This FS2000 terrain mesh file and scenery additions and corrections, based on
elevation points spaced 30 meters apart, covers the Salt Lake City region in Utah,
USA. The seat of the 2002 Winter Olympic games, the city is surrounded by rugged
mountains, canyons and scenic water bodies, including the Great Salt Lake to the
north. This scenery includes a well-formed Antelope Island at the Great Salt Lake,
plus the most important rivers and reservoirs east of the Wasatch mountains.
As anything of this complexity in flight simulator, this scenery demands plenty of
computing power (CPU speed and RAM). To achieve acceptable frame rates and a
smooth image, I recommended to install this scenery only if you are experienced in
tuning your FS installation for performance. You may follow the performance tips
outlined below.
To Install:
If you are not familiar with installing scenery files, please read Tim Dickens tutorial first. Point your browser to:
There's a flatten area in the stock scenery that will make the southern half of Antelope Island at the Great Salt Lake flat. The replacement file included in this archive will correct this problem.
This file replaces the stock scenery file from FS2000 of the same name. However, to make use of this file, the corresponding folder that contains it and all its files, must be installed on your hard disk.
If you have a full install of the simulator, this folder is already on your hard disk. Look for the folder
In the Scenery.CFG file you should see an entry like this (the area number and layer may not be 62 in your particular installation):
[Area.062]
Title=North Central US
Local=scenedb\westhem\usnc
Active=TRUE
Layer=62
After you have verified these conditions, go to the ...\USNC\SCENERY folder and rename the M5284431.BGL file to something like M5284431.BGX (to save as backup). Then extract the M5284431.BGL file from this ZIP archive into this folder.
If you don't have a full install, you can make a partial install of the area without having to reinstall the simulator. First create the folder
on your hard disk. Then go to the FS2k CD and copy all the files found under the
D:\SCENEDB\WESTHEM\USNC\SCENERY
folder into this folder. Then go to your Scenery.CFG file and look for the area that has
Title=North Central US
Replace the line that starts with Remote (just under the Title line) with the following line:
Local=scenedb\westhem\usnc
This should instruct the simulator to look for the USNC scenery in the hard disk instead of the CD.
Finally, make sure you replace the M5284431.BGL as described above with the file contained in this ZIP archive.
STEP 2. Terrain mesh and scenery files
The terrain mesh file is called slc30m10.bgl which you can install as any other scenery file. You may also install all the other BGL files (names start with OGD)
in the same folder as the terrain mesh file.
Here is a summary of the main steps, you can find more details in the tutorial cited above:
1) Place the BGL files into the scenery folder of your choice.
2) Start FS2000 and select Scenery Library from the World menu, then select Add area and find the folder where you placed the BGL files. Click OK and if needed, click the checkmark to make the scenery active.
3) To make sure the simulator installs the scenery file correctly the first time, quit the simulator and start it again. If you skip this step, you may risk crashing the simulator or your computer, or not having your scenery loaded correctly. This step is a workaround required because of possible bugs in the MSFS 2000 software.
Performance Tips:
Included is a screenshot (display_settings.jpg) of the display settings that can be used to evaluate the effect on frame rates of complex terrain mesh files like this one. In general, the "Terrain mesh complexity" setting can be moved from 100 to 1 (slide to the left), potentially doubling the frame rates in the process, though sacrificing some of the detail and accuracy of the elevated terrain. Visibility settings can also be reduced to no more than 60 nm. In addition, you may reduce or turn off the anti-aliasing settings for your video board, if any. Also, using the weather settings, you can set the visibility to less than 10 miles, thereby increasing the frame rates significantly. A minimum of 256 MBytes of RAM is recommended to minimize pauses. And remember, no matter what tweaks you apply, FS2k is not stutter free.
Technical Information ---
Level of Detail (LOD): 10
Corners of the area covered (WGS84):
NW NE
N 41.37500° W 112.37500° N 41.37500° W 111.25000°
N 40.12500° W 112.37500° N 40.12500° W 111.25000°
SW SE
Tools used:
Microsoft Terrain SDK ( http://www.microsoft.com/games/fs2000/devdesk.asp )
Microdem ( http://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pguth/website/microdem.htm ) (latest debugging version)
DEMconvert ( http://members.bellatlantic.net/~pguth/demconv.htm ) (version that can export BSQ files)
Terrascene2 was used to automate the download of most of the USGS 7.5 minute files.
Abacus Airport and Scenery Designer 2.1
Custom tool to convert DXF files to DAT format for appending into ASD 2.1 maps.
Notes about this first release:
1. FS2000 runways can only be rendered absolutely flat. That's the way it works. The side effect is that if an airport lies on terrain that is on a gentle slope, the flattening of the runway may create ridges around the airport that are not really there in real life. This is annoying and distracting, but there's no way around it.
2. Terrain mesh files don't change roads, rivers, coastlines and the placement of textures over the terrain. Odd things can happen such as floating lakes, rivers and roads, as well as farmland on top of a rain forest, snowless alpine elevations, or suburban streets on the sides of steep slopes, etc. However, the OGD files contained in this archive have many fixes to place some roads, rivers, lakes and reservoirs in the correct locations.
Other 30 Meter Resolution Projects I Have Previously Released:
1. Glacier National Park, Montana, USA (fca30m10.zip)
2. Los Angeles, California, USA (lax30m10.zip)(merges with Riverside Area)
3. St. Martin/St. Maarten, Caribbean (sxm30m11.zip)
4. San Diego County, California, USA (san30m10.zip)(merges with Phoenix Area)
5. Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA (cos30m10.zip)
6. Riverside Area, California, USA (ral30m10.zip)(merges with Los Angeles and San Diego areas)
7. Las Vegas Area, Nevada, USA (las30m10.zip)
8. El Paso, Texas, and South Central New Mexico, USA (elp30m10.zip)
9. Phoenix Area, Arizona, USA (phx30m10.zip)(merges with Tucson Area)
10. Tucson Area, Arizona, USA (tus30m10.zip)(merges with Phoenix Area)
11. Puerto Rico, Caribbean (purtmv1.zip)
Acknowledgements:
Dr. Peter Guth (creator of Microdem and DEMconvert) fine tuned his tools to make this work possible. He offered valuable insight on the method to use to convert multiple 7.5 minute DEM files into a single seamless terrain file for flight simulator.
Copyright and License to Use:
This archive is Copyright by Orlando Sotomayor. You have the right to use it for
your personal enjoyment. Redistribution on a commercial basis is strictly
prohibited. May 30, 2001.
