of the harbor. I would like to share my version, but I never expected it to turn out as something anyone else would want, so I didn't keep track of what scenery object libraries I used. That means I not only couldn't give proper credit, but more practically, I can't tell anyone what object libraries they need. Anyway, my version isn't so much authentic as it is just less inauthentic than the GH version.

I can tell you what I did. First I excluded the grossly inaccurate GH stuff, which was most of the harbor and its surrounds. Paul Clawson's USS Idaho has the right configuration for an updated old battlewagon of Pearl Harbor vintage, and it can be converted into a static scenery object with Static Aircraft Model Maker. Paul's Lexington and/or Saratoga can be converted to a scenery object like the Idaho and parked across the island from Battleship Row. Ford Island can be turned into a 1940-vintage version using AFCAD or ADE9X to pave it. I didn't attempt to put in all accurate buildings, but I came up with a semi-plausible layout using various available scenery object libraries. It's nowhere near authentic but it has a look that is at least sort of believable, and doesn't poke you in the eye with its gross inaccuracies as much as the Golden Hawaii version.

I then populated the island with static models of various 1940-41 naval aircraft. Being a big fan of the colorful pre-war Navy aircraft color and marking system, I depicted my Pearl Harbor in that little sliver of time between the arrival of the fleet and the building of Hickam Field, and the introduction of camouflage on Naval aircraft soon thereafter.

Having eliminated pretty much all of the Golden Hawaii stuff, it occurs to me that one might not need Golden Hawaii as a starting point, and could do just as well with a basic Golden Wings or even stock FS9 Pearl Harbor. Maybe you wouldn't have so much stuff to exclude in Golden Wings; maybe more in stock FS9. (But remember, Golden Hawaii has a lot of great stuff; it's not just Pearl Harbor.)

Of course, once you've driven yourself half crazy trying to come up with a semi-acceptable Ford Island, you'll feel compelled to create from scratch Hickam Field on the east shore of the harbor, which isn't depicted at all in Golden Hawaii, and was built barely in time to get clobbered on December 7, 1941. And that might make you want to do Wheeler Field...

I wish I could offer an accurate Pearl Harbor. Maybe I can influence someone to make a better one than what I came up with, and maybe they'll release it for the rest of us. Maybe these ideas will stimulate some folks to make their own Pearl Harbor.

[Motormouse]

Iirc, Derek and Brendan Web (DBW sim)
did a version of Pearl Harbour, and I think
also the virtual navy or fs shipyards

Not sure if either pack can still be found online

And for Ford Island, I wish the FSX scenery was converted

Ttfn

Pete

[ian elliot]

Well maybe something for the new year, and maybe in stage's, but i dont work to work to hard, easy enough to lose Honolulu int and the maybe the modern skyscraper autogen. I could probably do Hickam in my sleep and there's a lot of CFS2 ship objects that are easily converted, but i have a few bits and piece's to get out the door first

PS, Hi Mick, has the Bill Lyons version got accurate coastline and landclass, maybe i can use that as a base to work on

PPS, ive seen the DBW version, its up at Avsim, but its a present day, within the last 20 years or so, version, screens look good though

[Tom Clayton]

I just happened to be passing through and saw this. Search "DBWsim's Pearl Harbor 2004" on flightsim.com and you'll get two results from the same dev. I checked a few pics and it doesn't look half bad. It's current day (well... 2004 current) scenery, so if you're looking for war-era, this might not be what you want.

[kdriver]

Hi Ian,

Try the Pearl Harbor Project Scenery Pack in the CFS2 Scenery section. Hopefully the land and water masks will work, along with the airfield background bitmaps for Hickam, Ford Island, Ewa, Bellows, Wheeler and Kaneohe.

Rather than converting the multitude of GSL objects, you might be able to use existing FS2004 macros.

Cheers,
Kevin

[Mick]

Here's an overhead view of my Golden Wings / Golden Hawaii Pearl Harbor.

Attachment 85668

And here's an overhead view of the real Pearl Harbor.

Attachment 85669
My screenshot is oriented with due north at the top of the image. The real one seems to be turned a bit clockwise. Or maybe one is due north and the other magnetic north.

The virtual Pearl has the general shape of the real place but I wouldn't call it accurate, not in any degree of detail. It looks "pretty much" like Pearl Harbor but it wouldn't look very accurate to someone who's really familiar with the place, or just looked at it side by side with a photo.

I don't know how old that photo is, but there's no trace of Hickam Field, which was first built in the mid-1930s and not complete until 1941. Well, there's no trace in the photo assuming that I put Hickam in the right place, but I'm pretty sure I did. My Hickam AFCAD has accurate runways, taxiways and ramps, and I'd be happy to share it if anyone wants it, along with a flatten. The buildings are only very approximately correct.

