CLEVELAND WILLIAM R HOPKINS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (KCLE)
Version 1.0 for FS2002/FS2004 only.
TURN ON WORD WRAP
This is my first brand new scenery for a very long time (since FS2000 KLGB I think!). The concept for modelling this particular airport arose from a desire to undertake a project which fits into the future direction of my scenery designing efforts i.e.design of the second-tier major airports of the US. Besides this KCLE was also requested by many enthusiasts, it is a very important airport in the US and a major hub of Continental Airlines. I also see it quite a while before Microsoft will start to upgrade these airports to detail quality. This scenery is designed in GMAX as this is the future direction for Microsoft FS scenery objects.
THE AIRPORT
The history of Cleveland Hopkins Airport dates back to 1925 when the City of Cleveland inaugurated the first municipal airport in the United States at a site initially earmarked by the USAAF. The vision for the airport emanated from the desire of the then City Manager Cleveland, William R Hopkins, to build on the important position of the city as a transit point for passengers and mail. By 1929 a new terminal was in place, and soon afterwards the first air races were held at the site. By 1930 Cleveland Municipal Airport became the first airport with a functional air traffic control tower. During World War II the site adjacent became the assembly center for B-29s, and by 1940 this eventually led to NASA choosing the airport to become their aircraft engine testing base. In the early 1950s the name of the airport was changed to honour the man behind the drive to initially build and develop the airport, William R Hopkins. Also in the 1950s the original terminals began to take shape. Further expansions continued throughout the next three decades until in 1999 the first new terminal was inaugurated at Hopkins, Terminal D specifically for Continental Airlines. At present Cleveland Hopkins Int is undergoing an extensive expansion plan which is enhancing the airport to modernise it in preparation for the future. This includes among other work a new runway which opened in 2002 (6L/24R).
Cleveland Hopkins Int is presently the 38th busiest airport in the world in terms of aircraft movements (262,108 movements in 2002). Passenger numbers had reached 13.3million in 2000 but post-11 Sep have dropped off to 10.8m making CLE the 34th busiest in the world. The major airline at the airport is Continental for which CLE serves as one of the three main hubs (Houston and Newark being the other), 58% of the passenegers were carried by Continental.
THE SCENERY
This scenery design encompasses all the features of the present airport and includes the entire airport as it is in real life. It also builds in the airport enhancements that are part of the $1.4bn expansion plan which got underway in 2000. and which will eventually be completed in 2004/5. Also to note is the new outlay of the field which is in the process of being implemented i.e. removal of the runway 6C/24C.
This version includes night lighting which should nicely illuminate the whole area after dusk and up until dawn. It is also setup to exhibit the colours of autumn and winter.
I have decided to refrain from including any static aircraft in my sceneries as they hit performance badly.
I have also not made a new AFCAD file and am leaving this task to anyone of the exellent freeware artist who are experts at making a decent track system for CLE.
Taxiway and runway signs are now included thanks to great work done by Mark Earle, a Cleveland based aviation enthusiast. I also included all kinds of ramp vehicles (thanks to Microsoft).
Gerrish Gray's trees are again a feature of the scenery. These are magnificent and also very well coded to not cause too much of a performance hit.
I hope you like it!
The scenery is set to five levels in the interest of frame rate improvement.
Very Sparse Ground scenery only, taxiway signs
Sparse Adds the main terminals, certain trees
Normal Adds hangars, parking lot, misc buildings, minimum number of jetways, more trees
Dense Adds more jetways, all ramp vehicles, road ramp, more trees
Very Dense All scenery. All trees
INSTALLATION:
As normal, unzip the file CLE2003.zip. The unzipped file should create the following directory,
CLE2003 ( with four subdirectories as follows
\scenery
\texture
\Trees
\Treesbgl)
Just move the CLE2003 folder intact to the FS2002\scenedb\ directory. Start FS2002 and thru the scenery library add the above scenery folder as CLE2003. Make sure that the CLE2003 folder is on a scenery level higher (i.e. lower scenery layer number) than the default US Great Lakes scenery and any terrain mesh add-on scenery folders. Remember that this CLE scenery and the default US Great Lakes scenery have to be active at the same time to use this scenery. You will also need to activate the Cleveland city scenery from the scenery library.
Also ensure that within the Scenery Library the vehicles library are active.
There are no Exclude and Flatten switches to be installed.
My first recommendation would be for you to install Gerrish Gray's excellent tree macros (trees_V3.zip). They are available at AVSIM and SurClaro. If not then read on...
Open the TREES (as above) folder and MOVE all the contents in the folder to the main FS2002\texture directory. *** If you already have Gerrish's trees installed then you do not need to do anything with the trees ***
Open the TREEbgl folder and MOVE the content in the folder to the main FS2002\scenery directory. *** If you already have Gerrish's trees installed then you do not need to do anything with the trees ***
Although I have included all required textures, just to be careful you may want to download the Airport 2.60 textures and place them in the FS2002\texture directory.
FRAME RATES
Details mean severe usage of computer horsepower! Although I used GMAX for this scenery it is still very heavy on performance if all the details are maxed out (for reference with max on all parameters I get 16-19 fps on the ramp - my setup AMD XP1900 RAM768MB GF3Ti200) . There are three options to improve frame rates,
1) reduce scenery density levels (see above for details)
2) remove the trees by moving the file CLEtrees.bgl from the CLE2003\scenery folder to the main CLE2003 folder (or any other backup folder) for future use
3) remove the fences by moving the file CLEfence.bgl and 1fenclib.bgl from the CLE2003\scenery folder to the main CLE2003 folder (or any other backup folder) for future use
4) remove the taxiway signs by moving the file K2.bgl from the CLE2003\scenery folder to the main CLE2003 folder (or any other backup folder) for future use
5) remove the ramp vehicles by moving the file CLEveh.bgl from the CLE2003\scenery folder to the main CLE2003 folder (or any other backup folder) for future use
6) finally, you can remove the jetways too by moving the file CLEgates.bgl and CLEgtlib.bgl from the CLE2003\scenery folder to the main CLE2003 folder (or any other backup folder) for future use
Hope it all works!
Credits:
Mark Earle (taxiway signs and taxilines designed specifically for this scenery). Also a Thank You to the now defunct taxiways.com group.
Pascal Meziat, B McWilliams & and especially T Hiscox (Airport 2.60)
Discreet (GMAX)
Gerrish Gray (trees)
Arno Gerretsen (Bumpy)
and of course...MICROSOFT.
The Beta Testing Team:
Mark Earle (Beta Tester), Thanks for the help in the scenery and all the feedback given.
Chuck Slusarczyk Jr(Beta Tester), Thanks for the tremendous amount of 'on-field' feedback!
Andrew Malgieri (Beta Tester), Thanks for the on-field reports and those excellent pics!
Jason Pecora (Beta Tester), Thanks for your inputs.
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.
