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(right click image and open in new window to see it full size)

Definitely a WIP, but after a morning's effort I've the basic bones of the thing built and have placed it in the WOFF landscape. Now it's on to the tweaking and adjusting and painting. Thanks again Maeran for the excellent photos, they inspired me. And yes everyone, it will be available just as soon as I have it done.

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Looks good LOU

You've been skinning for years and now create scenery...what is next for you?

Beautiful. Plan on redoing all of them by any chance?

Yes he has taken the next 10 years off so will be able to complete them all!

Pol I'm sure you've provided him a timeline! 2 a week!

good point Cany 2 a week should just about do it

you guys Re killing me!

Cool! I'd actually pay for a historical airfields expansion pack for WOFF.

But only after getting some French two-seaters first.

A very good likeness already. Well done Lou!

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Thanks folks, glad to know it's looking good so far. As for the two per week quota, that won't be doable on my current work schedule. What I can promise though is to have this one done in two weeks after which I can start another to be completed in two weeks, and so on.



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That smily needs to be replaced with a "tongue in cheek" one!

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G'day All,

Another work week on the road and I returned home yesterday evening. After a good night's rest I was able to get back to my Bray Dunes project first thing this AM. Here are a few screenies showing how it is all coming together, (as usual, right-clicking on an image and opening it in a new window will allow you to view it full size).


Major Burroughs and his flight ready to depart on a patrol of the front lines.


The aerodrome as you look at it towards the north. The two tent hangers house the French escadrilles based at Bray Dunes.


Another shot showing it as you look towards the west.


And another looking northwest towards the coast and Dunkirk.


The view as seen during landing.


And the last one after rolling to a stop.

While I've had to take a few liberties due to a lack of certain bits and pieces I believe the overall look is quite close to the actual aerodrome during the Great War. I've a few more things to add and some final adjustments to make and I'll be able to provide a beta version for those who are interested.

Later folks!

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It looks amazing, Lou

Nice work Lou!

Truly amazing work Lou. You are an artist.

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Thank you CA88, MFair, and Hellshade. Glad to know you Gents approve. I am working on adding in the farm buildings to the east side of the north-south road and when I am through with that I should be able to offer the beta for testing.

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Where do you get the original photos of these airfields? Is it actually possible to recreate all of the famous airfields?

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Banjoman, in this instance Maeran had sent me photos that appear to be from a book, and many thanks again to him for doing so.






Usual sources are old books, and occasionally online photo archives as well as personal photo archives. JFM has many photos in his collection, some of which are of WWI aerodromes.

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Wow Lou, seeing the pictures next to your creation, I'm speechless as to how close you made it look like the real thing.

They are from a book. "Airfield and Airmen of the Channel Coast".

Some aerodromes have excellent material, others next to nothing. The best I've found for Leffrinckoucke for example is its location, NE of Leffrinckoucke village and a reference to some Canadian pilots hating the place.

Maeran, do you have any pictures of St. Pol-sur-Mer? I would love to see that one recreated. If we could get Lou to teach us how to do this we could help him.

St Pol has been completely built over by the port of Dunkirk.

From the same book, I have a plan and a single picture.





From a quick search on the web, there are a few poor quality pictures.

Thanks, that would look really cool from the air.

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Yes, thank you Maeran for these as well. I've already saved them to my 'WOFF St Pol' folder.

Banjoman, as to me teaching you how to do this, what follows is an outline of the basic steps needed to build an aerodrome for WOFF, (I just happen to have the info handy as CA88 asked me about this earlier today);


Create the text file that builds your new aerodrome and add it into the various ‘facilities’ folders in WOFF. This is incredibly tedious as you have to literally place every object in the facility precisely where you want it based on X-Y coordinates and compass headings within the file itself, (not the WOFF world).

Create the BMP files that will display the ground textures for your aerodrome. You will need four of these; one for spring/summer, one for autumn/winter light snow, one for winter medium snow, and one for winter full snow.

Create the BMP file for the alpha layers for your textures so that they will blend with the surrounding landscape. You only need one of these so yea hooray.

Create the four DDS DTX3 files from the texture and alpha images you built and place them in the appropriate ‘seasons’ folders.

Create the two MOS files you will need from two of the DDS files you built, so that your textures will all display in the sim when they should, and place them in the various ‘MOS’ folders. That’s right, only two of these as the sim will swap in the needed DDS DTX3 snow files based on time of year and weather conditions. If this is confusing don’t worry about it, just know that it works.

