This scenery is designed exclusively for use with FS2000. The scenery encompasses the southern portion of the State of Florida from the Florida Keys North to "Alligator Alley".
The scenery is contained in two zip files: "fl26-1.zip" and "fl26-2.zip". The first file contains the basic scenery ("bgl" and texture files). The second file contains dynamic scenery, scenery libraries and texture files - to be placed in the main FS "Scenery" and "Texture" directories and an Airport Facility Directory.
In FS2000 Microsoft has provided us with a excellent software product. There are areas, however, where the FS2000 scenery leaves something to be desired. The State of Florida is one of those areas. Both the outline and surface of the state bear little resemblance to the real thing.
This scenery corrects the outline of the State. It also substitutes a variety of textured polygons to represent the rich green vegetation of the everglades and cover the huge sections of desert sand that are part of the FS base scenery. (Currently, the visibility of these polygons is limited to 20 miles from the aircraft. So the lower you fly the more agreeable the appearance of the scenery.)
Scenery at the airports includes trees, buildings, hangers, beacons, static aircraft, lights and all the other features normally found in airport scenery. All major airports have terminals (some with gates), runway signs, etc. This scenery is fairly dense. Airport scenery arrangements were verified with the Jeppesen "JeppGuide Airport Directory for Southeast Airports". Although, in the past, I have personally flown my Cessna 320 into many of these airports, over the years new buildings appear and memory fades; therefore the detailed appearance of most buildings is pure fantasy.
At airports that have pilot controlled runway lighting (PCL), the runway lights must be activated by tuning the com radio to the activating frequency. These frequencies may be obtained from the Airport Facility Directory (AFD) provided in Zip file #2 (FL26-2.ZIP). The AFD also includes ATIS and ILS frequencies for applicable airports.
Display settings:
My machine is rated at 550 MHz, with 96 m of ram memory. With a 32 bit - 32 m video card I get very decent frame rates with the following display settings:
Terrain Mesh Complexity: 50
Terrain Texture Detail Distance: 18 (reduces the visibility of the misplaced desert texture).
Maximum Unlimited Visibility: 60 mi
Scenery Complexity: Very Dense
Dynamic Scenery: as required.
Set weather visibility to 50 mi when flying in the keys and to 20 mi over mainland. (again - to reduce the visibility of the undesirable desert texture on the mainland).
For those with slower machines or limited memory, frame rates can be increased by resetting the scenery complexity to "normal", particularly for take-offs and landings and back to "dense" after landing.
This scenery was also tested on a slower machine operating at 400 MHz with
64 m of ram and equipped with an 8 m video card. The resulting frame rates were 6 to 8 frames per second on the runway of a major airport and increased to 12 to 14 after airborne. These rates were with the density set to "normal". I also noted that the ground scenery became unstable at times. Individual machine performance may vary, but it appears that, to view this scenery properly, requires a somewhat faster machine.
To help conceal the base scenery sand in the everglades, I have included several superb FS2000 texture files from the "World" directory. These files cannot be accessed by our scenery unless copies are located in your South Florida scenery "Texture" directory. To simplify this process we have included them in the Zip file which will automatically place them there.
This scenery requires the VOD3, ASDv2 and Airport 2.10 textures. If you do not already have these textures they may be obtained from "SurClaro". The zip files are titled: "Vodtex30.Zip", "Asd21txt.Zip" & "Aip210tx.Zip"
Installation:
This scenery can be installed in a subdirectory located either in the main FS "scenery" directory or in a standalone directory titled "addons" or "fsscenry" or any other apt name. (I recommend the latter method). In either case, give the new subdirectory a name such as "South_Fl" and unzip "fl26-1.zip" into that subdirectory. The unzipped file should create two additional subdirectories titled \scenery and \texture )
Start FS2000 and, thru the scenery library, add the above scenery folder you have named and make it 'local'. Make sure that the folder is on a scenery level higher (i.e. lower scenery layer number) than the default USSE scenery folder.
The second file of this scenery ("fl26-2.zip") contains dynamic scenery for two airports, Rafael Sanchez's "Nova Tree" library and textures and an Airport Facility Directory help file. Installation directions for these items are contained in the "fl26-2.zip" file.
Credits:
Rafael Sanchez (VOD, DOD & Nova Tree)
Luis Sinclair and the FSDS team (FSDS)
SASM by Manfred Moldenhauer
ASDv2 - Peter Jacobson and the ASD team
BMP2000 - Martin Wright
All the highly talented FS aircraft designers whose designs are represented in the static aircraft and dynamic scenery.
And last but far from least, all the highly talented FS scenery designers who created most of the textures and macros used in this scenery.
Notes:
The scenery includes two dynamic scenery files, one for "Key West - NAS" and the other for "Dade County - Homestead Regional". These files require that you have DOD libraries "DODL10.bgl" and "DODL16.bgl" in your FS2000 main "Scenery" directory. If you don't have these libraries, you can find them, along with the required textures in the second zip file of this scenery "FL16-2.Zip".
To view the dynamic scenery files you must set the Dynamic Scenery Complexity to "Dense". On the subject of dynamic scenery - the FS2000 dynamic scenery file for Miami places some aircraft partially in airport buildings. To avoid this problem, I suggest that either dynamic scenery complexity be set to "Sparse" or "Miami5.BGL" be renamed to "Miami5.BAK".
The "Airport Facility Directory" contains accurate information for the airports contained in this scenery. This file opens with a map of Florida. To look up information for an airport, click on the portion of the map where the airport is located and you will be provided with a listing of the airports in that area. Information for airports in Florida outside the area of this scenery is fairly accurate and will be updated for each area as the scenery design for additional areas proceeds.
Copyright and Distribution
This scenery is released as Freeware. Copyright (C) RHS GROUP, 2000. 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.
Please forward all questions and comments to Rbobstell@cs.com
