St. Maarten (St. Martin? :) ) Scenery Pack?

[Ursus]

I just had a twisted thought after I Stumbled across a page of photos of planes passing over the beach on St. Maarten... A really twisted thought...

It's kind of a short runway to use as a space port; it'd be almost (?!?!) impossible to land the shuttle there, but it'd be kind of fun... even if a person had to perform hover-engine assisted take-offs and landings. (Actually, I think a DG might be able to handle the strip without hovers.)

The really twisted part... If you think the

wreak havoc on the folks on the beach... just imagine what the rocket exhaust would do.

(Yes, this is a 90% serious add-on request... well, maybe 85% serious.)

Edit: Oh... the forum software embedded that YouTube link... oh, well, I guess it's still readable.

 

[Andy44]

Wow. Looks like you could surf away from the beach there, while losing your hearing in the process.

 

[dutchpirate]

I've actually been there and it's pretty unnerving watching the heavies come into that airport. The airport is closed by 9:00pm since it would be too loud to have traffic after that. The ramp is a postage stamp too. If your flight can't make it's arrival time, you can get held up for HOURS at your departure airport until another ramp slot becomes available.

 

[unussapiens]

Textures would be easy enough, but the people and sand getting blown away may be a bit harder.

Perhaps a modification on the hover dust addon?

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

Yes, I know the runway at Sint Maarten, the beach at the start is indeed a great place . I'll try to make a hires texture for the whole island in Orbiter.

Btw, if I remember correctly, the Dutch island Saba (near St Maarten and relatively small), has the shortest (commercial) runway of the world, the island looks very nice. Maybe this would be nice scenery too. But as it consist mainly of a mountain, just a flat texture in Orbiter would be a little boring, but maybe it is possible to make a 3D model for the island, like the Thunderbirds-Island addon on OrbitHangar.

regards,
mcduck

 

[Woo482]

can some one make this?

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

I have the island textures in Orbiter now, but I'm currently finetuning it before uploading to Orbit Hangar. It has 2 parts, one higher resolution for the area of/around the runway, and a little lower res for the whole island.

regards,
mcduck

 

[dutchpirate]

Heel mooi mijnheer!

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

Bedankt, dutchpirate

I can't seem to get the highres and low res tiles exactly alligned. Does anyone know if it is possible to give the surface tiles an offset, without the need of changing their position indices?

To prevent this offset problem, it would also be possible to have the whole island in high res, but in that case the download size would possibly get a little too big, around 60 Mb (zip).

regards,
mcduck

 

[Woo482]

use 7zip it has a high Compression Rate

 

[Ursus]

Wow... that is nice. :beach: I can see myself there on the beach, basking in the warmth of the rocket flames. :focusHmm... only "charred" smiley I can find on the forum.)

Saba does look like it would be interesting if someone wanted to make a mesh. That St. Maarten texture looks great even without any hills across the lagoon.

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

Still working on the scenery/tiles, but in this stage it is already fun to fly around there in Orbiter!
Currently, I am thinking about adding some palm trees to the base scenery, from [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=591"]Jim's scenery pack[/ame], if it doesn't eat up to many FPS.

Also, I'm waiting for a bug to be fixed in the tiling utility, but I have to test one more alternative that might work.


Some (a lot!) more good closeup photos can be found here.

regards,
mcduck

 

[Woo482]

If you want to use them do to versions one with them the other with out

 

[Pilot7893]

I sucessfully landed a shuttle there in FSX

 

[eveningsky339]

Ah yes... this is basically the only place people land in MFS... :beach: