LONG BEACH AIRPORT (DAUGHERTY FIELD)
California, USA
ICAO idenitfier: KLGB
version 1.0 for FS2000 only.
TURN ON WORD WRAP
THE AIRPORT
This is a detailed rendition of Long Beach Airport (Daugherty Field) which is possibly the most historic airport in California. The airport is named after Earl S Daugherty, a notable aviator from the area. This airport is a busy airport in the southern California region situated only about 15 miles southeast of the extremely busy Los Angeles International (KLAX) and about 12 miles northwest of the equally congested Santa Ana John Wayne Airport (KSNA). I made this airport on request and initially I had only planned this is a lower key side project before I embarked on a larger project as I reasoned that details do count. However, due to time restrictions with work etc. this project just drifted until I decided to make a full scenery out of it. I have made a concious effort to adjust the scenery to ensure better frame rates and you should notice better performance from the base scenery even at Dense scenery levels. At Very Dense levels the scenery does slow down due to all the eye candy. This scenery does not include every single taxi sign etc. or even every conceivable bit of detail but it is 95% accurate.
Being hemmed in from two sides by two busy air terminals and also being surrounded by a dense residential area results in traffic movement at Long Beach being restricted to operating under strict time and traffic flow restrictions due to noise regulations. With it's size and geographical location within the Los Angeles basin Long Beach Airport is potentially a very valuable airport for commercial use but due to the above restrictions the airport currently only has two airlines (American and America West) operating scheduled services. However, Jet Blue has recently announced LGB as it's second port of operations after JFK, which should significantly boost traffic. The majority of traffic at Long Beach is general aviation with many variety of local Government and police/survellience flights a regular feature. Cargo traffic is significant with most of the major cargo operators operating regular service from Long Beach.
The airport employs approximately 20,000 people working for close to 200 businesses, with Boeing Aircraft Company being the largest employer. At present the site is home to the assembly of the C-17 Globemaster III military freighter and the Boeing B717. Final work on the remaining MD-11's is almost complete while the MD-10 conversion program might be concentrated at LGB as well.
The original home of the commercial arm of the Douglas Coporation, the airport grew with the corporation when it became McDonnell Douglas Corporation and subsequently after the takeover, it became Boeing's third main manufacturing site. The list of the aircraft produced at Long Beach is long and illustrious. The Douglas factory opened in 1941 and began producing C-47's alongside B-17s. With the end of the war the Douglas Corporation geared up Long Beach to produce commercial aircraft (military aircraft being concentrated at St Louis), and over the next three decades all the major successful coomericial aircraft of the McDonnell Douglas Coporation were produced at LGB. This included the DC-8, DC-9, DC-10, the MD-80/90, and at present the MD-11. The airport also houses the Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation Western US finishing center and one of the West Coast business centers of the Piper Aircraft Company.
Even with all the restrictions Long Beach is the still in the Top 50 list of busiest airports in the world ranked according to total aircraft movements, with almost 60% Business and General Aviation while the remaining being cargo and commercial movements. The airport has five runways but the main runway is 12/30 which services the main traffic. Departure proedures off of the airport are very restricted and require sharp turns post-departure to avoid the swarm of traffic which exists in the SOCAL terminal area! Similarly arriving traffic is usually given very tight vectors to shoe-horn the traffic on to the final approach course due to the proximity of Santa Ana to the southeast (the departure path from SNA's main runway 19R passes directly over the approach path of runway 30!).
THE SCENERY
The scenery is as close a resemblence as I could make from the numerous photographs I have of the airfield. The main terminal is faithfully renditioned and in the full install / very dense mode has an assortment of static traffic which you would most likely see around LGB, and also ground venicles with appropriate 'Long Beach' signs on them. Situated around the main terminal and surrounding the parking lot are the Gulfstream hangars and the Piper Aircraft Company business center. The Boeing ramps are all there with a detailed ramp area in front of Building 41 to the north (the B717 assembly area), the numerous other Boeing manufacturing plant buildings along the north side (and the only remaining sign of the Douglas era, the 'Fly DC Jets' sign on top of Building 80), and Building 54 on the west side (the C-17 assembly area). On the south side are general aviation hangars and sundry cargo warehouses along with the tower. There are various buildings in real life towards the southeastern portion of the airport and I have taken some liberty with the design of some of these buildings as I did not have any clear photographs of some of them (one casualty is the Marriott Hotel).
