As a new developer to scenery I’m very curious if my process matches the more seasoned developers. Right now when I pick an airport I look through Google Earth and Maps, Little Navmaps, and Navigraph for accuracy. I haven’t gotten into model designing yet but I’m realizing that’s where the unique factor comes into play.
Once I start the project I use the polygon tool to exclude any buildings or vegetation that I don’t think belong. I then attempt to find a generic hangar model that fits to give the place some 3D space. I then remove the aprons, taxiways, runways, signs. Then I rebuild those elements. Finally I pepper in some third party models from flight.to, but I’m realizing I need to make my own.
I asked chatGPT for a list of things to consider. How closely does this jive with your workflow? Is anyone really using GIS software or DEM data?
Creating realistic scenery for Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) involves several detailed steps to ensure high quality and immersion. Here’s a structured approach you can follow:
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Research and Planning:
- Choose a Location: Identify the location you want to recreate. Ensure there’s enough reference material available.
- Gather Reference Material: Collect maps, photos, videos, satellite images, and any other relevant information about the location.
- Understand the Environment: Study the natural and man-made features of the area, including buildings, vegetation, terrain, and landmarks.
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Tools and Software:
- MSFS SDK: Familiarize yourself with the Microsoft Flight Simulator Software Development Kit (SDK).
- 3D Modeling Software: Use tools like Blender, 3ds Max, or SketchUp for creating custom 3D models.
- GIS Software: Utilize Geographic Information System (GIS) tools for accurate terrain and elevation data (e.g., QGIS).
- Image Editing Software: Photoshop or GIMP for texture creation and editing.
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Terrain and Elevation:
- DEM Data: Download and import Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data to get accurate terrain elevation.
- Terrain Shaping: Adjust terrain to match the real-world contours, ensuring it integrates smoothly with the surrounding areas.
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Aerial Imagery:
- Satellite Images: Use high-resolution satellite images as a base layer.
- Image Processing: Enhance and adjust colors and details to match the real environment.
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3D Modeling:
- Create Custom Models: Design and model key buildings, landmarks, and structures using your 3D modeling software.
- Texturing: Apply realistic textures to your models, ensuring they match the real-world appearance.
- Level of Detail (LOD): Create multiple LODs for each model to optimize performance without sacrificing detail.
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Vegetation and Natural Features:
- Vegetation Placement: Use tools to place trees, bushes, and other vegetation accurately.
- Water Bodies: Accurately model rivers, lakes, and coastlines.
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Runways and Taxiways:
- Accurate Layouts: Ensure runways and taxiways are placed accurately with correct markings and lighting.
- Surface Textures: Apply realistic surface textures to runways, taxiways, and aprons.
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Lighting:
- Night Lighting: Add realistic night lighting for buildings, streets, and airport areas.
- Dynamic Lighting: Ensure dynamic lighting elements, like runway lights and streetlights, are functional.
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Sound and Ambient Effects:
- Ambient Sounds: Incorporate ambient sounds like traffic, birds, and city noise to enhance realism.
- Environmental Effects: Add effects like fog, rain, and snow to match the local climate.
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Testing and Optimization:
- In-Sim Testing: Regularly test your scenery in MSFS to ensure it looks and performs as expected.
- Optimization: Optimize models and textures to balance visual quality and performance.
- Feedback and Iteration: Collect feedback from users and make necessary adjustments.
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Documentation and Packaging:
- Documentation: Create thorough documentation for your scenery, including installation instructions and features list.
- Packaging: Package your scenery according to MSFS guidelines for easy installation and distribution.
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Distribution and Updates:
- Release: Distribute your scenery through platforms like the MSFS Marketplace, FlightSim.to, or your own website.
- Support and Updates: Provide ongoing support and updates to fix issues and enhance your scenery based on user feedback.
Following this comprehensive approach will help you create highly realistic and immersive scenery for MSFS, enhancing the overall experience for virtual pilots.
The biggest things that stand out to me in airport scenery are runway lighting, markings, slope, and obstacles in the OFZ or clearance plane. It doesn’t help that Asobo hamstrings US airports with incorrect markings. All the other stuff is eye candy.
Lighting is perhaps the quickest, easiest external QC check.
The hard part with standardization is matching expectations with scope. Freeware third party scenery has one set of expectations, payware another, and world hub yet another. A dev can choose to enhance some or all parts of an airport, from corrections to simple enhancements to full-on 3D modeling in blender. Payware kind of polices itself in terms of what the market will bear, reviews, etc. Freeware can be real hit or miss - I’ve seen some airports riddled with errors get great reviews and some free ones that I’d have paid $50 for.
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I’m a non-pro who mostly works on the World Hub, though I have a fantasy of doing this professionally, if I could ever get good at creating PBR textures. Though I have some thoughts on best practices:
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As far as charts go, I always go to the official source if I can. Most countries have something called an AIP, or Aeronautical Information Portal. Embry-Riddle has a list of AIPs by country. I have no idea how comprehensive it is, but if you can’t find your country in that list, you can search for “<insert country here> AIP” and you’ll usually find it in one of the first hits. The reason for using AIPs is that when you go through pilot training, you’ll fail your checkride if you bring out-of-date charts, and you’re taught to use official products. Third-party sites may keep up to date, or they may not. Unfortunately, sometimes even the official charts are not perfect, either. But they’re probably your best chance to find current information. Unfortunately, a lot of charts are behind a paywall or login. The US is not. Aerodrome charts: https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/diagrams/ . Chart supplements: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/digital_products/dafd/search/ .
