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Israel, the Holy Land - Part1 North (ver. isreal01update1)
A freeware for FS2004 by Seev Kahn
Update1
=======
This update was done to allow the installation of a recent scenery (Northern Israel - Haifa VFR 1.0 FS2004 gMax) made by Alexander Lawrence in the right contex of the landscape. Haifa VFR shows many landmarks in Haifa and the Bay Area that will help you in navigation around that part of Israel. The landclass update was done maily for correcting elevation and creating the right background for the new add-on objects.
Israel, the Holy Land project
====================
"Israel, the Holy Land" is an ongoing project with the intention to cover all of Israel with new detailed terrain textures for VFR and low altitude flying. Part 1-North covers the Land of Galilee and Northern Israel (North-West corner; N33 25.00:E34 52.00, South-East corner; N32 26.00:E35 53.00 - please refer to the maps), an area of nearly 2,700 square miles or 7,000 square km (net land within Israel). This area is divided into 7 sub-areas where each has its own BGL files.The scenery was tested by a number of simmers on both FS2002 and FS2004 and no problems where encountered in either version of FS. Special thanks go to Alon Smolarski (who has a PPL and flys in real life from Meggido a/p in Northern Israel) and Doron Angel. Both spent many hours testing the scenery. Their remarks helped me a lot. Many thanks go also to Moshe Chetrit, a scenery designer, who enlighted me with tips regarding software programing.
The package includes, beside Land-class BGL files, also one gmax scenery - the Orot Rabin power plant at Hadera (download separately). In future versions more objects will be added to enhance the scenery, most of them known landmarks and places of historical significance that can assist the VFR pilot. "Israel, the Holy Land" works fine with default and add-on airport sceneries. For the time being, I can recommend only one add-on airport in the covered area to be downloaded separately; Rosh-Pina (LLIB) by Anatoly Kras.
FS2004 default mesh terrain does not give you a true picture of the landscape, therefore I recommend the installation of "LightWeight Mesh", an excellent freeware program by Svante Wendel that makes things look much better. You can find the zip files at Flightsim file library;
http://library.avsim.net/search.php?SearchTerm=EurMed-1.zip&CatID=Root&Go=Search
Root&Go=Search
or in;
http://www.SurClaro/cgi/kdl/main/52/eurmed-1.zip?1in2y01p
You dont have to install the whole package. EurMed-1.zip covers Israel and the nearby countries.
Documentation
===========
Several maps (one of them in Hebrew) are attached to assist you in VFR flying, though any map of 1;250,000 will do the job. Try to search the web for such maps and sectional charts.
Sources for Terrain and Objects
=======================
The different sources for the new terrain and objects are the official 1:100,000 map of Israel published by the Survey of Israel, city maps, satellite images and aerial photos available on the internet - none of them payware.
What is land-class
=============
FS2004 world is broken down into what is called the Level of Detail, or LOD. This is a simple grid that covers the whole globe, where the smallest unit of display is a point, representing approximately 4.8 meters (about 16 feet). 256 x 256 points make an Area, also known as LOD13. A simple calculation will show that the size of a LOD13 area, in our part of the globe, is about 1,200 x 1,200 meter. This is the basic unit I work with in order to get maximum detail.
For better understanding, other basic LODs are; LOD8, known as a Cell. with a grid of 32 x 32 Areas and LOD5 with a grid of 256 x 256 Areas. Those are used for the creation and modification of larger areas. LOD5 is actually the basic unit of MSFS2004 when it comes to global planning of landclass. (a LOD5 unit can also be seen as a square of 3.75 degrees longitude wide and 2.8125 degrees latitude high. At the equator that corresponds to approximately 400 km wide by 300 km high).
In order to make FS frame rate friendly, Microsoft created a data-base of 60 water textures and 255 land textures (not all are in use), so the scenery engine can create a unique terrain picture by combining lines (such as shore lines) with one of those textures for each area. In order to eliminate border lines between areas the scenery engine is also blurring the contact lines between areas, making by that the terrain look continuous while flying. This approach has also a drawback for Landclass scenery design because it is impossible to place a certain texture exactly where you want it (within a few hundred meters). For example, placing a small village texture on one side of a road may not work and you will see the village on both sides of the road. This is much less noticeable in larger areas such as a large forest. In most cases I solved this problem by creating defined polygons wherever there is need for high accuracy.
