FS2002 & FS2000 Cleveland Scenery Version 3
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Thumbnail picture - The majestic ruins of Guisborough Priory, Guisborough, England.
Overview
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The aim of this scenery model is to create a flight simulator 2000/2002 representation of the area of the Cleveland area of North-East England. This area includes the large industrial centre of Teesside, and also several smaller towns such as Yarm, Guisborough, and Victorian seaside resort of Saltburn.
The following settlements are represented in this scenery :-
Stockton-on-Tees
Middlesbrough
Teesside Park Retail And Leisure Park
Billingham
Thornaby
Hartlepool
Yarm
Guisborough
Saltburn
Redcar
For anybody who is interested in seeing what Cleveland really looks like from the air, several real life photographic tour's of Cleveland can be viewed at the following web site :-
www.DaveRob.org.uk
WhatÂ’s New?
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The following technical improvements have been be made in version 3 :-
A alterative Low-resolution texture set is supplied for users with older computers, and virtual airline users.
Downsized certain Textures to reduce texture memory usage
Add Mip-Maps to .BMP texture files to reduce texture memory usage
Placed several textures in one file to reduce texture memory usage
Changed graphics backgrounds from white to grey to reduce flickering graphics.
Fixed problems With East Cleveland buildings not being Visible using flatten commands.
The number of BGL files used has been reduced, by placing multiple closely grouped buildings into a single BGL file.
The following additions have been made in version 3 :-
Teessides famous 1911 vintage Transporter Bridge, to many people the symbol of Teesside has been added
Yarm has been more densely populated with buildings
Guisborough has been more densely populated with buildings
Teesside park Retail and Leisure Complex's has been added
Saltburn Pier has been added
Hartlepool Works has been added
Cooling Towers at ICI Billingham and ICI Wilton have been added
+ lots of smaller things
Suggestions for Running This Scenery
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This scenery is compatible with both FS2000 and FS2002. it will run much more smoothly under FS2002, than under FS2000. The placing of scenery objects is also carried out in FS2002, so you may notice some objects which look slightly out of position in FS2000. Specifically any objects which are supposed to be on the coast.
If you are suffering from slow frame rates, try limiting Visibility to 10-20 nautical miles in the weather options.
The instructions below assume that you have installed FS2002 to the default directory, setup during the installation process. If you have not then you will have to modify the path names accordingly. I refer to FS2002 in the instructions below. The installation procedure is basically the same for FS2000, just substitute FS2000 for FS2002 in the path names below.
Step 1.
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Uninstall any previous versions of this scenery. You must do this, for this version of the scenery to work properly. I have renamed several of the files, since the last version. if you do not uninstall the previous version from your hard disk, you will see duplicate buildings, and the scenery will run more slowly.
Step 3 - Installing Optional Low-Resolution Version Of The Textures
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I have supplied two versions of the textures used by draw the details of the buidlings. A high resolution set (same as in previous versions), and a lower resolution set. If you are running Flight Simulator on a computer which contains a graphics card with 16 Megabytes or less of memory, then I would recomend using the low resolution texture set, for increased performance. I would also recomend using the low-resolution texture set if you are using the scenery primarily for flying proper approaches to Teesside airport (such as for a Virtual Airline), since you will not get close enough to any of the buildings to appreciate the high resolution textures, and again performance will be improved.
If however you are like me, and like skimming the rooftops in a Cessna, and you also have a computer with a graphics card with 32MB or more of memory, then I would recomend using the high resolution textures, for extra visual clarity.
Flight Simulator will use whatever textures are held in the Cleveland2001\Texture directory to draw the buildings. By default this will be the high-resolution textures. In order to use the low-resolution textures you must copy them to this directory.
The low-resolution textures are held in the Cleveland2001\LowResTexture directory. If you wish to use them, all you need to do is to replace the files in the Texture directory with the corresponding ones in the LowResTexture Directory.
Just in case anybody is interested in the technical details.The low resolution textures are 5.64 Megabytes in size, wheras the high resolution ones are 13.1Megabytes. The difference is that I have downsized most of the very detailed 512x512 images to 256x256, which causes them to use only 1/4 of the memory.
Step 4
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Open up the file C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\FS2002\Scenery.cfg
add the following lines at the bottom of the file :-
replace the numbers xxx with the next number in the sequence, look at existing entries to see how.
Step 5
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Start up the simulator, go to Teesside Airport, and you should be ready to go.
How to Fly To This Scenery
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The fastest way to fly to this scenery is to start at Teesside International Airport, runway 05 and takeoff, heading east. The scenery should be visible when you are sat on the runway. The best way to appreciate this scenery is to fly low and slow, something like a Cessna 172 should do the job nicely.
Other Freeware Sceneries Covering The North East Of England
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Anybody interested in flying in the North East of England using Flight Simulator 2000/2002 should download Don Alexander's excellent freeware versions of Newcastle and Teesside airports. These are extremely well modelled and add a lot to the experience. If you are running FS2002, then be sure to download the updates for these sceneries to make them work properly.
Future Plans
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In 2002 I will continue to develop Cleveland 2001, several important features are still missing, including :-
Hartlepool - Cleveland's 3rd town
Middlesbrough Football Club (MFC) - Riverside Football Stadium
The Captain Cook Museum, Stuarts Park, Middlesbrough
The Newport Bridge
The Tees Barrage
The Future Tees Wind Farm
Ships waiting To Come Into Teesport
Dockside cranes at Teesport
In 2002, I also plan to develop two more scenery models, again both in the North-East of England, these will be :-
Durham 2002 - The towns of County Durham - Durham, Darlington, Croft etc.
Tyneside 2002 - Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth, Whitley Bay, Jarrow etc.
One or two other bits and pieces.....
Copyright and Distribution
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This scenery is released as Freeware. Copyright (C) Stephen Gordon. As freeware you are permitted to distribute this archive subject to the following conditions, The archive must be distributed without modification to the contents of the archive. Redistributing this archive with any files added, removed or modified is prohibited. The inclusion of any individual file from this archive in another archive without the prior permission of the author is prohibited.
No charge may be made for this archive other than that to cover the cost of its distribution. If a fee is charged it must be made clear to the purchaser that the archive is freeware and that the fee is to cover the distributor's costs of providing the archive. The authors' rights and wishes concerning this archive must be respected.
Credits
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This scenery was created using Flight Simulator Design Studio (FSDS)
A 30cm (12 inch) ruler, a calculator, OS Explorer Map 306 'Middlesbrough & Hartlepool', and a digital camera also played an important role in the creation of this scenery.
Thanks To Don Alexander for advice on scenery design. It was Don's Teesside Airport scenery which inspired me to give scenery design a try in the first place.
Walter Monk for taking me up in a Cessna from Teesside Airport for a recon flight around Teesside
Dave Robinson for his excellent aerial photographs of Cleveland, which can be viewed at www.DaveRob.org.uk
Rory Solley for helpful suggestions and help with test flying the scenery
Colin Begg for help with testing
The following web site was used to transform Ordnance Survey grid references to Longitude/Latitude. http://www.obliquity.com/astro/osgb.html
The Informatin Pack - 'The History Of The River Tees In Maps'
By D.W Paddenden, published by Cleveland and Teesside Local History Society
ISBN 0 9507199 6 X was very useful, especially as a source of information on the
appearance of the Tees Bridges
www.ctlhs.org.uk
Have fun flying through the skies of virtual Cleveland, and if anyone has any ideas for improvements, then please don't hesitate to e-mail me.
