Woohooo!!!!!!!! Santy delivered when AVSim couldn't, my waiting is over!!!

After installing and setting up, I'm proud to say that the VERY first thing I did before anything else was to add the JG300 Pigsty Scenery and change the default flight to start there. Then after activating the scenery (which takes place without having to exit and restart- cool!) my very very first flight was at the good ol' pigsty in the default Maule.

And it looked just 'ZACTLY like this (first pic is the very first thng I saw when the flight loaded):



























I haven't really even tweaked it up yet or spent much time on optimizing, even had my vid card settings off, so there's a ways to go yet.

Really happy to see this now, and next.....gotta get my TrackIR all set up!

Merry Christmas!!

very cool Stoopy,that's going to make some piggies very happy

VERY NICE! And....I think I see a great Screenshot Competition pic in there too...

Hmmm...well, I been away on some holiday vacation without 'net access, but it seems FSX has imported some weird varietal Zoysia grass into our sty...or maybe we finally got synthetic turf and we won't have to make the new guy cut it any more (Richard was whining about how it was wearing down his tail rotor blades edging the taxiways and besides...he threw a rock through the window of my 'Slade last month).

Do you still get smoke from the generator? How's the interior of the Seaplane Base? Looks good, overall. I don't have FSX and probably won't, for quite a while. We'll still needs textures fixed on those two aircraft at Phu bai eventually and I'll have to find some compatible trees....if my scenery program even works in that thing.

Time will tell!

Na, I just got tired of "wearing down my tail rotor blades edging the taxiways" and do you know how difficult it is to keep that main rotor blade steady while flyin upside down to mow that grass?

So I decided to load up the UH-1C with some surplus 55g drums of defoliant I found at an Army surplus store, somewhere between Barstow and Mojave, and do some mass spraying. The drums were dated 1968 "Property of the U.S. Army" but the guy behind the counter said it was safe. Kinda the Mother of all "Weed-Be-gones".

BTW those aren't rocks I'm throwing. They are official U.S. Army "Candy Grams".

Hmmm.......turns out to be excellent questions, and yep, closer inspection on the gen smoke, textures and Seaplane Base reveals some unfortunate - or interesting, depending on your point of view - details.

First off, looks like some transparency issues when flying in low-light conditions....in the below pic, taken at dawn, notice that the hangar sides are transparent. Also, no smoke from the generator (oddly we do have all the lights working so it brings to question just exactly what does that generator power and what have you been using it for all this time,??)



Next pic below: Taken at mid-day, hangar sides are now fine and still no generator smoke....but get this...at the mountain brewery, I DO get smoke for the generator there. So, maybe some f/x or texture issues to be looked into....



As for the Seaplane Base. Well, I'm not sure if this is due to the "round earth" model that FSX now has, meaning the ground is gently curved of course, and the edges of large airport sceneries which are absolutely flat will be raised out at the extreme edges...or if it's a case of FSX simply having different elevation data (likely the case). But, the Seaplane Base is now elevated some estimated 80-100ft. above the water and is located on sloping terrain which now intercedes with the base.

First clue that things aren't quite the same is as you approach the NE entrance and see ground texture inside the tunnel:



Here's an idea of how the whole base itself is now elevated....must been some big earthquake and/or mudslide that just shoved it up....



Gonna be one heckuva drop taxiing any seaplanes out of the base, and one heck of a short-field landing getting back in:



Entering the first (east-side) of the two main entrances, it's pretty obvious someone left the rear hangar doors open when that mudslide hit:



You can juuust squeeze through in a helo but the refueling area looks like a write-off for now:



And trying to get through to the second entrance is tough going through thick growth. There goes another set of rotor blades on the Loach....



Here's the view inside looking NE toward the Sty.....we've definitely got some erosion damage in the side tunnel....



And where's the Gaurd???? Can't believe he'd abandon his post.....of course with that tree in the way, there's not much fear of infiltrating aircraft...



A quick drop-down through the false floor reveals him stuffing himself on truffles and wild strawberries....again....



As for what scenery tools will work in FSX, I'd say that the best scenery tool is the new scenry creation SDK that comes with the deluxe version. I haven't installed it yet, but aim too very soon, and I was fortunate enough to sit through the presentation that MS gave on it at the AVSim convention. Looks very good, essentially all the scenery work is done from inside the sim for the most part. Since you're not looking to have this anytime soon, I'll keep ya posted on what I see with it....

Clearly we were short a few rivets in the corrugated sections that made up the secret seaplane base. That's what happens when you contract out to the lowest bidder. Didn't we give that one to the Iron Mule Construction Company? I'm thinkin' a call to our attorneys may be in order. Check for any force majeur clauses that they may try to weasel out on. It's not like it don't rain a lot west of the Cascades, ya' know.

Fortunately, I've been hangin' out at the brewery so I hardly noticed....

Or we can leave it as is and also use it for "Planet of the Apes" scenery.

"You did it, didn't you...You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Gawd damn you all to hell!"

LMAO!!!! Ain't it the truth, too. Actually the Pigsty, the Mountain Brewery, and the Com-C Wilderness Camp all survived pretty well compared to other Ascout Anomaly Airways productions......very sorry to say, bud, but after seeing the pix below you may very well be yelling.

Seems the shift in terrain data that they sourced for this version (a while different database than previous versions used) have eradicated the old anomalies, leaving some bizarre results in the wake.


In no particular order:

Area Fifty TWO:

Is now VERY lush and this is the scene starting out at the adjacent airfield:



The hill drops off at the far end of the runway.....



The "containment area" has been massively compromised, so much so that I didn't dare land again, knowing (or actually, NOT knowing) what could be roaming around....



Here's the road where the trucks were hauling the.....cargo.....fortunately none of 'em have tipped over....