Programs
=======
Many thanks go to the creators of the freeware programs I utilized for the new land-class;
1. Ground2k. by Christian Fumey an outstanding program that enables to change the default land and water textures to new ones and create all kinds of lines such as shore lines, coasts, wave effects, rivers, and all types of roads. The program also makes it possible to create special areas with the data-base textures or with self made textures by applying a polygon with defined borders over the default terrain. It is also possible to control mesh lines with the program to change the elevation of the terrain and create river valleys, cliffs, etc.
2. EZ-Landclass. by Russel Dirks an excellent straight forward, easy to use, program that works directly from within FS2002/2004. With this program it is possible to change the default textures with new ones, provided they are in the FS data-base.
Warning!!! Those two programs create BGL files that are placed in a scenery folder. They do not (I repeat - do not) need a texture folder because the textures come directly from the FS data base.
Installation
========
If you are confident in the way you make your installations then please do it now, but if you want some guidance on installing this freeware then please see my recommendations as follows. An attached screenshot of the folder tree, after installation, will also help you;
To update previous installation FS2004
==========================
If you already downloaded the previous version of this scenery and installed it in FS2004 [ver. ISRAEL01] then all what you have to do is copy the new folder [B1] you just downloaded into your [Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\Israel Landclass\Israel Landclass North]. By doing this you will overwrite and replace the older scenery BGL files with the new ones, the files have the same names but 9 of them have different creation dates.
New Installation FS2004
=================
1.Open the zip file into any folder, but not an FS2004 folder.
2.Read carefully the installation text file.
3.You will find 2 main folders in the zip:
Documentation folder (A)
Israel Landclass North folder (B)
Scenery sub-folder (B1) (no texture folder!!!!)
4.Create a new folder; [Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\Israel Landclass] - without the brackets of course, and;
- Keep folder (A) wherever you wish or copy the files from the folder into the new folder you just created. The files will not affect the scenery.
- Copy folder (B) and sub folder (B1) into [Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\Israel Landclass].
5.Create a new folder; [Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\LtWtMesh] with a Scenery sub-folder. Download EurMed-1.zip from Flightsim (please refer to the link above). Open the zip and copy all 7 BGL files into the Scenery sub-folder you created.
6. Optional Download Rosh-Pina (LLIB) airport scenery by Anatoly Kras from Vatsim-Israel division http://simdata.sourceforge.net/vatil/ (home/download/scenery) and install it as explained in the txt file of the download.
7. Optional - Download FS2004 Scenery "Northern Israel - Haifa VFR 1.0" by Alexander Lawrence at Asim and install the scenry as explained in the txt file that comes with the download.
8. Start FS2004 and go to settings\scenery library\add area. Activate all new sceneries one at a time. Give the mesh scenery a lower number of priority. To get the new sceneries into effect you need to restart FS2004.
9. Start a flight from anywhere in the scenery area (see maps) and have fun.
Uninstallation
==========
Delete by un-checking manually from the scenery library menu in FS2004 the sceneries you want to eliminate and only then remove the folders from the folder tree.
Simulator settings
=============
Settings depend a lot on your system. The scenery was tested with different configurations. A medium configuration (GeForce 4 video card and 1.5 GHz CPU) got a frame rate of 18 FPS and above. Be aware that AA (anti aliasing) and clouds are both frame rate killers. Do not activate AA and set cloud 3-D to about 40% and coverage density to medium. All the rest depend on your preferences. To get a better picture of Israel, a country located in the Middle East, in the vicinity of many deserts, set visibility to no more than 20 - 30 NM. That will give the scenery a certain depth and haze, a condition prevailing in Israel most of the year.
Legal Disclaimer:
================
This scenery addon is made available for the private use of Microsoft
Flight Simulator enthusiasts. Under no circumstances may the contents of these zip files be modified or sold for profit. This scenery is released as Freeware. Copyright (C) Seev Kahn. 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.
You are welcome to contact me for support and further explanations
Seev Kahn
seevkahn@bezeqint.net
