Antarctica X Preview (released, topic closed)

[daytonite_andy 0]

Hi,

Excellent news. There used to be a regular route flown from the Falkland Islands (Stanley SFAL) to Rothera by a Dash 7. I know there is a great freeware mesh of the Falklands on Avsim.

Althought I do feel the scenery would not be complete without the US and Norwegian research stations from the movie 'The Thing.' Think about the missions eh?

I'm saving for my Cowboy hat already.

Andrew

[joerg 14]

That sounds great, I can remember how much I was in the need for such a scenery some weeks ago, when there was the Antarctic-Event held by the NewZealand Division...

Will the scenery work witz FSGlobalX Mesh and will the addon-scenery-runways allow better brake conditions than the default runways?

(With that I mean, that you don't have to apply reverse-thrust to keep standing where you are...)

THX,

Joerg

[Sasa 951]

I know, but despite of that i have to ask one question: are you going to include the Amundsen-Scott station

which is located on the south pole?

I'm sorry to say no. Just have a look at the link I gave to see why.

Btw: If you get as far as South Pole (what you can't - in FSX and FS9), you can't use LAT/LON GPS systems anymore. I pilot told me they don't work down there because the Longitude changes so quick, even when you taxi slowly, that they just crash.

Bests,

Sascha

[FLighT 0]

The entire continent? WOW! I've been wanting this forever. Yes, it might appear bland or boring with it's all white terrain, but there are some spectacular mountain ranges in the interior of the continent. Hopefully the mesh will be sufficiently detailed. A must buy for me.

Rats. Finally got Limesim's site to load, looks like nothing south of 85 degrees due to FSX limitations, so no interior. You'd think there'd be a way around this but I guess not.

[Sasa 951]

Rats. Finally got Limesim's site to load, looks like nothing south of 85 degrees due to FSX limitations, so no interior. You'd think there'd be a way around this but I guess not.

Yes, that's a limitation. It is the whole continent as it can be done in FSX, but the central part is not there. It's not only a FSX limitation - there isn't even any data for further down that S85°. Landing at the South Pole would certainly be something nice for your records but to be honest: It's not really interesting down there. The central part is really just white and boring while the coastal areas, the peninsula and the mountain ranges further north are way more interesting for flying.

Bests,

Sascha

[Chaders 97]

Hi All,

If anyone questions why they can't include anything below 85S have a look at whats at the top of the world. When FSX first came out I took a Default 738 to the geographic north pole so see just how round FSX's 'Round earth' really was. Have a look at the lines on the nose of the aircraft, this is where the 2 sides of the FSX world join at the top. There is no way anything could be built there.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the continent

[warbird861 0]

Hi All,

If anyone questions why they can't include anything below 85S have a look at whats at the top of the world. When FSX first came out I took a Default 738 to the geographic north pole so see just how round FSX's 'Round earth' really was. Have a look at the lines on the nose of the aircraft, this is where the 2 sides of the FSX world join at the top. There is no way anything could be built there.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the continent

Also pay visit to default FSX south pole station. It's quit interesting.

[Welmux 4]

There is no way anything could be built there.

Yep, there's the edge of the two halves - but why can't you build anything?

I was once going to build a scenery of that pole station myself, but because of lack of time

all i have done is that i tested to place some buildings in the pole area with the object placer

tool that comes with the SDK. That was a very simple test, but i was able to put the houses there.

My suggestion is that if you can place buildings near the pole (there aren't any buildings IRL on top of the pole itself),

put at least the main buildings of the base there. Even if GPS won't work there you could then fly there. This feature could

be described in the documentation so that everything doesn't work in the pole, but some buildings

have been added there to make the scenery more realistic.

Welmux

[howboi 0]

Hello,

As an ex-Coastie (U.S. Coast Guard), who served two years on an icebreaker and made two trips to the Antarctic, I think it would be an excellent idea to have an icebreaker in this scenery with a usable helo pad. Excellent images are available of the U.S.C.G.C Polar Sea and Polar Star, the two main icebreakers of the U.S. Seahawk/Jayhawk would be excellent if compatible with the Antarctic scenery.

