OntCen: A scenery for Central Ontario, Canada - Version 1.1
The OntCen scenery covers an area roughly bounded by Toronto-Collingwood to the west, Ottawa-Prescott to the east, the Ottawa River to North Bay to the north and Lake Ontario to the south. It is not a very densely populated area and is characterized to a great extent by a continuous beech-maple or pine-spruce forest punctuated by a large number of lakes. This is "cottage country" to the several million people living along the north shore of Lake Ontario. I have presented it as a largely undisturbed land of trees and water, but in reality the shores are dotted with cottages and the lakes teeming with small boats. It is at its best in autumn when the vacationers are largely gone and fall colours illuminate the landscape.
Because the area is sparsely populated north of Lake Ontario and densely forested, airfields are mostly small and seaplane bases numerous. Most of the seaplane bases are restricted and require prior permission for landing. In fact, most of these bases are home to small bush operations specialized in flying fishermen into camps on lakes not serviced by roads.
MS Flight Simulator98 is not entirely accurate in its scenery locations. Elevations may be off by a few hundred feet in some cases and roads, lakes, rivers, etc. may not be exactly where they are in reality. The OntCen scenery is design to conform with the FS98 world, not the real one. Consequently, the data given above will not agree exactly with those in the Canada Flight Supplement.
I have designed this scenery for flightsim pilots with a special love for small aircraft and VFR flying. Most of the lakes are accurately presented in the default FS98 scenery. I have had to add a few, Pencil Lake for example, and have modified some of the shorelines. Many of the roads are included in the default scenery, but I have added more when needed. It is all navigable by roadmap but if you get lost you can use the default navaids, or if you completely give up GPS will work .
What's missing
I have not included any of the southwestern Ontario or Bruce Pennisula airports. Also missing are several airports east of Ottawa. These and several small airports within the present area may turn up in subsequent versions.
Compatibilities
The OntCen scenery was created over the top of Henry Garbacz TorMont scenery and Roger Stewart's NorOnt scenery. That is, I worked to ensure that the three sceneries would be seamlessly compatible. Together they cover a large part of our province, allowing as much as 600 nm of continuous flight in small aircraft, including seaplanes. The OntCen scenery touches on both TorMont and NorOnt. At Arnprior (Renfrew Muni) you can view the buildings of the TorMont airfield from the OntCen seaplane base. The same holds true at North Bay with the Northern Ontario scenery. Without TorMont, several important airports along Lake Ontario will be missing, and without the Northern Ontario scenery that whole region will be absent. The only conflict is at Dalhousie Lake, where the TorMont scenery presents farmland in a heavily forested area. If this bothers you, you will have to temporarily disable TorMont.
Neighbouring sceneries are not a problem. You can use TorMont all the way east to Quebec City or the whole Quebec scenery from the Quebec Virtual Pilots (but not both). To the west, Frank Moore's Western Canada scenery actually contains one or two airports in extreme northwestern Ontario that merge without difficulty into Roger's Northern Ontario.
There will be some conflicts with some of Dave Westbury's airports, namely those at Midland (Huronia) and Parry Sound (Georgian Bay). Dave's airports are lively places with lots of dynamic scenery. They present an entirely different interpretation from my rather rural settings. If you want to use these, move my huronia.bgl and georgian.bgl files to a backup folder so you won't get duplicate runways.
Jim Stevens' Ottawa scenery is excellent but conflicts with OntCen in duplicating the airport at Carp. It also conflicts with TorMont. To use this scenery you should disable the TorMont scenery and move my carp.bgl to a backup folder. Kevin Sison's Metro Toronto scenery duplicates my Midland Airport and may also conflict with TorMont. Again, you will have to hide my huronia.bgl if you want to use this one. Jeffrey Lung's Southern Ontario 1.1 scenery doesn't seem to conflict with OntCen, but I have not checked it with TorMont. There are probably some other conflicts, but I am not presently aware of them.
Setup
Create a folder called OntCen and place in it a folder named Scenery and one named Texture. Place all of the .bgl files in the Scenery folder. Files labelled .r8 and .-af go in the Texture folder. If you do not have the Airport 2.10 texture files you can download them for free at several websites including http://www.simflight.com/airport.htm and http://www.flightsimgroup.com/main.htm. The OntCen folder can then be put wherever you keep your scenery folders. If you already have Version 1.0 you must overwrite this with Version 1.1.
Once OntCen is in your files you can go into the FS98 World/Scenery Library menu and choose to Add scenery. In that menu fill in the path to your OntCen scenery files. If you have problems with this, go into the Edit scenery menu and see how the path should be set up.
Directory of Airports
See the Aptdata.txt file
Notes on Version 1.1
My first version of OntCen, version 1.0, was missing a few texture files. Version 1.1 adds these crucial files. Two new seaplane bases have been added at Sault Ste. Marie and one at Mountain lake. Many of the other bases and airports have been modified. Some static aircraft have been added. Version 1.1 should be written over Version 1.0.
Challenge
Somewhere in the OntCen scenery lurk two of Jerry Arzdorf's vehicles, a motorhome and a 50 foot cigarette boat. Fly low and keep your eyes open for them.
Acknowledgements
The OntCen scenery would not be what it is without the sceneries of Henry Garbacz and Roger Stewart. These were the inspiration for me to try to fill in the area between them. Henry supplied several nice airports between Windsor and Quebec City, as well as all sorts of towers throughout the area. If you fly over a tower, it is more likely Henry's than mine. Roger bravely tackled northern Ontario, including the areas north of the Trans Canada Highway where Microsoft gave up. When you get that far north the scenery is pretty sparse except where Roger stepped in. Roger also included several seaplane bases, giving me my first chance to land a seaplane in something resembling more than water on a pool table. Static aircraft are Jerry Arzdorf's Noorduyn Norseman, Svein Holbo's Otter, Gerry Schmidt's Cessna C182 floatplane, and Dennis Simanaitis' Benoist and De Havilland Rapide. Some of the scenery textures come from the excellent Magrathea scenery from the United Kingdom (http://home.clara.net /magrathea /). I would also like to express my thanks to the flightsim development team at Microsoft for the gift of FS98. This may have been simply a matter of business to Microsoft, but I think the team working on it must have considered at a labour of love. Thanks a lot guys, may you live long and prosper.
Copyright and Distribution
This aircraft is released as Freeware. Copyright (C) David Malloch. 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.
This means, for example, that you may not upload an archive that uses
my scenery .bgl files with your own scenery or include them in a
package containing scenery without first obtaining my permission.
- 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 author's rights and wishes concerning this archive must be
respected.
Final note
I hope you enjoy this scenery.
Dave Malloch
Toronto, Ontario
20 September 1998
Malloch@botany.utoronto.ca
