no buildings at all around airports??

[2P-13]

Hi all, new to XP11, wondering if I missed something when researching this Sim;
My local class D airport has very few buildings around it...and another local small airport looks about like it did in 1896, except the roads and cement areas are where they should be...
I have most everything turned up in graphic settings...
Even a miss-placed building would be nice...
SFO looked good, lots of heavy iron on the tarmac and at the gates...
in XP11, is the user responsible for finding and placing their own sceneries??
Planes fly fine, and shooting an ILS approach worked as it should...just scratching me head
regarding the sceneries...All XP ads show some neat footage....

Thank you,
Tom W.

[🐉 Ðŗąçø 🐉]

What airport is it?

[2P-13]

Santa Rosa, Ca. KSTS
and the nearby small airports; Healdsburg, Cloverdale, Petaluma....I understand those being sparse, but not so much Santa Rosa...

[2P-13]

hoping I just didnt set something up right...Santa Rosa is completely flat, except for a light pole! LOL
The ILS works fine tho! I guess that is most important. for now

[🐉 Ðŗąçø 🐉]

As far as I can tell, the scenery looks correct. There are plenty of houses and trees around the airport, but no buildings or whatever inside the airport - only the navigational essentials.

The reason for no airport buildings is because nobody has designed anything in 3D for this airport yet. Airports in X-Plane 11 rely on something called the scenery gateway, a system which allow the community to design and upload airports which will come as default with X-Plane. Unfortunately, KSTS is not one of them.

Of course, you're always welcome to make KSTS yourself... But as you are new to X-Plane, I'd go against doing this. It's a long, tedious and very repetitve process.

[2P-13]

oh wow....so the final version of X-plane 11 will have corrected airport scenery once the community designs them? interesting....
Is xplane.org the place to get the most and best ones (outside of pay for ware)?
Thank you...

[🐉 Ðŗąçø 🐉]

Originally posted by 2P-13:

oh wow....so the final version of X-plane 11 will have corrected airport scenery once the community designs them? interesting....
Is xplane.org the place to get the most and best ones (outside of pay for ware)?
Thank you...

This is the final version... It's an ongoing project done by users, not by Laminar Research. If they did it, it would take them forever. If anything, it's a great thing.

Forums.x-plane.org is the place to go for pretty much everything. But you're better off searching Google because the search function is terrible.

[2P-13]

Great! Thank you for your information...lots that I didn't understand...Im not new to gaming and simming, so Ill poke around and get XP11 all set up...
I appreciate you taking the time to explain this stuff to me...
Tom W

[MugHug]

https://gateway.x-plane.com/scenery/page/KSTS

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/16505-ksts-charles-m-shulz/

[2P-13]

Many thanks!!
cant wait to get it all set up!!

[heartc]

The thing to understand is that in FSX for example, airport buildings were auto-generated by the Autogen engine, like trees and buildings in cities, except for the cases when they were actually hand-placed at major airports. So, this engine provided some random buildings even at small fields. In XPlane, airports are not part of the Autogen and if no one worked on the airport manually, there are not going to be any buildings. Runways, taxiways to some extent, ILS and accociated VORs / NDBs are however part of the database and will exist in the world. Oh, and windsocks.

[Galactic Starman]

Visit the Xplane-org [www.x-plane.org] site for scenery. There is a ton. Free and not also from third-parties for a small fortune. The free scenery is often really nicely done as it is updated by enthusiasts. Some of the european sceneries like Paris is very good or was very impressive back in X-Plane 9.0. There is historical wartime scenery available too which adds atmosphere to flying warplanes. Modern graphics cards may show up the flaws of early scenery so don't expect photographic quality unless it's been updated.

The third party scenery though pretty, is often quite boring. There are thousands of airports across the world so expect the smaller airports to take second place in being populated by buildings.

There is indeed autogen scenery available in X-Plane and can be found here from the Open Scenery X project[www.opensceneryx.com] It's been going some years now but it will give you tools to make your own airport with your unique local knowledge. It uses free scenery and tools. Some tools are linked there. X-Plane also provides its WED editor (world editor) to make accurate working airports and signals.

Autogen scenery in X-plane does exist but is weak compared to the demands of modern graphics cards and comparisons with massive gaming developers with teams of artists. X-Plane suffers from being a tiny team expecting players to create their own. Many do not have time for that they just want to imagine flying a plane. There are thousands of planes free to download at x-plane.org and if you have time can design your own...

[opjose]

And there is always Ortho4Xp and World2XP.

[2P-13]

I will continue research in Ortho, World, and OpenScenery and learn more about them...
I really appreciate everybodys time to get the noob up to snuff...
I signed up at Xplane.org and started poking around....This information from the posts will help
get me on a direction...
XP worked great right from the start, and set up perfectly for IFR approaches...
Thanks again for all of the input and time to respond!
Tom W.
See you in the run up area!!

[2P-13]

Hey Stone, what airport? Ill go check it out...always finding cool new places...

[2P-13]

sorry....never thought about that....