Howto:Make an airport

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For changing scenery and airports you need TerraGear. This article will guide you through the process and link you to related articles.

What you need:

• WorldEditor
• Runway layout data - either from the USA Airport & Scenery Database or from other free imagery
• Other data (approach lighting systems, frequencies etc.) about the airport you want to make
• Shapefiles for the area around your airport - http://mapserver.flightgear.org/download.psp
• Heightmaps - http://dds.cr.usgs.gov/srtm/version2_1/
• Of course FlightGear - any version

Ubuntu users, can use the script in Ubuntu fg tools.

Airport layout

The very first step before creating a new airport layout is to check if the airport already exists in the airport database. Latest data is available at http://data.x-plane.com/get_data.html If we find our airport there, we can improve it, if not, we start a new layout. This is all done in WorldEditor.

So if we have done the airport in WED, we save it as "ICAO.dat" (replacing ICAO with the ICAO code of your airport). That's the X-Plane fileformat, which is used by FlightGear too.

Turning the airport into FlightGear scenery

There are two possibilities, both require TerraGear:

• Howto: Test your airport layout: quick and easy, for a quick look at your airport. This will place your airport in the middle of an ocean.
• Using TerraGear, you can create an entire scenery, including the surrounding terrain.

Share your airport with the world!

Don't forget to send your new "airport.dat" to Robin, so we all will benefit from, with the next scenery release!