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Tel Aviv Photoreal VFR Scenery Ver. 2 FS2004
Copyright Alexander Lawrence 2004(c)
al-virtual@yahoo.com
DESCRIPTION
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~~~~~~ Welcome to Israel. Welcome to Tel Aviv ~~~~~~
Tel Aviv is the busiest and the biggest city in Israel.
It is the first newly founded Jewish city in the reborn Israel, but it is anything but "traditional". In the recent years, many skyscrapers have been added to the skyline which once was dominated by the Shalom Meir Tower in Tel-Aviv and the Diamond Exhange building in Ramat-Gan Business District. While Shalom Meir Tower still stands out among the less tall buildings surrounding it, the Diamond Exchange building has been literally engulfed by many post-modern architectural wonders which dwarf it to the point of non-relevance.
Although technically not Tel Aviv, my scenery covers almost all of the important towers of the Ramat Gan Business District. Looking at the imposing architectural complex and its tallest feature (City Gate Tower - standing 244m) will make you understand why.
Another important much talked-about project is the Azrieli Towers or better known as "Shalom towers" (not to be confused with the old Meir Shalom Tower) - Shalom means "Peace". This project has seen several changes during its construction, the most significant ones being the cancellation of one of the three towers - the Square Tower - and the height increase of the remaining two - the Round Tower (187m) and the Triangle Tower (169m).
Now you can also fly over the Ramat Gan and Bloomfield stadiums where some of the most of the important national and international soccer games are held. The big oval structure South of the Toyota Tower is the Yad Eliahu Basketball Hall which is the home of the Maccabi Tel-Aviv Basketball Team - twice European Champions and this year's Final Four players ;-).
The scenery is by no means complete. There are many other less tall, but important structures that I plan to add in future releases. Besides, there are many towers that are being built or planned, two of them towering at around 240m each; so there is plenty to do.
Meanwhile enjoy VFR-ing over Tel Aviv, or the LLBG RWY 12 approaches. The LL (Lima Lima) RWY12 outer marker is located on top of the Shalom Meir Tower.
Have fun.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
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Wherever possible I used photo-realistic textures based on pictures. The sizing, object location etc. was based on a combination of maps, satellite photos, pictures and visits to location. Some of the more subtle architectural features have been left out for the sake of frame rate. The buildings were designed with performance in mind - the key issue was to make them realistic to viewing distances of more than 300'(100m). The new version adds five new buildings (for a total of 56 buildings) and some fixes and optimization to the previous release.
All the 3D structures were overlaid on a 4.8m/pixel satellite picture which covers four seasons and night-time texturing. To make the low-level flight over Tel Aviv more realistic, I have also created an extremely dense, custom Autogen layout with customized Autogen textures.
This is an on-going project.
Tel Aviv Photoreal VFR 2 currently covers:
- The Ramat Gan Business District (9 towers)
- The Azrieli Towers (2 towers)
- The Shalom Meir Tower
- Marganit Twr
- Platinum, Medial and Millenium Towers complex (3 towers)
- Rubinstein Twr
- Elrov Twr
- Levinstein Twr
- Gan Ha'ir Twr + Rabin Square (1 tower + City Hall)
- IBM Building
- The Tower
- 6 seaside hotels
- The Textile Center Complex (8 towers)
- Opera House Twr
- Isrotel Twr
- Twin Towers (Ramat Gan - 2 towers)
- Toyota House
- Amot Center (3 Towers)
- Dizengoff Center (2 towers)
- NIP Tower
- Tel Aviv Towers (2 residential towers)
- Zion Tower
- Africa Israel Tower
- Ramat Gan Soccer Stadium
- Bloomfield Soccer Stadium
- Yad Eliahu Basketball Hall
This scenery and its future releases are developed with gMax, and the textures are encoded for maximum performance.
I hope you enjoy flying over Tel Aviv.
