Gmax NZAA

[Kelburn]

I decided about 3min before writing this post that I am a bit fed up with AFCAD! It's perfectly fine for most airports but with NZ airports, I want to ground layouts to be as realistic as possible.
So how should I go about designing a scenery .bgl that is a sort of ground cover which uses satellite imagery as its texture. i.e., I want to create a scenery file that when put over NZAA, you'll have an ultra realistic markings (as they are from aerial photos).
I think Robin once mentioned to me that with gmax you can create the file and put the textures etc. like what happens in payware scenery for the taxiway and runway markings (I think this was also done on the realNZ airports...)
Any ideas on how to get started (I also want it to be above the afcad though so you see the ground markings).

Just ask for clarification if you have no idea what I mean (I realise I've not explained it well...)
Thanks,
Kelburn

[toprob]

If you want your custom markings to sit on top of the default facilities, then you really want to use the 'FS2002 Gamepack' method... FS2002-style scenery allows you to tweak the code so that the ground polys are effectively 'glued' to the ground, without flickering etc.

To do this, you either need the FS2002 Gamepack (available only with the Pro version of FS2002) or use the method here.

There is a very good tutorial on creating the ground polys here.

Both these links are the FSDevelopersite, which has a huge amount of info on this subject.

Christian Stock has also written a great tutorial here.

This is not an easy process. There are a number of fiddly little steps, which can trip you up if you miss something. I suggest starting small, with one simple textured ground poly. The problem is that none of the tools used are actually designed for this type of thing -- for instance, there is no easy way to get your polys the correct size and placement. Arno from FSDeveloper is working on a tool to make the process a lot simpler.

[Kelburn]

Right. Thanks for that! Great to see you understood what I meant (I'm not entirely sure even I did). I think I'll make it my holiday project!

[NZ255]

Just to clear it up the 'Christian Stock' tutorial actually written by Bill Womack, is more for FSX is regards with the 100m segments. So you can ignore the 100m segments if it's for FS9.