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A new section has been added. It will keep you updated with the progress of GroundMaker beta 5. Read more...
GroundMaker development has been halted for a long time because of testing problems with FS2002. It is still unclear whether it will be developed in the future. A new version is being worked on but I cannot promise anything yet... GroundMaker can be downloaded from here again! Note that there are problems using GroundMaker scenery in FS2002... Thank you for your patience...
Some users have not been able to run Groundmaker beta 4 because of an ActiveX error (error 429) message shown when launching GroundMaker. At last a fix has been found... Read more on the help page....
It has been reported that dotted lines and lighted taxiway lines flicker in the new Flight Simulator version (FS2002). There is no fix for that at the moment but GroundMaker will be gradually updated for compatibility within next weeks.
You can now read the help online, without having to download it. The online help will be updated as new features or updates become available. Find out more on the help page....
GroundMaker beta 4.0 is available for download at last! Here are some of the changes and improvements that have been made:
Download beta 4.0, view screenshots.
What is GroundMaker? GroundMaker is a FREEWARE airport scenery design tool for the Microsoft Flight Simulator. Although it is still in beta stage it is 100% functional. Interesting features such as a taxiway sign tool or support for OpenGL rendering (shows textured shapes on the drawing area) have been added recently. GroundMaker scenery only works with FS2000 (Flight Simulator). This program is aimed at the average as well at the advanced scenery designer. Add polygons, taxiway centerlines, roads, dotted lines, tree lines, forests, taxiway signs, runways, 3D objects and more to your airport. All these shapes can be copied, pasted, deleted, dragged, mirrored, rotated, scaled and edited. Furthermore you can place objects on top of your ground scenery: runways, VORs, NDBs and 3-D objects (API macros). Your scenery can be compiled and copied to your scenery directory with the click of a button... GroundMaker is the perfect utility for creating small flat scenery areas (6 x 6 miles). If you want to design landscapes, there are other programs written for that purpose. With GroundMaker you get full FS2000 compatibility. There is no need to make any manual changes to CONFIG files in order to make your scenery work. All shapes and objects, including world menu entries (to access your airport in FS), exclude switches (to hide any interfering default FS airports) and flatten polygon (makes the airport flat in order to avoid visual artifacts) are complied in one FS scenery file. Why another airport design tool, you will ask? GroundMaker has advanced feature such as setting the order of appearance of polygons (allows you to make layered scenery), a user-friendly interface featuring selection of multiple shapes, special edit features (rotate, mirror, scale, edit single points, copy, paste), support for Level Of Detail (LOD, improves performance of complex sceneries in FS) that give you more freedom and flexibility in the process of designing.
Features Here a closer look at how GroundMaker works and what you can do with it. Two types of scenery items can be added to your scenery in the drawing area: shapes and objects. A shape can be one of the following: Standard colored or textured polygon (Poly), texture mapped polygon (TexPoly - polygons where you assign a texture coordinate to each polygon point), textured or colored solid line (use for taxiway centerlines or roads), dotted line (use for taxiway night light effects), tree line (gives the illusion of woods or buildings surrounding the airport) and flatten polygon (a polygon that flattens the mesh scenery under the airport so that ground scenery displays correctly). All shapes (except the flatten polygon) can have optional night switches enabled in order to be hidden at a desired 'time of day' (dusk/dawn, day or night) or to be illuminated for night effects. Shapes make use of the new LoadBitmap command that allows to use different textures depending on the time of day and season. The voluminous forest tool has been added recently. Following objects are implemented: API macro (3-D object), VOR, NDB, runway (new FS2000 type), initial location, exclude (to exclude the default scenery - only works with FS2000 patch 1 or higher installed) and taxiway signs. GroundMaker supports LOD (Level Of Detail) for polygons and lines. This feature improves performance of Flight Simulator because only the shapes close to the viewer are drawn in full detail. It can be disabled if you want all your shapes to be displayed simultaneously at the highest quality. Multiple items can be selected, dragged, copied, pasted, saved, imported, rotated and scaled. Multi-selection of points inside a shape is also possible. Shapes can be converted to another type of shape. Great for giving different shapes the same properties. Anyway, thank you for your patience and for being interested in trying out this product. GroundMaker will be FREEWARE and your feedback is very appreciated in order to make a quality product for the flight-sim community. |
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