Copyright and Distribution
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THIS IS FREEWARE SCENERY Copyright (C) 1999 James C. Bosworth.
IT IS INTENDED FOR THE ENJOYMENT AND FREE USE BY THE FLIGHT SIMULATOR COMMUNITY AND MAY BE DISTRIBUTED TO, UPLOADED AND/OR DOWNLOADED TO THE INTERNET FOR FREE OF CHARGE USE BY THE PUBLIC, SO LONG AS ALL FILES REMAIN INTACT AND THIS TEXT FILE IS INCLUDED. HOWEVER, THIS SCENERY MAY NOT BE SOLD, UPLOADED OR DISTRIBUTED TO ANY PERSON, BBS, ORGANIZATION OR ANY OTHER TYPE OF ENTITY WHICH INTENDS TO OR IN ANY WAY PROFITS FINANCIALLY OR OTHERWISE FROM DISTRIBUTION OF THIS SCENERY. ALL RIGHTS INCLUDING OWNERSHIP AND COPYRIGHT ARE RESERVED BY JIM BOSWORTH.
This scenery was tested using Microsoft Flight Simulator 98, on an IBM Aptiva with a 266 PII processor. It was created with Abacus' Airport & Scenery Designer, Version 2.0
NOTE: You MUST have the latest Airport 2.02, Abacus A&SD 2.0, and VOD texture files installed on your system in order for this scenery to work. Since these textures are readily available from numerous sources, these files are NOT included in this distribution in order to keep its size small. These texture files need only be installed once in the main texture directory of Flight Simulator and are used by numerous other third-party scenery files.
Mi98v30
When I started this project I had a lot of big plans, but everyone knows what happens to "the best laid plans of mice and men". Within two weeks I was dead in the water, done in by Elevated Mesh Terrain (to be known by my own nickname, EMT, from this point forward) and a few other quirks of A&SD 2.0. So I want to say right up front that Mi98v30 would not exist if not for the help of Justin Tyme and Tim Dickens. Justin not only helped me through the early stages but actually laid down the beginning of the EMT grid for Michigan, which I was able to follow for the rest of the project. He continued to help me throughout the project, always managing to come up with the right solution when I needed it. Id also like to thank my beta testers, Fred Wilson and David Sabean, for their constant support. They kept me going, even when I was ready to throw in the towel. And last, but first, I want to thank my wife, who put up with me living with this computer 12 to 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, for over 2 ½ months. And here I thought retirement was a time for "rest".
This package contains "enhanced" airports for the state of Michigan, all 234 of them. I may have missed a couple but it wasnt for lack of research. My "guidebook" was the 1999 edition of the Michigan Airport Directory and a 1997 edition of the Michigan Aeronautical Chart. I also frequently visited AirNav on the web, an excellent source of current airport information. I was able to actually visit and photograph some of the airports, which made the work a lot easier - and a lot harder.
If you have pervious versions of my Michigan scenery, youll want to remove them, they are not compatible with this version.
To run Mi98v30, you will need all of the "standard" texture files (VOD, A&SD, etc.) that are normally available at almost every major flight sim web site. In addition, you will need the new A&SD 2.0 texture file set. You can find this file (asd2txtr.zip) in the download section of Justin Tymes website: http://www.fsgenesis.com/ , and it is probably available at the other major sites by now, perhaps under a different name. If you see any areas or buildings that are grayed out or dont appear to be "all there", you are probably missing some texture files.
ISSUES AND COMMENTS
· The emphasis for this project is the airports, I didnt do a lot with the terrain. In most cases I had to work from charts, which leave a lot to the imagination. If "your" airport isnt right, Im sorry. Send me photos and Ill try to get it right next time.
· EMT caused a lot of problems, Im not even sure if its really worth it. The EMT area runs from about the middle of the Lower Peninsula north. You will experience some very annoying "bleed through" effects at some airports in the EMT area, but I didnt feel that removing the Great Lakes or important rivers and roads was the correct solution - and that was the only solution. I dont have the artistic skills needed to "draw" ground texture tiles, so I did the best I could.
· You will run across some strange north/south "bands" of regular terrain in the EMT areas, I dont know what causes that but I couldnt get rid of it. I know the EMT grids are laid down right because Justin Tyme set that up for me, the bands have to have something to do with missing information in the DEM files that EMT is based on.
· EMT also limited the macros that I could use, so you will find the airports in the southern areas much more "interesting" to fly.
· I attempted to match my scenery with other popular scenery packages, with mixed success. You will find that south west Michigan lines up nicely with Jim Rhoads Indiana. South east Michigan connects fairly well with Ohio, by Gary Demos, Ted Kessel and Dick Graham. The far west tip of the Upper Peninsula is a bit of a mess, I couldnt get deep enough into that corner with A&SD to fix it. Just another little A&SD quirk I had to live with. And the Sault Ste. Marie area of Michigan seems to work good with Kyle Duncans scenery for that part of Ontario.
· The antennas scattered across the state are located as nearly as possible to the real thing but the antenna heights are suspect, I didnt have a good way of controlling that. Also, many antennas in the western U.P. are missing, A&SD refused to let me add them.
· You must be in "slew" mode and/or have your crash detection turned off when you use the directory to go to an airport. I had to move a couple airports, change some altitudes, etc., and while you will get where you are supposed to be in most cases, there are a couple airports where you will find yourself about 6 feet under ground when you go to them, or a mile or two from the actual airport.
· You will find a lot of trees surrounding airports, especially in the northern areas. This is "real" in most cases, and it also helped to mask some of the EMT bleed through problems.
· This scenery package is designed for FS98. I did see it work in FS2000 in at least one case but I have no idea how well it work in FS2000 over all and I am not supporting it for FS2000. [Soapbox mode ON] At this point I have decided not to buy FS2000, maybe some day Microsoft will learn that many people cant afford to go out and buy a new computer every time they come out with a new program. [Soapbox mode OFF}
· I have a little Flight Sim web page set up to support this package, for the latest information about it go to : http://www.concentric.net/~jcboswor/index1.html
· This package does not include any dynamic scenery and I also removed my fictional airport, BOZ. The fictional airport was confusing some people and the overall package was getting so large that I felt the addition of dynamic scenery would make it just too much. I will be releasing dynamic scenery packages to go along with Michigan in the near future.
· While there are no longer any fictional airports in this package, I did stumble across a couple of "mystery" airports in the Upper Peninsula. One is a "closed" Air Force base which Ive actually seen, the other is an airport which is listed as being private but which is much too large (according to the Michigan Aeronautical Chart) to be some little backwoods operation. I had some fun with those two, and plan to have more fun with them when I do the dynamic scenery. J
· Be sure to check out the ATIS frequencies for each airport. Some of the messages are "normal", some arent!
· You activate PCL (Pilot Controlled Lighting) by tuning your COM radio to the ATIS frequency for that airport, or to the frequency specified in the data.doc/data.txt file
· A special thank you is due David Andrew Green for creating the HAS.scm macro, which is used in a couple places in this package. Thank you, too, to Travis McDanold for his golf.r8 texture file. Also, although I dont think this is legally required, Id like to thank Tim Dickens and Rafael Sanchez for their macros, which were part of the A&SD 2.0 program. I still havent figured out VOD, so Id be lost without these guys.
· And as long as Im thanking people, I should include all of those responsible for A&SD 2.0 - Mi98v30 simply wouldnt be without them.
