Coordinates?

[Scottler]

I'm a scenery newbie, and I'm trying to use FSSC...how do I find the coordinates for the location of the building I've built so I put it in the correct place on the globe?

Thanks!

[JohnP]

I am not familiar with FSSC, but I know with FSDS you would taxi a plane to the location that you wish to locate your building and park it there. You would then copy down the Latitude and longitude coordinates so you could enter them for your building location.
 Hope this helps a little.

[Hagar]

Easiest way is to go to the nearest airfield in Free Flight or fly to the area. Use Slew mode (Y key) to move to the exact location of your object. In Slew mode Q raises the aircraft. F1 puts it at ground level. Hit Shift + Z to bring up the co-ords. Take a screenshot to save writing it all down.

Once you have a few reference points for scaling purposes you can take a shot in Top Down view to use as a backdrop in FSSC.

[Scottler]

Crap, that's what I was afraid of.  Bleck.  lol  I did that last night, in the hopes that I'd only have to do it that way until someone gave me an easier way, and it worked.

So I went back into FSSC and created my building.  I must have obviously imported it incorrectly, though, because though it showed up in my scenery library, it didn't show up in the $im itself.  

Any suggestions?

[Firestriker]

While FSSC is a fine program, I prefer Airport for Windows. The latest version interfaces via FSUIPC to allow for extremely accurate placement of objects. Perhaps that feature will be incorporated in the next release of FSSC.

[Scottler]

Is Airport freeware or payware?  I make very, very few exceptions to my protest of payware releases, and try as hard as I can to stick to only freeware applications.

(I've made probably three exceptions to this rule since F$98...lol)

[Firestriker]

Yes, it is freeware.

You can get it at most of the sim sites or directly from

http://www.airportforwindows.com/

also you will need another freeware item for the FS interface. FSUIPC, also avalible on most of the sim sites.

Just for your own information, I have done some checking and here is a little bit of trivia. The distance between two  lat/long positions like say
N41* 51.53 W087* 36.56
N41* 51.54 W087* 36.56
is 60.78 feet.

If you add 0.00220 to a lat/long position you move 1 foot. like this
N41* 51.53 W087* 36.56 to
N41* 51.53 W087* 36.560220
In this case you would move 1 foot to the west.

[maskrider_01]

Hiya Hyperion,

FSSC is a great program, but it does have a learning curve.

I think what you need to is start out with a location and then build your building.  

If you have a specific place in the world in mind then find the coordinates, lat/lon of the location and make those cordinates the "scenery center" in the "Header Properties" dialogue box of FSSC "File" -> "New"  dialogue box.

There are no real short cuts to getting the lat/lon coordinates and altitude of a location.

Indispensible to me is MS Encarta Virtual Globe. I use it to get all of my intitial locations- first I "Find" the location that I am interested in then I get the lat/lon from the location sensor.

I then go into CFS2 with those coordinates and start there in Free Flight.  I usually use my Corsair since I know that I am sitting 6.63 feet above the ground when in the cockpit.

Once at your chosen location, as was suggested, go into "slew" mode and hit "Shift"+"Z" to bring up the altitude and coordinate read out. Hit the space bar once ( to get yourself facing true north ), hit "F1" once ( to make sure you are on the ground ).  Then, in spot plane view, take a look around, if you like the location, then fine.

Go into top down view, make sure true north is at the top of the screen- ( hit the "Space" bar ). Then with whatever screen capture utility you use, I use an old freeware version of Printkey, make a screenie of the view.

Theoretically, where the cross hairs cross in your top down view, should also be the coordinates of the scnery center that you established earlier- as long as you haven't slewed you plane away from that location.

So, importing this screenie as a "scaling" background image in FSSC, and aligning the crosshairs with the scenery center circle in FSSC should ensure that the backgound image is centered- however, don't count on it!

Now your next problem is making surethat the new background image is scaled to the proper size. If it isn't then, your scenery objects, as you add them in the FSSC layout window, will not turn out looking right when viewed in CFS2.

The only way I have found to successfully scale the background image, is to put a runway at the the base center. Make it 4000 feet long and 200 feet wide with a cement texture- so that it easily seen. Then, after making your screenie and imported it into FSSC as a background image it is easily scaled by making sure that the runway in the background image, fits exactly into the runway outline in FSSC's layout window. This also helps to ensure that any inacuracy in the cross hair location is taken care of. If the Background image fits into the runway outline in the FSSC layout window, then the image is scaled and located correctly and from then on additional scenery objects can be layed out with confidence.

Once you are set up, and if you do not desire a runway in your scenery, just dump it.

So, in summary, what you need to do, is to go to your location, get the altitude reading, then go back into FSSC and create an initial scenery file that contains a runway and a "Flat Area" set to whatever altitude you determined it to be ( remember the readout included the height of the cockpit- so subtract 6.63 feet, for example if you are in a corsair ). Then go back and take your top down scaling screenie.

One other note on scaling the background image in FSSC, I have found that it usually works out to multiples of 7. Such as 7, 14, 28, etc., depending upon how many times you have hit the "[" key.

I know this is an awful lot to get a hold of, but building airfields and scenery with FSSC is a bit of a process.

Also, make sure you have all of your folder locations set up prperly in FSSC preferences section. This will help eliminate having to look for you BGL files.

Cheers,  Chris

[_526th_Fireman]

That's from "The Man" himself in scenery design. I wished I had his knowledge of the process.

For those of you who don't know, Mask Rider is the best looking scenery out there for CFS2. Not sure if you dabble in scenery for other Flight Sims MR. If you don't have any of his scenery then you need to visit his site and download a sample. It is awesome.

Hey MR!  Good to hear from you again. Wrote you awhile back but guess you were too busy. Hope all is well and as always, looking forward to the next batch of fields. Too bad "the site" went down. Caused a tumoil on the Zone. lol

Take care and keep up the good work.