Hi folks,
Apologies in advance, I may go on a bit here. Sip to the end to hear about KMIA project.
Some of you may remember me from a couple of years ago. I joined the FG community in 2009, and got involved with creating scenery in the UK. I was responsible for the scenery in and around Norwich Airport (EGSH) and the UK Football Stadium Project.
After that, I started flying for AVA, and after discussions with Alex and Jason in 2010, offered to create some custom scenery for KMIA, exclusive for AVA pilots, which was a much used Airport that lacked decent scenery.
I spent 4-5 months building the main terminal and hangars in Sketchup, but around the beginning of 2011, my interest in FG and the project waned, and I silently stepped away from it. Real life gets in the way, and I started a new hobby making Scale Aircraft Models (which I continue to this day.) The nearly finished KMIA model sat on my hard drive collecting dust.
However, I still lurked on the forums from time to time, and have been waiting to get back into modelling scenery for FG. I recently got back in touch with Alex, and seeked collaboration with him to finish the project and get it into FG for Atlas Virtual Airlines exclusively. However, Alex has let me know that he can’t commit the time to help me out, and so I have decided to bring this to whole FG community, as my interest in flying for AVA and in FG is not yet revived.
So, firstly, my skills regarding scenery development are limited to creating models in Sketchup. Below, is a screenshot of the KMIA terminal as I left it, and some hangars to the north. I hope you will see that is has potential. I like to strike a balance between detail/accuracy with low filesize (something which I perfected in my football stadium project)
What I really wanted to achieve with this though was more than just a model. I can see that there has been some exciting developments recently regarding scenery development, and I am putting this out there to seek collaboration with some of you guys who have experience where mine is lacking.
I have noticed that recently, statto has updated the landclass data in Miami, which is great news as that is key to getting my model in FG. However, I have noticed the airport layout has not changed, which to my eye is inaccurate, and my model will not fit comfortably in the current layout.
So, I’m seeking help from you kind people in the following areas:
1.Airport layout – Either updated in Taxidraw, or if possible, the new 850 format which looks like it has the potential to take FG to another level in scenery realism.
2.Working jetways – I understand there is a huge thread regarding this, that offers help in how to implement this. But I would greatly appreciate any one who knows how this works to contribute those to this model, as it is beyond me.
3.Help with textures from my model – Some of the textures are very basic in my model, an I would like to overhaul them and try and get them a little more realistic. I would also seek help in implementing night textures, so anyone who can give advice on that would be a great help.
4.AI traffic – I’m hoping one of the chaps who works on the AI stuff (gooneybird springs to mind, as he helped me with Norwich) can update the ground network and write some AI traffic once the new layout has been fixed.
So if you can offer your time to help in the above areas, or naything else you can think of please let me know in this thread, and see if we can make KMIA one of the best developed airports in FG.