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Some airport designers do terraforming under the airports simply so world updates don’t affect them. I don’t endorse this idea, but I can understand why they do it.
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Work with aprons and runways first. Get your Christmas tree foundation good before you start hanging ornaments on it. If you try to get PAPI lights aligned on a runway before you get your runway straightened out, the PAPI lights are going to move. If you do your taxiways first, then you can validate your taxiway sign placement later after the aprons are down.
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Search sites like YouTube and social media for taxiway signs and other nuances you wouldn’t find just by looking at an aerial. I usually start with YouTube because people love to either film out the window as passengers or out the front as pilots. I usually start by filtering my YouTube search for the past year and when I exhaust everything, I then remove the filter and look at other videos. I try not to go beyond 5 years ago except when I can’t find anything else. I actually add the taxiway signs as I go and I have a color coding system of PaintedLines that I use for the taxiway signs I haven’t yet verified. After that, I scour photos. I did Ushuaia, Argentina in the World Hub, and I stumbled upon a Facebook page from the air traffic controllers at the airport. They had a photo that included a taxiway sign I hadn’t seen anywhere else. Finding signs like noise abatement signs or runway length signs or signs that point to the apron really add a nice touch. People who know the airport would surely get a kick out of seeing signs beyond the generic “taxiway A” signs.
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I use blender. I’d love to learn 3ds Max, but I don’t have 
to throw in the fireplace. Unfortunately, I suck at this step, and at some point when I have time, I’m going to post in this subcategory and plead for help.
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Consider that FPS may be more important to some people than reslism. There is an airport developer that I really admire. They released an airport that was absolutely amazing, and they got pounded in the reviews for performance. Imagine an airport from a top-tier developer that takes six months to release a product getting 1-star reviews. So, performance always has to be in the back of your mind.
Anyway, this is what I’ve got so far.
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This is good advice. I tend to follow the same process for finding data, working on US airports entirely in the World Hub. Chart supplements (formerly known as the A/FD), airport diagrams, Jepp charts, Google Earth, Google Maps, Street View, municipal or airport sites with airport layout plans (ALP) or master plans, random websites with random pics, and YouTube are my go-to resources.
That said, most of the airports I work with are very small and what I’d consider “dirty” in that they don’t conform to large-airport standards. You see a lot of ambiguous, amorphously bordered gravel and dirt runways and aprons, spalled and cracked concrete, overhanging trees, dilapidated hangars, adjoining lots, and junk everywhere. And the in-sim aerials are often washed out and worthless (grey concrete does not contrast well against light brown dirt or grasses at these resolutions). So there’s often a bit of both artistic license and educated guesswork involved in making design choices.
Then you have outdated pics with airports in states of constant change, so that little grass apron you had to plop down to cover the bonanza that happened to park there the day the aerial was taken may change the next time the aerial is updated. Or maybe it was taken during a temporary runway closure. Lots of little frustrations like that.
Knowing how airports actually work and finding up to date (especially official) resources helps keep the guesswork at bay.
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This is AWESOME! Thanks for responding. It looks like I’m on the right path with what you all are doing. Lots of extra stuff consider. I’m trying to use as many generic assets as I can from fs-base and asobo-modellib-generic* packages. I submitted an application for access to World Hub. Hopefully it’ll get approved.
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As someone pointed out above, the quality level for both freeware and payware has a huge range. There are some scenery projects that took someone a few hours to do, and some that took years. If you don’t know Blender yet I suggest you start on something small, and maybe not necessarily an airport right away.
Here’s my suggestion: choose some kind of landmark, like a building or group of buildings, perhaps near where you live so that you have some connection to it and maybe even see it in real life. Maybe there’s a tall building near you that isn’t shown properly in MSFS 2020? Maybe your own house? Choose something that has only square edges or mostly square edges for now.
Open Blender and watch one of those “learn Blender in 20 min” tutorials. Start with a box and learn all the basic tools like extrude, inset, subdivide etc. Figure out how to scale it. Setup the MSFS exporter. Try to get your object into the sim. Then play with PBR materials, learn how to get materials, modify them and make your own, how to export them properly, how to achieve the look you want. Then try more complex shapes.
If you start with an airport it’s all that plus the airport stuff, aprons, polygons, vegetation etc. Pick a small airport with a couple of hangars, or one tower and one terminal. Remember that you can download pre-made 3D objects from various sites, and you’re allowed to use many of them for free. Learn how to import these objects.
Start with a small project where you can achieve your goal within a few days and see some progress.
When I start an airport, I start with the runway first; then the taxiways leading to and from the runway.
A good understanding of how airports are constructed is a must! Let me give you an example: runway lights are all 60m apart, taxiway lights and runway approach lights are 30m apart. TDZ lights are 30m apart. The MSFS editor defaults to 60m for taxiway lights, but this is incorrect; it should be 30m.
Place the ILS transmitters where they are in real life and then make sure that your ILS glideslope and PAPI/VASI lights matchup. It is really irritating to land your aircraft and then see that the lights show something completely different to what is shown on the ILS.
Know your conversions! MSFS works in meters, not feet! All airport maps are in feet; except for Russia and China. They use meters. To convert from feet to meters requires that you divide the feet value with 3.281. Remember this figure as if your life depends on it!
You are not at modeling yet, but here is a tip for you. It is not the size of the texture that matters, but the detail. You can have 4K textures with terrible detail or a 2K texture jampacked with detail, such as rust, cracks, mold etc. The key is in the detail.
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