Of course, many other nations also have icebreakers that visit the South, most also with helo pads.

Just an idea. Thank you for great scenery, I enjoy TahitiX immensly.

Howard

[Sasa 951]

Yep, there's the edge of the two halves - but why can't you build anything?

I was once going to build a scenery of that pole station myself, but because of lack of time

all i have done is that i tested to place some buildings in the pole area with the object placer

tool that comes with the SDK. That was a very simple test, but i was able to put the houses there.

Ok, let me get this more clear: Placing 3D objects down there is actually no problem. What is a problem is the terrain. See attached screenshot how it looks down there when you create a mesh terrain that is only slightly better than the default flat area. No even considering how to place aerial images down there. FSX is still based in geographic LAT/LON projection. You can't place any larger aerial images down there without running into problems. For FSX the South Pole has a size of 0, but this 0 includes the whole LON range of 360°. Further up this range covers about 44000kms, here it's all merged in one single pixel!

Anyway: I don't really get it why so many people here limit a whole continent, that is bigger than Europe or Australia (!), on that single pixel in an area that is one of the most boring ones in Antarctica (except for numbers jumping on the GPS, right). You neither limit Europe on Rome or Australia on Ayers Rock, do you?

Excellent images are available of the U.S.C.G.C Polar Sea and Polar Star, the two main icebreakers of the U.S.

Cool! I will send you a mail, ok?

Bests,

Sascha

[scott967 0]

I played around with the continent myself, moreso in fs2k2 and some in FS9. I was mainly interested in McMurdo, but it was really hard in fs2k2. I did a little work on FSX. It is easy to work the terrain data with it in polar stereographic projection. The problem comes once you export into lat/long for FSX everything gets so distorted its hard to visualize what you see.

The question I have, is what are you doing about sea level? Are you modeling ice shelves or sea ice as above sea level? How do you transition to sea level? that was the problem I was faced with using the DEM data I had.

scott s.

.

[Sasa 951]

I did a little work on FSX. It is easy to work the terrain data with it in polar stereographic projection.

Can you explain this a little further, please? For all I know resample.exe can only work with geographic lat/lon projection.

The water will be at 0, the ice shelves will be at the DEM's altitude.

Bests,

Sascha

[scott967 0]

Can you explain this a little further, please? For all I know resample.exe can only work with geographic lat/lon projection.

The water will be at 0, the ice shelves will be at the DEM's altitude.

What I meant was, I try to do all I can in GIS software while in the polar stereographic projection, so things look real. The last step is to reproject to lat long for resample or shp2vec, because once you reproject it becomes very hard to keep straight what you are looking at (for example, if you import the shape vectors into SBuilderX it is difficult to do much , except run the bgl compile).

The DEM I was using was from SCAR I think, and in some areas it was showing an elevation in areas of water of up to 15 meters. I never did decide if it was best to force all water to 0 m, or try to model the ice somehow. This was in fs9 though. In some areas, such as the Ross Ice Shelf by McMurdo it seemed OK but off the shore in other areas not so easy to decide where the edge of the ice should be. It probably would be easier in FSX.

Here is some DEM where black = sea level and blue = ice above sea level. You can see it needs at least some work to be useful. But maybe there is a better DEM dataset these days.

scott s.

.

[Sasa 951]

but off the shore in other areas not so easy to decide where the edge of the ice should be. It probably would be easier in FSX.

No, it isn't easier here. All I will do is to force all the water at 0m. This will result in some cliffs at the coastline but as at least 95% of the coastline is covered with ice (and therefore more or less deep cliffs) it won't matter very much. Keep in mind this is a flightsim - we are not trying to drive around in "Ivans" for thousands of kilometers but flying.

Bests,

Sascha

[Zemke 1]

Excellent project, the Twin Otter and C130 will have a nice playing ground there, especially if you can modelize snow winds. If I recall it well, it has been done in freeware for FS9 somewhere in Tongass Fjord.