I don't recall anything about landclass, but it would seem that there must be landclass in Golden Hawaii since modern development would look very out of place in a Golden Age Pearl Harbor. There's nothing with a recognizable file name in my Excludes/Fattens/Landclass folder, but Lyons may have snuck it into some other place that exists in a box-stock FS9 installation.

I do have mesh, the old FS Genesis 10m Hawaii mesh.

Kevin, I wish I had time time to check out those CFS2 sceneries. Some CFS2 sceneries work in FS9 and some don't. Some of us were able to convert Maskrider's NAS Glenview to work in FS9, but Glenview is located some ways from the shore of the lake. When I tried Maskrider's Guadalcanal the shorelines were a complete mess; CFS2's and FS9's shores weren't at all alike and they conflicted as the sim tried to show both at once.

Tom, I think some might wish for a WW2-era Pearl. My intent was a slightly pre-WW2 setting.

[leuen]

I used Randy Cain's Ford Island scenery for this "particular situation". The rest is GH environment.





Bernard

[Mick]

Ian, here are the flats and excludes for Ford Island and Hickam.

[stoney]

Mick, where do I install your BGL's?

[Motormouse]

Mick, where do I install your BGL's?

Try the add on scenery/scenery folder..
Or

make your own scenery folder and drop it in your addon scenery folder and activate in the normal way

Ttfn

Pete

[ian elliot]

Thanks Mick, i did discover some issue's after i PMd you, so these will come in handy
To anyone else, these bgl's probably wont mean anything, yet , there just a few bits and piece's Mick sent me to look over

[Mick]

Mick, where do I install your BGL's?

They can go into any scenery folder lower in the stack than the areas they apply to. I put excludes, flattens and land class files in a scenery folder called "Excludes Flats LC" and keep it low in the scenery stack, right above the stock scenery folders and under AddOn Scenery.

At present you don't need them unless you plan to make your own Hickam Field, Ford Island and MCAS Ewa.

They are a platform for the additions I made to my own Golden Hawaii installation, all the do is flatten the ground under Hickam Field and MCAS Ewa, and get rid of whatever is under the place where Hickam Field was built and all the totally wrong stuff on Bill Lyon's Ford Island.

I can't release my Golden Hawaii additions for a few reasons. One is that they really are not release quality. Another is that because I never intended them for release, I didn't keep track of the static object libraries I used, so can't tell users what libraries they need, and because the airfields are populated with static planes made with Static Aircraft Model Maker, and it would be a major challenge, probably impossible, to get all of the modelers' permissions to release the conversions.

Anyway, I sent a lot of my stuff to Ian in the hope that they might help him with a better version of Hickam Field that he's considering, and maybe Hickam Field will prompt him to think that an authentic Hickam really calls out for an authentic Ford Island and MCAS Ewa, since like Hickam, they are in or adjacent to Pearl Harbor. And a little further away are Wheeler Field, Bellows Field, and NAS Kanehoe....

[stoney]

Thanks MM.

Steve

[Mick]

I might add that I didn't keep track of the scenery libraries I used for the buildings and couldn't face the chore of getting permissions to release the static models I made of so many aircraft, and my Golden Hawaii additions are not very authentic anyway.

The exception is that I made very accurate AFCAD files for Hickam Field, NAS Ford Island and MCAS Ewa. If anyone wants those, to put their own buildings and stuff onto, I'd be happy to share them. I know Ian's thinking about Hickam, but the others...?

So if anyone wants the AFCADS just let me know and I'll put them up here as an attachment to a post.

Merry Christmas to all !!!

[ian elliot]

Just a teaser. Kalaeloa (Barber's point) was under construction at the time of the attack's, After Ewa was attacked, construction personnel were moved from Kalaeloa to Ewa to repair the damage, once Ewa was operation again, construction restarted on Kalaeloa which opened spring 42.

[ian elliot]

Ive ended up doing what i wasnt intending to do, not happy with existing object library's, ive knocked up my own, and messed with Mick original AFD file's and bugger'd about with the coastline's Quite a lot done, lot more to do

[Shessi]

Ha ha ha....I know that feeling Ian...it just erks that there isn't any decent version of what you want...so what do you do...you do it yourself!!

There's a huge amount there, and if it's anything like your Malta scenery (beautiful!), it will be superb.

Cheers

Shessi

[ian elliot]

Thanks Shessi, This makes Malta look like a dirt strip

[huub vink]

Well Ian I can assure you that your efforts are highly appreciated.

Cheers,
Huub

[rohan]

Well Ian I can assure you that your efforts are highly appreciated.

Same here . . .

[Mick]

Lookin' good!

And you got Barber's Point too! I never got around to that.