Aerofly Scenery Design


by SeanG

I said there would be more Aerofly screenshots…. Well, here we go 🙂
Over the weekend I did some further experiments with some of the development tools for Aerofly. I have not yet gone so far as to look at the 3DStudio part of the SDK, I’m sticking to established end-user tools for now.

  • Queenstown Photoreal
  • Night lighting experiment at Christchurch
  • 737-500 with the Port Hills and GIS derived ‘Cultivation’ scenery
  • Airport Night Lighting using ‘AFS2 – Scenery Editor – A web based tool
  • The city lights are unlike anything I’ve seen in a PC based sim before
  • Ahh the glow
  • LINZ Photo turned into scenery at Christchurch, with more GIS ‘Cultivation’
  • And the cockpit view isn’t so bad either

Once I get a little more familiar with the tools, and get consistent results I will publish a list of tools, tutorials and links for those of you playing along at home 😉

ManCave re-shuffle Part 1


by SeanG

This weekend I spent a bit of time tidying (read: chucking out) in the ManCave in preparation for shifting things around. After a bit of organizing, sorting, moving, stacking and generally making a huge mess, I was able to turn the Skyhawk sim around 90º and into it’s new location. Then, after much cable tidying (read: chucking out) I moved my 2 primary PC’s into their temporary home next to the desk, and re-cabled everything again.
I am **really** thrilled with how it has worked out so far, in fact there is a lot more space than I was anticipating. from my CAD modelling I expected it to be much tighter than it actually is…

Susan doesn’t look too happy… still, I’m sure she’ll get used to it.
The new view from the door… I like being able to see the sim, rather than it being stuck down the end of the room with it’s back to you.

Next step is to get rid of the un-used PC’s on the right, find a home for the printer so I can get rid of the cabinet it’s sitting on, sort out the cabling **properly** and find another piece of carpet to fill in the gap.
I have/had plans for lifting the sim up maybe 300-400mm to allow for storage (and PC’s below the floor, but with more space than I thought in the room, I may not need to go down that track.

Aerofly FS2


by SeanG

I have experienced Aerofly FS2 before and was impressed especially as a VR experience, what I wasn’t prepared for was the open architecture and the ease of adding scenery. The tools available for AFS2 are outstanding, allowing for easy development of vast, detailed photo sceneries and even airport design from your web browser. AFS2 is pretty exciting, and has really re-ignited my passion for GA flying….

Expect many *many* more posts on AFS2…. In the meantime, enjoy a screenshot from a flight over Banks Peninsular.

It wasn’t to be


by SeanG

Tonight was going to be my ‘Back in the Saddle’ flight in DCS:World, after a lengthy absence.
The launch, in a Harrier went well, dropping 2 Mk82 low-drag bombs accurately onto an enemy frigate, delivering the coup de grâce after my fellow aviators had damaged it earlier in the day.
And that is where it all turned to rubbish….

The gimbal on my Thrustmaster Cougar has given up, and after some research it appears to be a not ‘uncommon’ problem. I’ve looked into options to repair or replace the broken part, and will probably end up machining a new part. A lot will depend on what I end up doing with my plans for the Skyhawk sim. One of the options I am thinking about is retro-fitting the Cougar to the Skyhawk, with a modified gimbal mechanism. The sim is potentially going to have a multi-purpose VR makeover….

Sim Tech Support


by SeanG

Tonight I got all of Nikolai’s sim parts together for a final run-through to make sure everything was running properly before he takes it all home…

  • Captain Nathan at the controls
  • Pedestal all fired up

After getting everything setup again, and a couple of test flights by my trusted co-pilot it was all ready to ship off, with Nick’s F/A-18 cockpit, to it’s new home!

More Linings and BIG ManCave Plans!


by SeanG

Another evening of ‘doing stuff in the garage’ tonight meant some more work on the 737 Linings.

Even has SouthWest branded tissues in the pockets 🙂

I’ve put enough fasteners in to hold it all in place so that I can plan the structure to hold it up. As I’ve said before; I want the sim to be fairly modular, so that I *could* move it in pieces, but mostly so that I can remove parts of the sim to work on outside of the confines of the enclosure it will be built into.

As part of the development of the 737, there will be a big renovation of the ManCave. For a start the 737 sim will be coming downstairs from the loft. The main reasons are access and temperature; not only is it hard work getting to the sim, it’s also too cold in winter, and way too hot in summer. The 737 will be just outside the current ManCave door, and mounted on casters so that it can be moved around to be worked on. The rest of the ManCave will have a shuffle with the TA-4 being turned 90 degrees, and going purely VR, while the ‘Instructor Desk’ will become more of a general purpose desk and be moved against the wall.

A virtual top down view of the planned layout, TA-4 on the left, Arrow on the right, and the 737 at the top, just outside the door

You can see in the render that it is a very cozy space, but with some careful and creative design I think I can make it all work and make far better use of the space than I do currently.

The 737’s new enclosure, just outside the ManCave door.

With the move downstairs of the 737 sim, I hope to turn the loft back into a useful storage space again, and recoup more space in the garage than the 737 sim will take up.

737 Wall Lining


by SeanG

Tonight I had a wee play around with my 737 side wall and linings to try and figure out whether the ‘side wall cut’ was above or below the bottom of the interior linings. Finding this out is important so that I can figure out how I will eventually mount the side wall structure to the floor.

After a small experiment it appears that the cut line is almost *exactly* at the bottom of the liners, and importantly, is level. This makes my life much easier when I come to designing the mountings as I have a nice flat base to start from.

It’s an addiction!


by SeanG

Since getting interested in Bridge Command, I have started messing with it…. it ships with a basic scenery of Santa Catalina Island, which looks ok, but really needed some textures to make it look better… a quick edit with some photo imagery, and it looks lots better.

Here we are steaming along the Northern side of San Clemente Island (which is just South of Santa Catalina). My textures don’t quite fit, so need a little more fettling to make the shoreline perfect. For a quick edit it looks quite good, and adds to the immersion nicely. Next, I’d like to try building a scenery from scratch, maybe Lyttelton Harbour, or Maybe Auckland?

Great Ship Simulator


by SeanG

During some googling around looking for some radar display images I stumbled on to the “Bridge Command” website, and found a neat ship sim. The biggest surprise was that this sim has an external Radar display, Multiple-PC display, and the ability to talk to a Chart plotter via NMEA data. And whats more; it’s free, open source!

Small test setup, with the main program running on my laptop, a second view running fullscreen radar on a second laptop, and finally the “Instructor Map” running on a small windows tablet.