Exciting to follow the development of a new continent in FS, it has never been done before!

Nice additions will be various ice presence in the see following seasons (no idea whether this is possible in FS!) and a nice airport in Christchurch NZ to start the tour round the various stations with the C 130. Another one in Ushuaia for the Twin Otter would be perfect.

[KC 0]

Mawson's Hut at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, is a very famous Australian Antarctic historic site. It would be great if this could be included in the scenery.

Ken

[JamesChams 108]

For the center of the glaciers or inland, I saw a DVD documentary that showed this:

A lake formed on the glacial ice melt.

Possibly due to global warming; exposed terrain

Can you add features like this as "points of interest" for scenic flight and, perhaps, missions?

[Juergen_LOWW 21]

Hi Sasa

Are there any first screenshots for all the hungry and interested Antarctica-Afficionados in several other forums ?

[Paul K 93]

Concerning flying with real world weather updates, does anyone know what the weather reporting coverage is like in the Antarctic ? Can you only get weather data from the research base areas, or is the whole continent covered ?

[Sasa 951]

@ James

I'm not sure yet if Sky Blu will be done. If yes, you will have a blue ice runway there to land. Blue ice is some extremely compact and transparent type of ice.

Your second picture shows the Dry Valley area close to McMurdo. It's one of the driest areas in Antarctica and therefore large areas there are snow free. It's not global warming. What's the name of that documentary?

@ Juergen

Nope. Those are the only screenshots available as yet. I will post new ones as soon as I get them.

@ Paul

Have to do some research on this. I know that one of a Twotter pilot's jobs is to fly across the continent and land somewhere in the outback to install new weather stations. But I have no idea if the data those gather is freely available.

Bests,

Sascha

[JamesChams 108]

Mr. Sasa,

@ James

I'm not sure yet if Sky Blu will be done. If yes, you will have a blue ice runway there to land. Blue ice is some extremely compact and transparent type of ice.

Your second picture shows the Dry Valley area close to McMurdo. It's one of the driest areas in Antarctica and therefore large areas there are snow free. It's not global warming. What's the name of that documentary?....

Sky Blu ice runway? - The 1st picture, I posted, is of glacial melt that has formed a lake within the ice and deep caverns where divers can swim; info. from the documentary; I thought that it would be something that would enhance the appeal of the overall package. The other region was described as ice-thinning as a result of global warming. But, I don't know enough about it; so your probably right. Finally, here is the DVD documentary info. you wanted....

The documentary is:

ANTARCTICA

An Adventure Of A Different Nature

Presented in IMAX Theaters

I found it interesting and full of scenic location footage from the South Pole Base to others...

Maybe, it will give you the data that you wanted for the South Pole Base, etc.?

What ever you can do to make this product as enjoyable and fun, all power to you; Good Luck!

[KPD 0]

Awesome.

Though I guess this means I have to update my BAS repaint for the Twotter. Hmm... Maybe a multipack including all four serial numbers. We'll see...

[Paul K 93]

I think the Aerosoft Catalina in a BAS livery would look rather nice !

[Matt_B_1978 1]

If this product is yet to be released and you guys would like to include a real-world route from Sydney, Australia to Antarctica and back again I can provide it for you. It is the actual flight plan for a scenic Qantas flight in a Boeing 747-438ER I did a few years ago. It took around 13 hours flying time. Qantas do a few of these flights during the Southern Hemisphere summer annually. It's definitely worth the expense if you get the opportunity to do it! I could also provide some pictures from the flight if you like? Please let me know.

Kind regards,

Matthew

[SGTMAJOR 1]

I just stumbled on this thread while searching for something else..... WOW... Looks great and perfect timing. I've been planning on trying to do a flight to the South Pole..... now looks like you may have just what I'm waiting for.

One of my college instructors had 14 years of Antartica experience..... micro-biologist. Had a GREAT slide show he would present to his students at the end of term for any that was interested. Needless to say.... I attended every chance I could. Great Stuff!! I've been fascinated with Antartica ever since.

Good luck..... you already have one sale here. (smile)

Cheers,