FSX Gold Coast Airport Scenery

Gold Coast Airport (YBCG), Australia. The Gold Coast Airport is a busy international airport located some 100 km south of Brisbane and 850 km north of Sydney. This scenery contains an accurate depiction of the terminal, control tower, hangars and the very distinctive lighthouse at Coolangatta (with beacon) plus night lighting of the apron. In addition many buildings have been added to Coolangatta and Surfers some of which are original but many are stock buildings. The scenery has been reduced in complexity to attempt to be reasonably frame rate friendly. All models are Gmax or FSDS3.0. Extensive coastline changes has added beaches as far south as Byron Bay and the canal network behind Surfers Paradise, Bond Uni, Currumbin and Coolangatta. Recent upgrades of the airport to a 2500 meter runway have been reflected as well as a widened apron. Therefore it may look a little different from the current Google Earth image but it is accurate. By John Ross.

INSTALLATION

1. Unzip the package and copy the folder Gold Coast (YBCG) to your ADDON SCENERY folder (default location is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Addon Scenery).

2. Open FSX and from the home screen select scenery library. Add the area Gold Coast (YBCG) and click OK.

3. The airport should now be installed and selectable from the free flight menu.

4. For more traffic instal the file traffic.bgl in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Scenery\World\Scenery.

SETTING

I run the sim at a medium high level with water effects 2.0 and 50% autogen giving a frame rate of 15.00 fps and a pretty steady landing. The mesh size should be kept at 38m or larger to stop some strange valleys appearing around the airport. I normally use 80-100% traffic setting and medium high for boats and other animation objects.

If you have not already done so I would recommend obtaining the Cloud9 Xclass textures replacements. This will stop the Gold Coast looking like an arid land in the Summer. If not stick to the Winter for a more accurate view.

If the beaches do not appear as Coral White obtain the modified terrain.cfg put out by Richard Ludowise, Luis Féliz-Tirado (see AVSIM hot files for the year). This corrects a microsoft error on the way some of the landclass files are represented.

FUTURE VERSIONS

This is a starter version and if I find other people find the frame rates acceptable I will add to Surfers Paradise and before the date of the forthcoming sim show at the Casino I should add the casino building!!!

Other FSX scenery includes Coffs Harbour which has been released and Port Macquarie which should be out very shortly. After that Lismore, Ballina and possibly Grafton will get an upgrade to FSX.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

KML_fsx has been used in conjunction withe Google Earth to change the coastline, roads and rivers. Thanks for the author of this software which is really indispensable.

FXPlanner has been used to change the airport layout and this is another highly recommended piece of software.

Thanks to the staff at the GCAL who allowed air side photographs of the buildings to enable accuracy. These photographs do date back a few years so other than the airport upgrade the terminal is as it was in 2004. For example the car park has been expanded considerably and the Qantas terminal has changed but basically what you see is a reasonable representation of the airport.

The airport lighting uses a modified library model of Bill Learning orginally released for Runway12. For visibility reasons the lights are made deliberately a little thicker than in real life although the height is correct.

LEGAL

This product is freeware and must not be used in whole or in part for commercial gain whatsoever. You may upload it to any website as long as the website in question is Microsoft Flight Simulator related and that there is no profit involved or charges being made.

If anyone wants to use any of the textures or models (contained in the library files) in their own creations please feel free but do let me know in what way they are being used.

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