RONALD REAGAN WASHINGTON NATIONAL AIRPORT (KDCA)
version 2.0 for FS2000 only.
TURN ON WORD WRAP
This is the update for FS2000 compatibility to my DCA-98 scenery for FS98 uploaded in Jan 1999.
This was the second scenery design ( after KDTW ) of my designing career and I had chosen to redo this very celebrated airport which again had been largely ignored by the FS design community. I lived in Washington DC for three years and have fond memories of this busy airport. Due to it's city center location I remember many a time going over to this airport with my father and park at the wildlife conservatory at the threshold of Runway 19 (18 at that time), to watch planes making the river approaches with the airplanes buzzing down to land on Runway 19 after making a sharp right turn past the G Mason Memorial Bridge on 2 mile finals ! Great sight to see ! and amazingly they all seemed to get it right first time !
Of course that was before the complete remake of the airport in 1997. This brought in virtually a brand new airport with a new terminal building to the north of the old rather antiquated one. It also brought in extra parking spaces for aircraft which was a much needed requirement unfulfilled for almost thirty years. Additionally the new terminal also eliminated the other significant shortfall of the old one in providing super metro connections to the city on the doorsteps of the terminal (no more walking 20 mins to the station in pouring rain!). Now if only they could increase the runway length...
All the navaids for the scenery are included including the LDA for Runway 18 (108.50) (the antenna is also visible on the other side of the Potomac River).
This scenery design encompasses all the features of the present airport and includes both the new terminal and what is left of the old one. In my first draft of this airport for FS98 I had wanted to construct the metro station fully, but I found that this was eating up my already seriously constrained scenery size limit. This time around with the flexibility of FS2000's new scenery design engine the Metro Station is there in a form which gives a feel of the station. The gates are also included but are also some way short of the actual number in the interest of saving memory.
This version for FS2000 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 included a whole set of static aircraft wrapped up in two files. These statics were all sourced from Mike's API's site and are made with MDL2BGL, These are included only if your system can handle the tremendous load of the complex structures and the resultant fall in frame rates. If you do not want the static aircraft the two files DCAStat1.bgl and DCAStat2.bgl can be removed from the DCA2000\scenery directory. Note that these static aircraft are also in two levels of scenery density, Dense and Very Dense. Similarly to save Hard Drive space the textures related to these can be removed (all *.af files) from the DCA\Texture folder.
(Note:These files are included in a separate download which was uploaded alongwith this scenery and is called DCA2KSt.zip).
As part of the overall upgrade taxiway and runway signs are now included. They can be viewed in Dense scenery setting.
I hope you like it!
The scenery is set to four levels in the interest of frame rate improvement.
Very Sparse: The main terminal buildings and the runways are displayed, the Metro Station
Normal: Adds hangars, misc buildings, tower
Dense : Adds gates, taxiway signs, 70% of static aircraft.
Very Dense: All scenery. Adds the rest of the static aircraft.
A WORD OF WARNING ! THIS SCENERY IS A MEMORY DESTROYER ! IF YOU THOUGHT FS2000 WAS SLOW WAIT UNTIL THIS SCENERY HITS YOUR CPU! WHOAH! REMEMBER, IT IS INTENDED TO BE AS ACCURATE AS POSSIBLE WITH LOTS OF PURPOSE DESGINED AND COMPLEX BUILDING STRUCTURES. HENCE IT IS NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED COMPUTERS ( i.e. IF YOU OWN ANYTHING LESS THAN A PII 300Mhz AND NO 3D GRAPHICS ACCELARATOR) THEN SAY GOOD BYE TO FLYING HERE !) I DO APOLOGISE AGAIN!
THIS SCENERY REQUIRES VOD 2.7, AIRPORT 2.02 TEXTURES AND THE NEW VOD 3.0 TEXTURES WHICH CAN BE FOUND AT SurClaro.com AND SurClaro. DOWNLOAD THESE AND PLACE THEM IN YOUR MAIN TEXTURE DIRECTORY.
Installation:
As normal, unzip the file DCA2000.zip. The unzipped file should create a folder as follows,
DCA ( with two subdirectories \scenery and \texture )
Move the DCA folder (intact) to your FS2000\scenedb directory. So you should have a structure of FS2000\scenedb\DCA with subdirectories called "scenery" & "texture".
Start FS2000 and thru the scenery library add the above scenery folder DCA. Make sure that the DCA folder is on a scenery level higher (i.e. lower scenery layer number) than the default US Northeast scenery folder. Remember that my DCA scenery and the default US Northeast default sceneries have to be active at the same time to use my scenery.
IMPORTANT:
You also need to make the following change to the scenery.cfg file in the FS2000 root directory AFTER YOU HAVE ADDED THE SCENERY FROM WITHIN FS2000,
The [Area.xxx] and Layer=xxx are assigned automatically by FS2000 so do not change these within the scenery.cfg file, just find where FS2000 has added DCA and paste the above on top. Also do not change the layer number and leave it as your FS2000 has assigned.
Hope it all works!
Credits:
Pascal Meziat, B McWilliams & T Hiscox (Airport 2.1)
Rafael Sanchez (VOD)
Abacus (Airport & Scenery Designer 2.1)
Special thanks to Chris Grall for all the help in making this scenery compatible with FS2000 and the trick to nightlighting.
Mike and all the various aircraft designers for their api macros
M Kopatz and any other authors (for use of their grass, taxiway and water textures)
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 WILL BE ALLOWED TO BE UPLOADED TO OTHER SITES WITH MY PERMISSION.
If you like this scenery drop me a line. SFO, MSP or DFW next...
