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Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby radi » Mon May 03, 2010 11:32 pm

radi wrote: I'm willing to write a wiki article once I sorted out all shortcomings (and finished my thesis :roll: )
...
(Though I've got some scripts to ease the last step somewhat.)


A first version of the wiki article is available. PM for the bash scripts mentioned.
http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?title=Howto:_Convert_objects_from_X-Plane

Edit: fixed link.
Last edited by radi on Sun Dec 26, 2010 9:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby itismike » Sun Oct 03, 2010 8:00 pm

I'm interested in adding/editing scenery for my local airport but it seems the info contained in this FAQ is out-dated. Is TerraGear still being used? If not, can this be 'un-stickyied'? Maybe a pointer to the wiki, which can be community-maintained rather than responded to, is a better place for basic scenery-editing instructions? Where can I start?
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby Gijs » Sun Oct 03, 2010 8:05 pm

This FAQ is still current. Things haven't changed much over time ;)

Additionally, you might find usefull information at our wiki (which is already mentioned in the FAQ): http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Po ... er/Scenery
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby itismike » Sun Oct 03, 2010 8:38 pm

I'm confused. TerraGear.org has been offline for a long time, and I thought I read other posts saying that focus has been shifted to the World Custom Scenery Project? I guess I'm just getting a little mixed up. Thanks for the link to the developer's portal. Unfortunately I'm on a 64-bit MBP, so some of the tools are out-of-reach for me. I'll look around and see what I can use.
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby g.hekt » Sat May 28, 2011 1:21 pm

For a whole week I have been trying to follow all possible tutorial-wiki's and forum posts concerning how to start to make my own scenery.

The biggest problem I encountered is that none of the tutorials described the things I saw in the software I had to install, none. Actually nothing seemed to correspond with the actual software which actually got me off from trying to do something. Heck, I couldn't even find and install all the possible programs (i.e. http://www.terragear.org is offline permanently) and therefor I couldn't even pass the installation process.

The only thing I managed was to make a very good upgrade of the area of one airport in TaxiDraw. But the exporting and re-packing it into apt.dat.gz didn't work as described, nor did the steps look like the described, or maybe there were quite a few important things missing. Actually my goal was not too high - just to make this small airport (LBSZ) more realistic for me, I didn't even mean to submit it or anything since submitting material has many more requirements.

I usually fly on my MacBoo Pro but I soon realized that I had no chance of making any scenery with it, so I switched to my old PC with XP (in order to use fgsd). There I spent countless hours, virtually any free minute I had but I still could not even find the things described in the tutorials. I would have posted some logs or screenshots but I encountered just far too many problems/differences.

I know that writing tutorials is very time consuming and unpleasant, and I don't want to criticize anybody for having written a bad tutorial or something like that... I just want to point out that there are a few things that may have changed over time and require updated information, as well as the fact that lots of steps and information are missing - sometimes it's even hard to figure out which step is meant for which OS.

If I had managed to do this airport, I almost sure would have made even more airports and land, and would have tried to submit them for the whole community. Maybe others have also stopped because of the same reasons - the situation becomes more and more complicated with all kinds of problems.

I'd love to find an actually working possibility to make scenery that I could also try in FG. And I hope that the near future might bring us tools that would actually help us all develop better and more beautiful scenery.
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby itismike » Sat May 28, 2011 3:20 pm

Well said, Georg. My local airport KAMW has the taxiways on the opposite sides of the runways which makes pattern training rather confusing. I have the benefit of of a triple-boot MacBook, so I figured I'd be able to get one of the development tools installed on Mac, Windows, or Linux. Alas, many many hours later I found myself in the same situation you describe. I don't know who has these tools successfully installed, but it seems to be a very small select few that do. It is a very frustrating experience following outdated tutorials and dead links when trying to contribute to FGFS.

Maybe the main contributors keep it intentionally difficult/near impossible to contribute in an effort to keep the outsiders away from the goods. Kinda like an exclusive pilot's club :lol:
I kid, I kid!
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby itismike » Sat May 28, 2011 3:35 pm

Georg, taking a look at this thread again it looks like there is some active development going on. If you've got any love left for FGFS, check the wiki mentioned in the new release post by Gijs on page 7. Good luck! Let me know if there's any light at the end of the tunnel!
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby g.hekt » Sat May 28, 2011 4:12 pm

Thanks for your support at this... I had also started thinking about TerraGear but the website's down and the GUI is useless without it... And it kind of scared me as well because of all the things I have to download, install and compile, even though I consider myself an advanced computer user (I work for the computer service of a university). All links are pointing at different versions, installation-tutorials, more and more software and libraries you need... It is becoming a full time job. It might not have been so confusing if I had followed all developments since the beginning but I just recently discovered this wonderful sim.

