SurClaro Flight Simulator Resources

Does anyone have experience with 'hardened surfaces'? I want a runway or a landable surface as part of a 'floating' scenery object and am new to Gmax, and scenery design. This is all I know about, or can even speculate about regarding 'landable surfaces'.

I read something a while back about specifying an even number of metres above ground level for best results from a Gmax .BGL export featuring a 'hardened surface'.

The readme for a floating airport scenery file for FS9 talked about falling through the landable surface if you didn't bring your aircraft in ever so softly. I've experienced this with the Independence Day mothership scenery.

If you are careful, you can land on some FS2002 high building tops, but sometimes your aircraft may act funny when taxiing along these surfaces. (Crashing into unseen somethings, etc.)

Only square (or squarish?) objects actually allow for 'crashability', no matter whether crash damage is checked in Gmax or not. (you'll taxi right through a round or circular object, for instance. Not %100 sure about this one, but a good topic for clarification.

Any responses on landability on an airborne object will be appreciated.
I'll have to check back in down the road a week or so, thanks. Smile

EDIT: Had a chance to look around at Turbosquid quickly, and so far I've learned that the popular methods for 'hardening' surfaces all involve an 'Attach_tool' thing that only comes with FS2004's gamepack or SDK or something. No luck there for my poor old FS2002 ambitions.

There must be a way to harden a bunch of poly's so I can land on what is shaping up to be a really cool scenery project. Even in FS2002 I can land on tall buildings so there must be a way to make a surface landable. I read something about FSregen, a Chuck Dome utility I think, but the author claimed to experience fall-throughs after a short time.

My object has to 'float', with nothing underneath it, so cheating and having the ground rise to an elevated runway (easy to do) won't cut it.

There has to be a way and I will find it! Twisted Evil

Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 11:04 pm Post subject:

Well, I'm back online now after doing without the internet for a few weeks. To answer my above question I have once again found that FSDS by Abacus solves my problem with a 'polygon - create elevated platform' feature that will work for my FS2002. Trouble is I bought a wireless PCI adapter instead of sending for FSDS! So I started another aircraft project for FS8 to keep me involved and creating while I save my pennies for FSDS, and my dream scenery project. My first successful aircraft of any note for FS2002 was a futuristic (howdya guess?) sort of shuttle-bus-like thing with the .Air and config file hijacked from the excellent X-Wing. It actually looked O.K. and flew just right, but was a far cry from uploadable. My new craft is going to be an Air-Taxi. Think of a big, flying car like my cop car for Orbiter but a bit bulkier, and done up like a Taxi. I'm still a bit of a G-Max scaredy-cat. I know my way around in there a lot better but I'm still modelling exclusively in Anim8or and using G-max for texture application and exporting. I'll post back with a few screenshots once I've made 'em into .jpegs.

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:21 am Post subject:

you have FS8?????

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:39 am Post subject:

FS8 is FS2002. And yes, he does have FS2002.

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 1:26 am Post subject:

Posted: Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:41 am Post subject:

Here's a shot of my Air Taxi in mid-project. This one's going to have more car-like stuff on it like antennas, side & rearview mirrors, sunvisors (somewhere to put the driver's taxi I.D. photo), windshield wipers, and whatever else I can get away with, poly-wise. I was going to model a folded newspaper left behind in the back seat but had a brainstorm and will just paste the newspaper texture onto my seat texture. (Yes, that's a brainstorm for this newbie!) I still have some serious modelling to do, as I havent figured out how to do an auto-style front grille like I want yet, and face a similar challenge for the rear-end jet exhaust-behind-a-grille concept that will look awesome if done right and textured a certain way (You'll see). It doesn't look like much yet but the textures are gonna make or break it, a decent taxi paint job should make a big difference. Boy, I have a lot of learning to do as I go here. I don't know much about texturing in G-max, just the real basic slap a bitmap on a sphere sort of stuff. I have more ideas for interior stuff and have to detail the dashboard with a few insets for air vent 'texture-a-poly' activity later. Yeah, I know, I had better do model test in FS soon so I get a feel for frame-rates, eh? This is done in Anim8or, and all objects so far are G-max import and MakeMdl export-friendly. By the way, so far the pilot has been the hardest to model without co-located vertices and I'm still not happy with him, maybe a real nice texture job will save the day. He's the second attempt for this project. The first guy was twice the poly's and I couldn't figure out how to model him past the knees. The arms on this one still suck but it seems that every time I actually use my brain, good things happen, so my next project and pilot will be better.