Fill 'er up!

[toprob]

Where are we again?

[Splitpin]

Could that be the tower at chc behind you ? ..... what are you up to Robbo ?

[toprob]

This is for Ian, I think he'd be pleased.

[Charl]

Here?
...and yes.

[toprob]

The business-end of the airport still looks like a bomb site, but the aero club side is starting to look tidy...
(The FTX NZ AI certainly add to the ambience.)

[toprob]

...and I did promise someone a close-up of the (unfinished) tower:

[Splitpin]

Amazing ....

[emfrat]

Will there be a Big Blue Shed? and an Antarctic Centre?
MikeW

[AhunterG]

Looking great Rob, really nice to see the progress! I am sure your facebook followers would love and appreciate a little WIP screenshot or two!

[toprob]

Will there be a Big Blue Shed? and an Antarctic Centre?
MikeW

It'll be a good representation of the airport. And the city. And a large chunk of Canterbury.

Here's some very early, random shots:

The Antarctic Centre is not yet finished, and I have yet to decide if it'll have a working haglund:)


My old hang-out:


Sure, the beach here is windy as hell, but I was raised in New Brighton, so for me it is just another day...


Hagley Park, lots of work to do around the city.


There will be a 5 metre mesh, which adds some cool bumps:


...and just to show that I am working on the main airport area, here's the far end bit:


It'll include West Melton and Rangiora airfields:

[NZ255]

Looking really great Rob!

Off topic: does anyone using the site on mobile have the issue where the pictures are cut off (only shows the left of the image) and you cant scroll over or click it to see the whole thing.

[emfrat]

Excellent work, Rob. Put me down for one when it's ready

[Splitpin]

Just gets better

[deeknow]

hate to just repeat everyone else's approval posts but hell this is looking great, can't wait.

[toprob]

A couple of shots very similar to what I've already shown, but a wee bit down the track... some changes to the way I make the ground textures, mainly. The main terminal is still not finished, so don't look too close, but it is starting to look like the Christchurch I know.

[Charl]

Could live with ground textures like that... how does that translate to AFS2?

[toprob]

Well, some work to do there, the 'look' of these Prepar3d ground textures is really based on a combination of FSW and X-plane's features. At the moment I'm aiming to hold off any other sim screenshots until it all comes together. As I mentioned, I'm working an a concurrent X-plane version on the side, leaving Aerofly until I've finished these two. This is just that I'm confident that Aerofly can deliver the result I want, I'm just a bit nervous about X-plane, so I need to 'live' with it for a lot longer. X-plane's development tools seem to hate me...

[cowpatz]

Love those textures. Looking very good.

[toprob]

My timetable originally included finishing the main ZCH terminal last month, and the bulk of the ground textures this month. However at the beginning of this month I was only half way through the terminal, so I'm officially behind schedule... hey, what's new.

However I have been pottering away on both the terminal and the ground textures, so it might not be as bad as I think. I have been experimenting with a different way of making the ground textures, to overcome the sharp edges using detail overlays. Now the detail texture is added directly to the ground polys, so it controlled by the alpha mask at the edges of tarmacs, taxiways etc. There are some 'features' of this technique which I'm not yet 100% sure about, as it does dirty up the look a lot -- personally I like that compared to too-tidy airports, but I need to figure out a way to tone it down!

Two major issues this month, which were annoying me. First, the colour temp of the NZCH tarmac was off, and I couldn't figure out what the problem was. Secondly, I couldn't dig a hole for the aero club bunker, I just couldn't unflatten the area. This week I was determined to figure out both of these issues, and finally manage it Friday evening... The problem turned out to be the fact that I'm getting too old for this.

Here's the bunker, finally in a hole where it belongs. Still some work to do on the actual model, but since I don't have any photos, it will be always be fairly rough.



Yet another work-in-progress ground texture shot at the aero club.

[Charl]

Great hole, great manhole (Personhole??) cover