So I'm leaving the developing for those who have the proper knowledge.
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby itismike » Sat May 28, 2011 5:55 pm

g.hekt wrote in Sat May 28, 2011 4:12 pm:(I work for the computer service of a university)

Me too! Guess this project attracts like minds!
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby Gijs » Sat May 28, 2011 8:26 pm

g.hekt wrote in Sat May 28, 2011 4:12 pm: I had also started thinking about TerraGear but the website's down and the GUI is useless without it...

It is not. You do not need terragear.org at all, it's been down for a whole lot of time now.
The wiki tells you where to download precompiled Windows builds from http://wiki.flightgear.org/TerraGear#Download

PS: I updated the "TerraGear" wikipage, removed the broken link ;)
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby g.hekt » Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:22 pm

somehow I am not allowed to download from the location ftp://ftp.ihg.uni-duisburg.de/FlightGear/Win32

Why is this? It asks for user/passw or just says 'Sorry, the maximum number of clients (1) from your host are already connected'... Maybe this link should also be updated.

Another question: If I download Terragear, does this mean that I might be able to make the airport I wanted without having to install a few more programs (for example in order to convert the TaxiDraw file into something else and another one to pack into apt.dat.zip and so on)? I assume that I'll have to download the GUI as well since I'm not very familiar with the commands. But anything else?

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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby AndersG » Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:31 pm

g.hekt wrote in Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:22 pm:somehow I am not allowed to download from the location ftp://ftp.ihg.uni-duisburg.de/FlightGear/Win32

Why is this? It asks for user/passw or just says 'Sorry, the maximum number of clients (1) from your host are already connected'... Maybe this link should also be updated.


Please use a proper FTP client that doesn't try to gain more than a fair share of the server bandwidth by opening multiple connections.

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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby g.hekt » Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:41 pm

AndersG wrote in Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:31 pm:Please use a proper FTP client that doesn't try to gain more than a fair share of the server bandwidth by opening multiple connections.
/Anders


I tried just opening the link with Safari (I'm still on my mac), then tried with Firefox, then tried with Transmit (FTP-client)... Since this usually works I wouldn't think that my client opens multiple connections. But shouldn't this download location be as accessible as possible so that every user can download without complications?
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby Gijs » Thu Jun 02, 2011 9:59 pm

g.hekt wrote in Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:22 pm:Why is this? It asks for user/passw

Did you try to follow the required step? "Supply your EMail adress as password for anonymous ftp access." (if you use a FTP client, make sure you don't have the web-link opened in your browser at the same time!)
If I download Terragear, does this mean that I might be able to make the airport I wanted without having to install a few more programs
Correct. TerraGear is actually a bunch of tools (as explained in the wiki page), each aimed at a step in the scenery-process: elevation, airports, landclassing and in the end, constructing it all together. If you're just interested in testing your airport-layout in FG, you'll only need one of the tools: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Testing_Your ... k_and_Easy
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Re: Scenery FAQ - Read This First!

Postby g.hekt » Fri Jul 01, 2011 4:01 pm

Thanks for your help, I managed to download TerraGear but this changed nothing to the fact that it's impossible for me to even start a project. The only manageable thing remained TaxiDraw. Everything else is obviously too complicated for my brain - I can't manage to keep track of everything I am supposed to do when I'm constantly running between windows and mac.

And still - for every airport there are quite a few things to download before you can even get started and there I ran across a few broken links and non-working but nevertheless required stuff (like the custom scenery pieces).

Frankly after 3-4 hours of just trying to get everything together for the edit of a small and unimportant airport, and these are not the first 3 to 4 hours of just trying, I don't think I can make it. I couldn't even start editing. It's just too much effort without any success so far. Like I said, I am probably too stupid to get it working if I am the only one complaining though I am still thinking that I am quite an experienced user with computers/graphic design and such.

I hope for a single-program for OSX someday that will allow me to edit, export and put into apt.dat.gz any airport I want. Sorry to have filled the topic with not really helpful information.
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