NEW YORK LA GUARDIA AIRPORT
New York, USA
ICAO idenitfier: KLGA
version 3.0 for fs2002 only.
TURN ON WORD WRAP
This is a significant remake of my original La Guardia airport scenery to upgrade it for FS2002.
La Guardia Airport is the smaller of the three main airports of the New York area and handles marginally less traffic than the other two (JFK and EWR). It also sits in one of the busiest Air Traffic Terminal Areas in the world which handles traffic out of five busy airports in close proximity to each other (JFK, EWR, TEB, HPN). As a consequence, it would not be out of place to call this airport congested to the limit. A common site is to see planes parked around in the penalty box due to nonavailability of slots or parking spaces!
I have visited this airport twice and was amazed at the tiny size (considering it's importance to the NY area) of this airport. And like Washington National, the approaches and takeoffs are full of sharp turns and bends due to the close proximity of the airport to the city. This ofcourse adds to the complexity (and fun!) of flying in and out of this airport (try the Expressway Visual approach to Runway 31). The other issue with this airport continues to be the short runways which require deft piloting skills especially considering that widebodies fly in to LGA quite regularly.
THE SCENERY
This scenery design encompasses all the features of the airport starting with the wonderful old Central Terminal Building and continuing to the East with the USAir and Delta terminals, and to the West with the Marine air/Delta Shuttle terminals. I have also included many of the traditional landmarks of LGA including the famous "Welcome to New York" sign (pardon the colour), the distinctive tower and for those of you who yearn to be the daredevil pilot, I have included the Long Island Expressway and the Maspeth Tanks for you to roar down the Expressway Visual to Rwy 31 (I know the purist New Yorkers will say that the tanks have gone now but nostalgia pervails...)..
I have included most of the gates with individual airline logos on the gates to facilitate easier parking identification. You can go to the LGA site on the Web to get full info on parking bays of the airlines.
Static aircraft are included in a separate download. These reflect the kind of traffic which you will encounter at La Guardia. These have also been placed to take into account the gates the AI aircraft use. The statics need to be installed separately in a new scenery folder and added in via the scenery library. Just watch out for the frame rates with the static aircraft...!
Nightlighting is there in force.
I hope you like the scenery!
INSTALLATION:
As normal, unzip the file LGA2002.zip. The unzipped file should create the following directory,
LGA2002 ( with two subdirectories \scenery and \texture )
Just move the LGA2002 folder intact to the FS2002\scenedb\ directory. Start FS2002 and thru the scenery library add the above scenery folder as LGA2002. Make sure that the LGA2002 folder is on a scenery level higher (i.e. lower scenery layer number) than the default US Northeast and any terrain mesh add-on scenery folders. Remember that this LGA scenery and the default US Northeast default sceneries have to be active at the same time to use this scenery. You will also need to activate the New York city from the scenery library.
Although I have included all required textures, just to be careful you may want to download the Airport 2.02, VOD 2.7 and VOD 3.0 textures in the FS2002\texture directory.
IMPORTANT:
You also need to make the following change to the scenery.cfg file in the FS2002 root directory AFTER YOU HAVE ADDED THE SCENERY FROM WITHIN FS2002,
The [Area.xxx] and Layer=xxx are assigned automatically by FS2002 so do not change these within the scenery.cfg file, just find where FS2002 has added LGA and paste the lines "Exclude..." and "Flatten..." above on top in the same position. Also do not change the layer number and leave it as your FS2002 has assigned.
The scenery is set to four levels in the interest of frame rate improvement.
Very Sparse: Basic buildings and the runways are displayed
Sparse: adds the roads and some buildings
Normal: adds all the buildings and the control tower
Dense: adds half of the gates and statics (if installed), taxiway signs
Very Dense : full display of all scenery including the hangars, trees, parking lots, misc buildings etc. In addition, all the static aircraft (if installed) are also displayed if you have this part of the scenery activated from the scenery library.
FRAME RATES
Details mean severe usage of computer horsepower! This scenery is heavy if all the detail is maxed out. Additionally it also suffers from having a very dense surrounding scenery of the default New York area. There are three options to improve frame rates,
1) reduce scenery density levels (see above for details)
2) remove the jetways (gates) by moving the file LGAgates.bgl from the LGA\scenery folder to the main LGA folder (or any other backup folder) for future use
3) do not install the static aircraft
All the navaids for the scenery are included including the ILS's and the LDA for Runway 22.
Credits:
Pascal Meziat, B McWilliams & and especially T Hiscox (Airport 2.60)
Rafael Sanchez (VOD)
Greg Roath (for the great help in providing pics and the pertinent advice)
Chris Graessle (for all the excellent pics and the interesting observations)
Micheal Rodrigues (a great new collection of taxiway signs)
The Beta testers...
and of course...MICROSOFT.
THIS SCENERY IS FREEWARE AND MAY NOT BE USED FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. HOWEVER, IF YOU WRITE TO ME THIS AND MY PREVIOUS SCENERIES MAY BE ALLOWED TO BE UPLOADED TO OTHER SITES WITH MY PERMISSION.