The car parking areas are all there as well as the roads that service the airport. Taxiway/runway signs are included and I have also included a NOAA map of the airport to help you in navigating around the airport.
Full nightlighting of the airport has been done while also included are seasonal effects on the grass textures. All navaids for the airport are included including the ILS 30 and the LOM NDB BECCA (see separate file for details).
***The scenery is designed to accomodate a set of static aircraft and ramp vehicles included in a separate file. The static aircraft are placed accurately as you would most likely see them at LGB. The statics are included only if your system can handle the tremendous load of the complex structures and the resultant fall in frame rates. To reduce the burden on the CPU of the statics I have placed them in a separate file and also in either dense or very dense scenery complexity settings. The static aircraft files listing is
LGBstatics.bgl
You can either adjust the scenery complexity or remove the above file to improve performance.
Another performance draining item is the chain link fencing around the perimeter. This looks great but is draining on the CPU usage and can be removed by either reducing density to normal levels or remove the separate file called
LGBfence.bgl
***
Due to the complex nature of the scenery I have set five complexity levels to the scenery so that the low power computer user can also use the scenery.
Very Sparse The runways and ramp area and the main terminal building
Sparse Adds the buildings around the main terminal area and the ramp
Normal Adds all the buildings and trees etc.
Dense Adds half of the static aircraft, the chain link fence, some runway identifier signs
Very Dense Adds all detail including all the buildings, static aircraft etc.etc.
TIP1: TO OBTAIN AN ACCEPTABLE LEVEL OF FLYABILITY AND DETAIL PLAY AROUND WITH THE VARIOUS SETTINGS AND FILES i.e. REMOVE THE STATICS FILE OR FENCE FILE ETC.ETC.
TIP2: ONE METHOD OF FLYING HERE IS TO TURN COMPLEXITY LEVELS TO DENSE/VERY DENSE WHEN TAXIING TO SEE ALL THE DETAIL (EYE CANDY) OF THE DESIGN BUT ON LANDING AND TAKEOFF GO BACK TO NORMAL SETTINGS TO BOOST FRAME RATES AND ELIMINATE STUTTERING
****A WORD OF WARNING ! THIS SCENERY IS A FRAME RATE HOG ! REMEMBER, IT IS INTENDED TO BE AS ACCURATE AS POSSIBLE WITH LOTS OF PURPOSE DESIGNED 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 ACCELERATOR THEN SAY GOOD BYE TO FLYING HERE)****
Most of the textures are included within the zip file but to be safe this scenery requires VOD 2.7, Airport 2.02, ASD 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 LGB2000.zip. The unzipped file should create a folder as follows,
LGB ( with two subdirectories \scenery and \texture )
Move this LGB folder (intact) to your FS2000\scenedb directory. So you should have a structure of FS2000\scenedb\LGB with subdirectories called "scenery" & "texture".
Start FS2000 and thru the scenery library add the above scenery folder as LGB2000. Make sure that the LGB folder is on a scenery level higher (i.e. lower scenery layer number) than the default US Southwest and any terrain mesh add-on scenery folders. Remember that this LGB scenery and the default US Southwest default sceneries have to be active at the same time to use this 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 LGB 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 2.60)
Luis Sinclair and the FSDS team (FSDS)
and of course...MICROSOFT.
Fred Lewis, his prompting me and providing me with the pictures got this project off the ground
Beta tester Gene "Skully" Bordelon
For more information on this airport be sure to visit the Long Beach Airport website : www.lgb.org
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. I USUALLY DO NOT OBJECT SO ASK ME PLEASE. I WILL STRICTLY NOT ALLOW UPLOADS TO COMMERCIAL SITES WITHOUT PERMISSION.
If you like this scenery drop me a line. DFW next...
