FSX Ants Aussie Airports Vol. 1

Ants Aussie Airports Vol. 1: Snowy Mountains scenery, Australia. Contains scenery of a number of airports in and near the Snowy Mountains region of Australia. Most of the airfields contain photoreal backgrounds. Almost all airport objects are custom made. By Anthony Lynch.

This download contains scenery for FSX and includes a number of airports in and near the Snowy Mountains region of Australia. Most of the airfields contain photoreal backgrounds and these are designed to blend in with the payware FTX textures. It is therefore recommended that you have the FTX textures installed if you wish to see these airfields at their best.
I try to make these airfields as accurate possible. This means that almost all of the models are custom made with the use of library objects kept to the minimum.
Note: Many of these airports are available for FS9 as part of the VistaOZ freeware package.

REQUIREMENTS

- Microsoft's FSX is essential (this scenery is not compatible with FS9)
- ORBX's payware FTX textures are highly recommended.
- OZx freeware airports are recommended though not essential.

INSTALLATION

This scenery makes no changes to your default installation nor does it install things into default folders except for one effects file which has a unique name so it shouldn't overwrite anything else.

1. Unzip the download into a temporary folder.

2. Move the "Ants Aussie Airports" folder into the "Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Addon scenery" folder.

3. Move the "effects" folder into "Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X" folder.

4. Start FSX and select "SETTINGS".

5. In the "Other settings" section on the right of the screen select "Scenery Library".

6. Select "Add Area".

7. Navigate to the "Addon Scenery\Ants Aussie Airports" folder and select "OK".

8. Ensure the Scenery area "Ants Aussie Airports" is above the FTX entries and click "OK" (see below for a screenshot).

You are now ready to fly so select one of the airfields listed on the following pages.

AIRPORTS INCLUDED

Cooma-Snowy Mountains, Cooma NSW, YCOM
A minor regional airport about 100kms south of Canberra.

Polo Flat, Polo Flat NSW, YPFT

A small airfield with a flying school. The airfield is located on the eastern side of Cooma near the industrial estate. Note that it is preferred that landings are made on the grass beside the central sealed section. Note that this field does not have a photoreal background although I have added the racecourse to the north.

Tumut, Tumut NSW, YTMU

A small regional airfield north of Tumut. Home to the busy Tumut Aero Club who have flight training, avgas sales and an active group of aircraft constructors (VH-experimental and RA-Aus).

Khancoban, Khancoban NSW YKHA

An airfield set up to service the Snowy Mountains hydro electricity scheme.

Geehi, Geehi NSW, no ICAO

Not really an airport, more like a camping ground which is occasionally used as a landing ground so you won't find any hangars here but you will find a few campers. This is the only field without an AFCAD file so you will have to find it. If you fly heading 149º from Khancoban for 11NM you should find it sitting in a valley beside a river with a road running north south to the east of the strip.

Kennedy Airfield, Adaminaby NSW, YADY

A small grass field just east of Adaminaby which is rapidly expanding with many new hangars expected to be constructed in the future. Home of the Snowy River Aviators who mostly fly ultralights and light sports. You should also be able to spot the racecourse to the north of the field.

FAQ

Will this scenery work in FS9?

No. However, these airfields have been converted from FS9 airfields which are available as part of the vistaoz package.

The photoreal doesn't blend with the default textures.

It is highly recommended that you have the FTX textures installed. These not only provide better ground and tree textures for Australia but also provide better coastlines, landclass and roadways as well as improving a few of the major cities. Plus they also have plenty of free airports which you can download. I consider FTX an essential purchase for anyone flying in Australia so the airfields are designed to blend with these textures. Please do not ask me to modify this scenery to work with the default textures. It would just mean a lot of time and effort from me with no benefit to myself.

Why are the windsocks so ugly?

It is difficult to create windsock models that work well in FSX. The FSX SDK doesn't allow access to the necessary parameters so developers must use windsocks developed using the FS9 SDK. Unfortunately FS9 windsock models don't work all that well either and will more often than not display the incorrect weather conditions. This is not a fault of scenery developers but is a fault with MS FS9 and FSX. For FS9 I used to make windsock poles and added the FS9 default windsock to the top. It wasn't perfect but it looked better than the default and at least showed which way the wind was blowing. In FSX I can't do this as FSX (for some unknown reason) will move the windsock away from the pole. So, rather than use unreliable windsock models I decided to use the ugly default windsocks which at least show the correct wind conditions which is more important than looking pretty.

Will there be more Ants Aussie Airports?

Yes. The following is a list of the planned volumes (note that the order given here is not necessarily the order they will be released):

AAA VOL 2 : Southern NSW
Gundaroo, Wedderburn, Wilton (Sydney Skydiving) and Warnervale

AAA VOL 3 : Northern NSW
Evans Head, Casino, Swan Bay, Palmers Island, Sth Grafton

AAA VOL ? : Northern QLD
Longreach, Barcaldine, Hamilton Island, Rockhampton, Lindeman Island, Williamson (not to be confused with Williamstown)

AAA VOL ? : Southern QLD
Brisbane Intl (maybe), Lady Elliot Island, Bundaberg, Hervey Bay (maybe), Gympie

AAA VOL ? : Northern Territory
Darwin Intl, RAAF Tindal, Emkaytee, Batchelor, Delissaville, Dum in Mirrie, Albany Park, Dundee Beach, Robertson Barracks, Darwin Hospital

Why doesn't the airport data work well on some of the airfields?

The way most FSX airifelds are designed is with runways and taxiways defined in an airport file. The problem with these airfields is that the terrain must be absolutely dead flat beneath them for the runways and taxiways to appear (see Cooma, Tumut and Polo Flat for examples of these types of airfields). Not all airfields are completely flat with many having sloping or bumpy runways so, rather than flatten those fields I have included a simple airport file which only contains comms data and a few start locations. These fields cannot handle AI traffic nor will they appear on the ATC nearest airport screen. The airport file is there merely to allow easy selection of the airfield from the FSX menus.

Any other problems

Before emailing me asking for support consider the following. This scenery is designed to work with FSX SP2. Please also consider that this scenery works great on my system and that's all that really matters to me. If it doesn't work on your system then I may be able to give a few tips and pointers but please don't expect me to spend too much of my valuable time trying to solve problems as my advice would probably be to read the section below.

UNINSTALLING

Start FSX and remove "Ants Aussie Airports" from the "Scenery Library"
Delete "Ants Aussie Airports" from the "Addon Scenery" folder
Delete "AntsAussieAirports_ChimneySmoke.fx" from the "Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Effects" folder

PARTIAL UNINSTALL

You may wish to remove some airports but not all. Each airport will have a number of files associated with it so to uninstall a particular airport you will need to remove each of these files. For example: To remove Tumut airport you will need to remove the following files:

aaa1_TumutPhoto.bgl (The photoreal background)
aaa1_TumutScenery.bgl (Placement of the 3D models)
aaa1_TumutWindsock.bgl (Windsock model, unfortunately uses the default windsock)
AFX_aaa1_YTMU Tumut.bgl (runways, taxiways and aprons as well as excludes)
CVX_aaa1_Tumut.bgl (SBuilderX vector data ie flattens, roads etc)

It is not recommended that you remove aaa1_TumutModelLib.bgl as this contains the 3D model library which may include models used at other airfields.
Note that the AFX file includes excludes. If you edit this file with an airport editor that is not AFX then this data may be stripped from the file.

This scenery is freeware.

Thank you for taking the time to read this manual and I hope you enjoy the scenery.

Anthony Lynch

⇲ Download Now 33.19 MB

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