FS Scenery

Designing Scenery in FS

This is a new page and I hope it may be of interest to anyone thinking about trying their hand at scenery design. For the moment it will contain information on design tools, some of the scenery problems I have encountered and links to useful FS design sites.

Design Tools

There are many tools that are available for designing scenery for FS2002/4. The Design Tool link above will take you to information on GMax, Autogen and FS Scenery Library files. These are just a fraction of the total and others include:

AFCAD2 - An FS2004 specific tool that allows you to open any default FS airfield and redesign the airfield layout, specifically runways, taxiways and aprons (and associated markings). Essentially it is for 2D (flat) objects. The AFCAD for FS2002 does not work like this - it only alters AI data.

FSDS2 - A payware product that produces very similar output to GMax.

EOD - a more basic and easy to use object builder.

FSSC, Airport, Architect etc - These are programs for building a scenery or airport complex i.e. many objects in a defined area. All are SCASM based - a design language that has been in use for some time but may not extend into FSX.

Ground2K4, Coastline Maker - More complex tools for reworking default FS coastlines and ground objects.

Design Problems

The link above takes you to a set of pages covering some of the issues I encountered during scenery creation. Topics covered in this section include coastline creation, Grid Datum errors and GPS/Mapping errors.

Design Links

This is not a comprehensive selection of links but it does list some of the sites that provide tutorials for those wishing to get to grips with GMax scenery design.