Author Topic: Coming Soon: "The Western Chugach - Part 1: From Seward To Summit Lake (52Z)"  (Read 3088 times)

stiletto2

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The Western Chugach Scenery Series
                                                                   
One of the things that RTMM has been focused on since last summer is getting "from Here To There".  In other words, it is not just about your destination.  It is about enjoying the trip, the flying, the environment , the ORBX scenery and the RTMM add-ons that bring the "bush" to life.  However, there is another aspect that many of us don't get to experience.  The level of detail below us, as we fly from one location to another, is just not detailed enough to create the fleeting images of developed land in sparsely populated areas that make us yearn to know more about what we are flying over.   

Just north of Seward and the Kenai Mountains, lies a stunningly beautiful piece of scenery at the western edge of the Chugach National Forest and the Chugach Mountains .  This rugged area straddles the famous Seward Highway and the Alaska Railroad.  It can be reached via car by taking the Seward Highway north from Seward along Snow Creek and on into the Kenai and Trail Lakes areas and beyond.   Probably due to lack of good digital data and the sheer size of southern Alaska,  ORBX SAK depicts very little terrain/object detail in this popular hiking and camping area in terms of settlements, business areas, towns, creeks, hiking trails etc. and makes only basic enhancements to campgrounds and airports.  Existing aerial photography shows, however, that there is a lot more to see than what the ORBX SAK region software displays.   

"The Western Chugach" is planned to be a series of four RTMM scenery enhancements by Rod Jackson that sit on top of the ORBX SAK region and provide a lot of the missing detail in order to make the "Here To There" experience in the Western Chugach more "true to life".  The Western Chugach will give the RTMM pilot a more detailed view of the landscape that spreads out below them including creeks winding up to glacial headwaters, populated campsites, hiking trails, and the people, vehicles, buildings and general clutter in the small towns and settlements.   What makes this scenery different from most of the existing RTMM sceneries is that the majority of "added detail" scenes can only be flown over without any grass strip or airfield in sight just like in real life.  In addition, in some cases, the added smaller scenes and creeks are so integrated into the scenery that at first you can't even see the difference from standard SAK due to the tree umbrella etc. just like in real-life   This creates a bit of a  challenge for a fixed wing pilot to see all that there is to see while offering extra detail to our rotary wing users who can just dip down low and "gape".  The more detailed enhancements will be along the major highways in the area:   The Seward Highway, The Hope Highway and the eastern part of the Sterling Highway.

Documentation will be provided that helps educate the "bush flyer" who wants to know more real-life information about the detailed areas that they are flying over.  The added object and terrain detail in this scenery series (though not photo-real) is designed to be "photo-similar" based on available aerial photography.   The terrain and object enhancements are location specific enough that many small retail/commercial/industrial locations can be identified using a provided table that contains mile marker locations and descriptions such as "Joe's Roadside Store" or "Mabel's Bed and Breakfast".  However, the objects (e.g. buildings) used in these sceneries are all from the current RTMM Object Libraries so no custom photo-real objects were created to match actual real-life objects.  Nevertheless, the overall effect is pretty realistic.

The Western Chugach coverage area:



The Western Chugach Parts:

     
       
Coming Soon: The Western Chugach - Part 1: From Seward To Summit Lake (52Z)

The Western Chugach - Part 1 adds isolated enhanced areas of scenery that begin at Mile Marker 13.5 along the Seward Highway heading North and end at Mile Marker 46.0.  Isolated terrain and object enhancements may stretch up to 5 miles on each side of the highway.  This means that over 200 square miles of terrain were reviewed before the enhancements were made in The Western Chugach - Part 1 scenery package.

Part 1 uses the RTMM Season Switcher to control seasonal object placement and density, provide winter time ice in Ptarmigan Creek and restrict AI Float operations to Spring and Summer.  In order to maximize frame rates almost all added foliage is autogen. 

Part 1 features:

-Small, season-sensitive, hand painted and annotated (with autogen foliage) photo-similar areas of interest including some residential areas, small commercial areas and small towns or settlements (e.g. Crown Point, Kenai Lake Work Center and Moose Pass)

-Key missing water vectors (e.g. Ptarmigan Creek and Falls Creek) have been hand crafted into the proper topographical location

•   Custom creek outlets override ORBX shorelines
•   Several creeks include a slight glacial color change at their outlets
•   Most added creeks are  depicted from headwaters to outlet
•   Most creeks ice over in winter but the larger and fast-moving Ptarmigan Creek includes  icy/open water (even in January) at lower elevations creating a small open water area at its outlet in an ice-covered lake

-Many added poly enhancements for better conifer coverage in certain areas, topographical adjustments to enable better creek depiction as required , insertion of many dirt and gravel road & driveway vectors, as well as many custom poly additions to depict small commercial and residential locations. 

- Two highly visible trails: The Carter Lake Trail and Crown Point Mine Trail for ATVs.  These trails have been depicted in their entirety using dirt road vectors.

-9Z9 airfield enhancements focused on more realistic visuals including a custom textured unkempt gravel runway and working windsock.

-AI Floatplane departures from private dock at Moose Pass in Spring and Summer (Special Thanks to  Dexter Thomas for this capability)

-Corrections to a few ORBX SAK scenery errors including water walls (elevation issues) and trees on tracks

-Precision placement of objects in many different scenes that make up the overall enhanced scenery including an alternate object placement file for FSX users in high elevations areas to account for the difference between the tessellated P3D depiction of terrain and the non-tessellated depiction in FSX.

-List of modeled real-life locations along the Seward Highway by mile marker including descriptions and, in many, cases, hyperlinks to the real-life web pages.

- Added bonus of two hospitals  (one in Seward and one in Anchorage) with Helipads for medevac activities complete with their real-life ICAO codes so that Helicopter flights can originate from the helipads and flight plans can be made that include the helipad as a waypoint or destination.    (Special thanks to Steve Weinkamer for developing the ADEX files to allow this).  Under a separate set of releases, a number of RTMM Medical Dispatches are being developed that will require The Western Chugach - Part 1 scenery. 

Pictures are worth a thousand more words so here is a link to almost 40 Part 1 pics.  Just click on the link below and then click on the first picture and the displayed album will let you arrow through each picture.   Caption is at the bottom left below each picture.
                                   
The Western Chugach - Part 1 Picture Album link:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/p06bsnzjakw2kiv/AACt5eO3laaol9C9jj0QuSCsa?dl=0

Release date of The Western Chugach - Part 1 is planned for April.

Rod
« Last Edit: March 22, 2015, 05:32:06 PM by stiletto2 »

corbu1

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Rod,
This is simply amazing.....a new jewel in RTTM world!!!


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ualani

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Stunning, Rod! I know how long you've been working on this and now I see why.
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Bradallen43

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 ;) With great anticipation we all await!

Brad

stiletto2

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Thanks, guys!  I can't wait to get this one out the door. The trouble is I keep wanting to fly around and enjoy the scenery :)

Rod