Scenery enhancement

Note  As of December 2015 this page is still rather a listing of the topics of most of the articles in the category rather than an introductory summary of different ways to enhance the scenery.

There is many ways to enhance scenery in FlightGear.

The scenery in FlightGear consists of a terrain mesh, terrain materials (which includes textures) and scenery objects. The scenery is split into 1 x 1 degree scenery tiles. The triangular terrain mesh has some information like land class encoded in each triangle. Using that information the terrain is textured based on a material configuration, sometimes procedurally (in essence partially through configuration of algorithms and not by artwork alone). The airports are also part of the terrain mesh, in which the various runway, taxiway and apron materials are encoded as scenery mesh triangles as well.

In addition the scenery is populated with objects, either static objects that only occur once, or shared objects that are included with FlightGear and/or the scenery and are used in many places. Static objects are typically prominent buildings while shared objects are typically objects used often, for example power pylons.

All of this can and should be improved over time, and experimentation is both possible and encouraged (but work in small steps, so you can learn from small mistakes).

Description of the content of the articles by categories

This part is probably temporary, to help reorganize documents about scenery enhancement. If you add Feel free to add the description of your page.

General scenery

• Next Generation Scenery: Brainstorm page about possible feature/enhancements in scenery (terrain, textures, LOD of the objects, etc...) and links to mailing list discussions and related projects & efforts.
• Tile Index Scheme: How work the scenery tile system and calculate the tile index.
• World Custom Scenery Project: (october, 16 2008 stub) Tools used for the World Custom Scenery Project.

Terrain

• BTG file format: Description of the file format used in flightgear to describe terrains.
• CORINE to materials mapping: Table of relations between Corine database and textures used in Flightgear.
• Howto:Calculate elevations: Know the elevation of the ground at given coordinates.
• Experimental terrain generation with GRASS (WIP): About current (summer 2012) experiments using GRASS (Geographic Information System) for terrain generation.
• Geographic Coordinate Systems: Explaination of the WGS84 Ellipsoid systems used in Flightgear to compute coordinates.
• Howto:Create_custom_terrain: Create a custom shapefile to add custom scenery to FlightGear.
• Using TerraGear: How to use Terragear. (french full translation)
• TerraGear CORINE: How to use France Corine database, SRTM v4 datas and OSM to improve European terrain (french full translation)

Terrain building tools

• Terragear: Building/installing Terragear ([[Es/TerraGear[spanish 3 lines translation]])
• TerraGear_Documentation: Description of Terragear toolchain, tool by tool.
• TerraGear_GUI: GUI to use Terragear toolchain. Installation and usage.

Technical concepts and experimental generation tools

• TerraGear support for transition polygons: Explanation of the new technique used for landclasses transitions in Terragear (for developers).
• TerraGear texmapped line data: About newconstruct, allowing to automatically mapping textures folliwing the line of roads, rivers and railways.

Terrain databases

• Coordination of Information on the Environment european Corine database, one of the sources of the FlightGear terrain
• OpenStreetMap, Can be used as source of terrain and some kind of scenery objects.

Airport

• About_Scenery/Airports: This article gives an introduction to the $FG_SCENERY/Airports folder.
• Howto:Add details to your airport: Placing objects in airport (same than in other place), but with more airport specific signs placements (lot of details about general object placement)).
• Howto:Test your airport layout: quick and easy: Testing the airport
• Blender and BTG: Creating airports terrains BTG files with Blender.
• Howto:Animated jetways: Adding jetways (path connecting airplane to airport terminal gates) into airports, add informations requirement to aircraft models for using them.

Airport signs

• Howto:Modeling Ground Signs with Blender: Creating airport signs and adding them on the airport using Blender.
• Signs: Description of common airport signs and stg file signs syntax for adding them.

Heliport/helipad

• Howto:Make a helipad : Creating an helipad object, the apt.dat to define it as heliport, testing and distributing it.
• FlightGear User Created Helipad List: Raw list of helipads created by users (ICAO code and coordinates).

Airport design tools

• WorldEditor: State of the art X-plane apt.dat 850 format and better airport creation tool.
• TaxiDraw: Free taxiway editor for FlightGear and previously x-plane (Deprecated, use WorldEditor now)
• AirportEditor: Java-based AI ground network editor for FlightGear
• FGSignMaker: is a (X)HTML/JavaScript-based (a.k.a. web-based) tool to generate taxiway sign

Stubs

This articles are stubs, not modified since long time and should probaby be dispatched, if there are really interesting informations ? :

• Howto:Step-by-step_Scenery: Stub (january 29, 2012), some tips about creation, should
• Howto:Make an airport: little page with link to some relevant pages and good structure, could be a used as base for main guideline ?

