Praise indeed

19°C, light clouds, clearing later.


Nice response to my Chernobyl scenery for FSX:
Simviation Forum, he said:

I just want to praise this scenery, it’s probably one of my favorite all time spots to hover around now in fsx. My only request is that this scenery be expanded to add the city of pripryat (cant spell it worth a crap) and mabe the unfinished reactor… oh and chernobyl 2 http://pix.fine.kiev.ua/egor/gallery/0000b02w I just really want to have it feel like when i fly in that area that i’m actually flying there….

It’s broken the 1000 downloads point now just on AVSim alone. There are numerous other hosts that don’t detail the number of downloads. Anyway, I do intend to work out how to add in Pripyat; the current landclass poly is hardly ideal. It would be perfect if I could place the Ferris-wheel, the Polyssia Hotel and the tower blocks.
Here’s the link to the v1. if any readers want it (Microsoft Flight Sim X only): ChernNPP
ChernNPP_v2

St. Kilda for FSX

26°C, warm sunny day, but rain now.


FSX scenery: I’ve just put together a cluster of islands for FSX: St. Kilda off the west coast of Scotland. There was nothing by default in the Sim, but this has worked a treat. The water texture must have suppressed the 3D mesh because the topography is very convincing. I don’t yet know whether that is a result of the add-on mesh, it may be flat in standard installations. It could probably do with a coastline texture, normally I don’t bother with those but it would give that slightly foamy wave pattern on the rocks.
2008-7-1_21-35-11-546

Uploaded scenery for FSX

18°C, Changable, mosrly bright


FSX scenery: Uploaded the River Angara file tonight. Thus:
River Angara, Siberia
Scenery for FSX: to replace a 380 miles section of this major river that drains from Lake Baikal in Siberia to the North.
From  N58° 57.191′ / E101° 14.592′
to:
N58° 6.028′ /  E92° 59.629′
The default section of the river are left untouched.
The default scenery shows this river empty, except for coastlines. For a waterway that is up to 3 miles wide, and a source of hydro-electric power, this is some omission. This scenery fills the gap. I have tried to set the river’s shape to fit seamlessly with the default water shapes, this includes using a similar number of corner points.
As a bonus, I have placed autogen polygons to represent the some of the bigger villages/towns from Kezhma to Strelka.
To install, simply drop these files into your addon scenery folder and run FSX. Make sure, of course, that Addon scenery is listed in the Scenery manager.
The optional file VFR Bratsk R_Angara can be placed in:
My Documents>Flight Simulator X Files
It is a flight plan you can use to make finding the river easier if you are unfamiliar with Siberia.
Hope they like it, the last one has now just about reached 1,000 downloads from one site, good eh?
The Harlech & Llanbedr area is starting to look right. It should be ready fairly soon, I’ll show you another day.

Solaris

18°C, rain


Solaris: a film by Tarkovsky, as you know, I like Tarkovsky’s films. This one was released around the time of Kubrik’s 2001 a Space Odessy. Solaris has dated less well  than the American counterpart, is my initial opinion. That means that Stalker rates more highly for me. Cinematography is where this film-makers appeal lies for me. He shoots moving pictures, and each shot in the film could be printed as a picture and seen in its own right. Stalker has better pictures – I would say.

Divert a river

14°C, rain.


2008-5-16_19-39-2-218

  1. Use object placement tool to put an object on each corner of the river’s origonal course, then save the xml placement file.
  2. Open the xml in notepad, open Google Earth as well.
  3. Open Google Earth, under Tools>Options set Show Lat/long to Universal Transverse Marcator
  4. Put placemarks in the same co-ordinates as the objects, Copy & paste the corordinates from the xml file. In this case, I had to place 6 objects.
  5. Draw the river’s polygon so that it ended at the placemarks.
  6. Complile the KMl to bgl as normal.

This has worked well apart from a road that crosses the river, as well as a ridge in the water that stubbornly refuses to dissappear. I have noticed other ridges further upstream in Miicrosoft’s own river polygons; so maybe there is another fault not of my making.
Kezhma-Siberia

Upload + 24 hours

17°C, clear afternoon, but fresh E wind.


24 hours on: 361 downloads from AVSim. No direct feedback yet, but for one email requesting a recompile to a previous version of the Sim.
 
River Angara is substantially done now, it is at the fine tuning stage where I’m matching up the new river with the existing one in FSX.
R_Angara join

Release to AVSim

22-17°C, clear then suddenly- clouds.


AVSim: This second attempt to upload my FSX Scenery to AVSim is, I hope, more successful than the first. We should be impressed with their professionalism I suppose- the first was rejected because I’d missed some details in the readme file. I have another project to follow soon.
2008-4-26_20-32-21-156

Core 2 Quad

20°C, rain am, Sun pm;


It took ages to fit, partly because I was so careful about it, but also, I put the heatsink’s support frome in the wrong way. It presents some interesting problems, some games don’t benfit much, but 3DS Max and photoshop work at double speed with it. The BIOS reports it running at 600Mhz, but in use it does runn well. Oddly, Windows 2000 pro only shows 2 cores running in Task Manager. Either, Task manager in Win2K only displayes 2 cores, or maybe, Win 2K doesn’t support more than 2. Very strange that last possibility since it supports multi-processors right from the first service pack.

Quad core

13°C, showers.


Scan.co.uk is a hardware supplies place in the UK, who offer computer componants are decent prices along with a very wide range to choose from. Today should have seen a quad-core processor delivered here. They only deliver when all decent folks are out at work. Therefore, on Saturday I will have to drive there to collect it, about 12-15 miles from here, a journey that will negate the cost benefit of buying mail-order. There’s no point using them again because of this.