Eagle's Nest and Eagle's Nest North:

Essentially, Millwood Lake is now completely filled back up to level with water, so no more 15,000' waterfall or sunken lake. A strange result is that when over water, you can "see" the runway down there but it's actually 15K' down....it 'follows' you the same way the moon stays in the same position while flying.

At the center of Eagle's Nest North, the flatten area actually causes an anomaly all it's own, which begs looking into, literally...



Considering the small width and considerable depth of the modified anomaly, this may still be worthwhile as a challenge all it's own...a hovering 15,000' descent all the way to the bottom.....I tried it from external view looking down and it quickly turns into a "Journey to the Center of Your Mind" kinda thing.....I failed, twice, but am gonna try again maybe with some Iron Butterfly or Donovan MP3's playing in the background to help.....



A bit farther down the edge of the lake, lies the fully-exposed Eagle's Nest.....no longer a retreat for diabolical masterminding, it's more like "Eagle's Summer Lakeside Nest" now.....and the strobe light on the Bell UH-1 still blinks, if that's any consolation....



Mountain Hideout, Secret Lair and Secret Base:

Since these all essentially took advantage of the sunken Stockton Lake anomaly, and it's been fixed too, it's another "Planet of the Apes" scenario.....weird scenes inside the goldmine, truly.......

Off to the right you'll notice the Secret Base is now not a terribly well-kept secret....and if you notice the very small grey line on the water, slanted at about a 30-degree angle, and located just above the Artificial Horizon at the bottom of the picture, that's the runway for the Secret Lair, way way down under the water....



The Secret Lair itself does kind of the same thing as the Mountain Hideout scenery does, but since it's now located under land there's a very cool....one might say even very diabolical......set of sawtooth-style hills around the hole it sits down in....



Also not far from there, one of our"shipments" shows up hopelessly landlocked. Seems we owe JG300-Lurps an apology for us accusing him of being the consumer of the beer that was noticed as missing. As a reminder, Lloyd's of London did finally reimburse us for this lost ship so let's just keep this picture to ourselves please....



Looking down the huge pit protected by the Diabolical Hills, the 10,000' drop looks a little more manageable than the other one.....gonna have to try this.....



Roirama Pt. 1 & 2:
Not sure what to say here....the oddest part is, Roirama Pt. 1 shows up but Pt. 2 doesn't! I double-checked my scenery library and both are there and enabled. Strange, and kind of a bummer becuase I really got a kcik out of pushing a glider to the edge of Pt.1, pushing it off the runway, and then seeing if I could pull out and land at Pt. 2 at it's slightly lower elevation.

But anyway, Pt. 1 still shows up as a huge elevated mesa, there's just no huge 60,000' peak anomaly to accompany it anymore.



The area itself is somewhat compressed in length and width though, so some facilities have been interestingly elevated as a result...note the small building on the near side of the runway is now juuuust a little bit tipsy......cubicle space must now be carefully selected to maintain a balanced work environment.....



Setting down to land and check it out, I gotta confess there's something about this view I found very...comforting, let's say.....can't put my finger on just what it is, though.....



And here's the view looking West.......hey we got earthquake insurance don't we???!!!!



And finally.....

Rotorhead Raceway:

Well if there's a time during all this that I fell down on my own knees and cursed them g***-Da**ed Ba**ids for nuking it all to H**L, this was it. She's there, in spirit, but...she's gone.

We have a very, very small teensy-weensy little crevasse that peeks down to the raceway runway of yore.....and a new (and re-adjusted) runway at ground level. The odd thing here is that the new runway is canted 10 degrees further than the old one, so the runway numbers are 34/16 instead of 33/15. Who knows why.



Kinda depressing to look past the Winner's Circle and no longer see the drop down into the Racing Canyon.....



All the above- and below-ground facilities are there of course:



One possibility for keeping this alive might be to use the "Gates" that FSX now provides.....there are a couple of missions that use 'em. A race course with timing gates, and a few horizontally-arranged gates to hover up or down through as part of the course, aren't entirely out of the question, perhaps,......

At any rate, looks like it's time to search for new Anomalies..they gotta be out there....

Some VERY interesting pics fellas and I had NO IDEA your engineering talents were so good!!

Make no mistake, it's all Ascout's talent. Yep. A multitude of fine scenery creations and releases under his belt.

Some of which are now misrendered in the latest sim......

Stoopy!

BTW, the pic that should have been submitted in the screenshot contest is this one... (Too late now I'm afraid...:wink:)



Great shot IMO...

It's the way of things, Stoop...little by little, the small, local dragstrips that you and I grew up with are fading into the past. Weekend warriors from Carlsbad Raceway to my own VERY distant past at Shuffletown Dragway north of Charlotte, NC are being gobbled up by developments and freeways and in the latter case were long since closed as noisy "nuisances" by the same people who decry illegal street racing and wonder why those dangerous contests take place. Brookshire Boulevard cuts right across the what had been the old deceleration lane. Now we can't even lay a sparky patch of screetching skids down the runway at Rotorhead Raceway. Just have a look below at what little can be found of the old Shuffletown where I fought many a battle in the late '60's.

It's so depressing, I'm not sure I'll even be able to take up the challenge of scenery design in FSX (and I ain't kiddin', neither...I need to move on to working on maintaining that other website thingy you know about...)

Sad times indeed.

Out of curiousity Stoopy, hows the Loach do in FSX?

I noticed the blacked out windows that appeared in the demo version don't seem to be there anymore but it almost looks like maybe they are now completely transparent......like there's no glass at all.

Have to admit I'm a little burnt out on having to re-learn what I've already learned to accomadate new versions (of FS and FSDS). Projects that I started and have now been sitting most likely won't see the light of day.