INSTALLATION
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IMPORTANT: It is recommended to install Seev Kahn's Tel Aviv Landclass which can be downloaded at SurClaro and AVSIM. This is not a requirement but I do recommend installing the above since together with Tel Aviv Photoeral VFR 2, they provide a more complete Tel Aviv experience. If you have any other Tel Aviv scenery, please disable it from within the FS. If you don't, you may experience strange results. Also, if you have my TLV VFR Ver. 1.0 or 1.2 installed, remove it first completely, and then follow the instructions below:
Scenery install:
1. Install Seev Kahn's excellent Tel Aviv Landclass Version (recommended but not mandatory).
2. Disable any Tel Aviv/Ramat Gan scenery - if you don't, you may experience strange results.
3 Create a new folder: "..\Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\Tel Aviv Photoreal 2"
4. Unzip the "TLVVFR12.zip" file into this folder using WinZip's "Folders" option.
5. Define the new scenery in the FS2004 using the normal "Add Scenery" procedure.
Autogen Textures install:
1. Unzip the "Israel Autogen Texture.zip" file into the "Flight Simulator 9\Texture" directory and allow it to overwrite the original files. Please see that this is the TOP FS9 TEXTURE directory and NOT any other scenery or sub folder texture directory - otherwise this won't work!
UNINSTALL
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1. Follow the normal "Delete Scenery" procedure within FS2004.
2. Delete the "..\Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\Tel Aviv VFR 1.2" folder.
Autogen Textures Uninstall:
1. Unzip the included "Original Autogen Texture.zip" file into the "Flight Simulator 9\Texture" directory and allow it to overwrite the original files. Please see that this is the TOP FS9 TEXTURE directory and NOT any other scenery or sub folder texture directory - otherwise this won't work! This will revert FS9 to its original Middle East Autogen textures.
The scenery has been created with gMax and the objects and textures have been optimized for minimal memory and CPU impact, so you should not experinence any performance degradation. As an example, my AMD 1400 PC equipped with a GEForce III 64MB card, consistently delivers 16-18FPS over Tel Aviv with fair weather and @14-17FPS in reasonable cloudy weather. All the sliders are maxed out and I use GEForce's QNX Anti-aliasing (which steals @30% of the frame-rate). The Autogen is set to "Normal". As you see you have plenty of headroom.
If you have installed Seev's Landclass, you may experience a significant frame rate drop over Tel Aviv when you look North at night. That is because of the "dynamic" roads used in the landclass scenery. There is nothing to be done to fix that except upgrade the hardware. A Pentium 2.8GHz with 512Mb RAM or similarly endowed systems should do well nevertheless.
Autogen is a big frame-eater. If you really want to fly at 500' and enjoy the new Photoreal Tel Aviv with its custom Autogen, then you should set the Autogen density to Extremely High. That could bring your system to its knees. Again, I cannot do anything about that except recommend a hardware upgrade - specifically, a much stronger CPU and larger memory.
Autogen has other inherent limitations that you should be aware of, limitations which are not controlled by the designer:
- Replacing the relevant Autogen textures, will replace the Autogen textures throughout the Middle East. The result is that many Middle Eastern towns will look more "westernized" than before. The rest of the world is not affected.
- Autogen buildings and trees do not always appear, although they were defined correctly by the design tools. This depends on a lot of factors within the FS9 engine. I might try to solve this issue in a different way in the future.
Enjoy.
FS2002 Compatibility
====================
Although it was not tested with FS2002, Tel Aviv Photoreal 2.0 should not have any compatibility issues with it. There is however no claim of full compatibility with FS2002 so if issues occur, please remember that testing and development were targeted for FS2004 and up.
LEGAL STUFF
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Copyright Alexander Lawrence 2004(c)
al-virtual@yahoo.com
1. This file and its contents is FREEWARE and it should not be made part of any commercial package or activity.
2. No modifications reposts are allowed. If you don't like it, delete it and re-create it yourself from scratch.
3. There is no warranty either express or implied covering this product.
Please do not contact me with requests for technical support. The installation is trivial and it should not create any issues if you follow Microsoft's scenery installation and deletion guidelines. In case you don't know how to do that, read the "manual".
Suggestions however are welcome and may be sent to: al_virtual@yahoo.com. I do not guarantee to reply but I will try to include the best suggestions in a future release and credit accordingly.
CREDITS, ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS and THANKS
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- Alon Smolarski for his help with information and photos, beta-testing and encouragement.
- Various Architecture Companies for hints and information.
- Ittai Arnon for allowing me to use some of his textures for the seaside hotels
- VATIL (VATSIM Israel) for encouragement
- Discreet - gMAx's developers.