Models

• XML XML format of the Models, basics 3d models are in AC3D files format (.ac) and fgfs XML define their behavior, this page describe general XML format syntax and common usage and one example to insert NASAL script code inside.
• FlightGear_Newsletter_August_2012#Scenery_corner web forms and tools to import/modify/delete models in the official scenery database.

Creating or enhancing models

• Howto:Decrease_the_number_of_faces: Decrease the number of faces of the model to avoid slowdown Flightgear with non-visible details.
• Normals and Transparency Tutorial: Tutorial about how to use Blender 2.4x, to create model with transparency and normals information compatible with Flightgear AC3D and exporting them.
• Howto:Illuminate faces: How to make building or objects visible by night by illuminating their faces (Warning: Old method, would give weird result with Rembrandt renderer)
• Howto:Lightmap: The new way to have illuminating faces (full spanish translation)
• Howto:Animate models: Add animation to a model using model description .xml files
• Howto:Nasal in scenery object XML files: Embed Nasal_scripting_language in object .xml description for interaction and animation.
• Modeling - FAQ: (stub) really few question should be filled and perhaps be used as references on other articles ?
• Modeling Resources: Lot of external ressources about modeling 3d objects and animate them, some redunduncies with Aircraft information resources, probably to dispatch
• Modeling_-_Getting_Started: Nice general starting page with categories and link to other important informations about modeling for Flightgear.

Aircrafts

(see also : Category:Aircraft enhancement and Portal:Developer/Aircraft

• Howto:3D Aircraft Models: Create aircraft model.
• Aircraft information resources: Lot of usefull links about aircrafts information resources.
• Howto:Animate gear scissors: Animate gear scissors, include nasal example script and xml definition.
• 3D Model Rotates Around Nose: Simple explanation of the mistake to define nose as centroid and how to place it the right way.
• Creating instruments for FG: Create panel instruments for an airplane, no 3d modeling part, only about XML definition of the instrument to get it usable in flightgear.

Textures

• AC files: Basic changes to textures and colors How to change colors and textures of a model by editing model ac file.
• Howto:Texture a building: Texturing the differents elements of a building using UV maps with Blender and Gimp.
• Textures & Texture Maps in SketchUp: How to embed your own textures into a SketchUp (SU) model
• Howto:Create textures from photos: Take photos, extract textures from them. Focuses on trees and facade textures.
• Livery over MP: Add a livery dialog in the flightgear menu (Full spanish translation).

Importing

• SketchUp to AC3D exporter: Tool converting objects from SketchUp (used in Google Earth) to AC3D. Installation and usage.
  • Modeling - SketchUp: Redirect to SketchUp to AC3D exporter. The source of this page contains some information about modeling with Sketchup but is commented as deprecated and Blender is considered a more appropriate and compatible tool.
• GMax2AC: Script for converting GMax models to AC3D format used in Flightgear.
• Model import and export: General import/export page, with some external models (Blender and GMax) Marked as need cleanup

Modelers

• Blender: Interesting links to internal pages and externals tutorials about using Blender to enhance Flightger.
• Wings 3D: Few explanation lines some external docs and tutorials links
  • Modeling - Wings 3D : tutorial about modeling with Wings 3d.
• K-3D: Only one line with a link to the project itself.
• Pretty Poly 3D Modeller: Only one line with two links to the project itself
• AC3D: Proprietary modler with limited trial version. Only one line with link to the site.

Modeling palette

• To populate :

Populating scenery models

• Howto:Calculate elevations: Know the elevation of the ground at given coordinates (for placing an object).
• FlightGear Scenery Database: Overview of the FG Scenery database, statistiques and link to guidelines and online submission forms.
• Howto:Add shared models manually: Full process of adding existing shared model in scenery
• Howto:Convert objects from X-Plane: Convert X-Plane scenery objects and MS ® Flight Simulator scenery objects to FlightGear AC3D models format and STG models position files.
• Howto:Get a number of elevation offsets for a number of objects: Get (relative to ground) eleveation offset to reuse them when terrain change.
• OpenStreetMap_buildings: Building can be highly detailed in OSM, link to OSM buildings documentation and how-to (including existing tools) to convert them to flightgear scenery.

Howto:Place_3D_objects_with_the_UFO: Using the UFO flightgear airplane to interactivly place existing models in scenery (french full translation)

• Howto:Add details to your airport: Placing objects in airport (same than in other place), but with more airport specific signs placements (The goal was airport builiding, but there is lot of details about general object placement and can be used to understand how to place models elsewhere)).