Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Flight Simulator Scenery - Develop Your Own

By John Peters

The virtual world in which you fly is probably the most important part of your flight sim experience. After you have been flying for some time you will get to know your virtual world well. It may be that you are missing some favorite landmarks or just have the desire to add some special scenery to your surroundings. These days it is possible to design and build your own flight simulator scenery and at little or no cost. In fact the biggest investment you will need to make to design and build you own scenery is in the time to learn and become skilled in the software that you use.

Scenery design for flight simulators requires a CAD (computer aided design) program. Everything you can see in your virtual world such as buildings, trees, signs and roads has been modeled as a 3D object. The purpose of the CAD program is to allow you to design and build inside the program your own objects. There are a number of programs available that you could use, if you are interested in building your own scenery.

The first option which will appeal to many users just trying to understand what modeling is all about is free. It is a program called Gmax. Gmax was actually distributed together with Microsoft flight simulator from the 2002 version and continued until 2005 when it was discontinued. You will find that much of the scenery and aircraft that has been built for Microsoft flight simulator was built using this program. Although it has been discontinued and is no longer being updated, it is still a sensible choice if you are interested in learning what is required to be able to model 3D objects.

Another option is a low priced software application called Flight Simulator Design Studio. This program is very user friendly and is easy to use and get started with, even if you have no experience. It is still powerful though and comes with advanced features that mean you can make complex scenery like an oil rig or an aircraft carrier, or planes like the Catalina.

The final option is a program called 3DS Max. It is only really for professionals as it costs thousands of dollars. It is the most powerful program available for building scenery and modeling aircraft and contains numerous advanced features to produce extremely complex models.

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