Amend the 12 global layer files so that you can place your aerodrome in the landscape where you want it for all twelve periods of the war. This involves adding the facility name and description along with the X-Y coordinates, compass heading, and elevation to locate the aerodrome in the WOFF world. This is also incredibly tedious though not nearly so much as the aforementioned text file.

That’s about it. You will need the CFS3 Builder’s Tool Kit as it contains the MOS editor and global layer LIB creator required for the related above steps. You will also need to grab a good portion of the files in the CFS3 ‘buildings’ folder and add them to your WOFF ‘buildings’ folder or you won’t have all that much to work with in terms of additional structures and the like. WOFF is using its own set of buildings as ‘.sm‘ files inside the sim and these are not available to you as a modder so you have to make do with what is currently in the WOFF folder and whatever you scavenge from the old CFS3 items. Same is true for the trees, which means you will need to import those as well.


And I will now ask you the same thing I asked CA88. When do you want to start?

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Let me take a look at some of those files so I can have an idea of what you are talking about. I would be more than willing to help you with this project, just send me an easy task and I'll work on it.

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The problem with this Banjoman is that you can't really do one item without doing the other related items along with it as they are all interconnected. For example, you can't place the structures and trees and such in the facilities file independent of creating the ground textures as the two things have to fit together precisely. And the exact location of the entire affair in the WOFF landscape itself has to be done early on in the texture creation process so that the aerodrome will align and fit with the existing roads and tree lines in the WOFF world. All this means that you are making many, many, MANY minor adjustments throughout the process to get the whole thing to come together looking like a cohesive package. I've no idea how or if you could farm out sub-projects within the overall process.

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Lou, looks awesome!!!


Keep up the work man. This is a welcomed addition to the depth of the already 10 mile deep atmosphere of WOFF

BTW...did you ever finish Boistrancourt?

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Thanks James, glad you like it. Boistrancourt is done with the exception of the items Hauksbee is building; walls, guard tower, revetments, and such. I know he has been having issues getting his completed items to import into the sim but as soon as he has that sorted out I can add them into the mod and make it available to cover the entire period of the war.

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I see, maybe I'll take a look at the files and find a smaller airfield and work on that. I've always thought that if we could get all of us that like to mod and build things working together we could really do some cool things, might even be able to help the devs.

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Go for it Banjoman! If you get stuck just give me a shout and I'll see if I can help you get unstuck.

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Banjoman, message me as you do this too. Lou mentioned that I'm trying this as well, so let's use each other to learn it. Thanks Lou! If you feel like recording how you do this so it can be a little easier that would be great *cough*

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I barely have time to even work on such projects let alone record how I do it! However, if I win the lottery and suddenly become a man of leisure I'll put it on my "List of things to do now that I have time".

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Sounds like excuses, Lou!!
I'm sure I can manage just fine with the instructions you gave me.
Then again, maybe you should just win the lottery

I will tip my hat to you Gents who understand such things. "On", "Power off". Now you know as much as I do! Again, fantastic work, and good luck Banjoman.

Indeed.
Good luck guys. It would certainly be awesome to have every aerodrome set up to be historically accurate.

Question Lou, if you can answer it - if you use the Aircraft, Vehicle, and Building SDK v1.5 for CFS, and a copy of the wretched outdated Gmax, it seems possible that you (meaning me or more likely my actual 3D folks) could add new 3D objects to aerodromes. For me, it's all about being able to accurately recreate La Bellevue aerodrome in WoFF so I can use greenscreen to get some WoFF footage into World of Lies, but anything I can come up with will be free for anybody to use.

I think I have something around here to convert the 3D formats people use these days to Gmax, and definitely have an obj to gmax import script, so in theory, any obj format object can be imported into Gmax, saved out, and used in CFS/WoFF. Might take some scaling and playing with the textures, but having messed with this stuff making animated films for a long time, it seems possible.

Once the script is done and the flying scenes shot, it will be a nice side-project to play with in between shooting the flick. I'll keep ya'll advised of progress.

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Kuroken, you should get in touch with Hauksbee as he has been trying on and off for the last six months to bring objects he's created for our Boistrancourt project into WOFF. He has not been able to sort it out yet due to scale and texture issues. If you can give him direction, or he you, it might prove most helpful for both of you.

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I'll get with him tomorrow and see where he's at. I can't model in 3D, but have a fair amount of experience in manipulating models and textures.

only 1 alpha EMP file, and only 2 MOM files from the DDT GTX5 files? This whole thing sounds like child's play.

(Mfair, I think I'm closer to your end of the spectrum! )

This is all exciting stuff!

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A quick update for those interested.

Shredward was kind enough to send me another photo of Bray Dunes that shows a lot more of the aerodrome, and it revealed a row of tent hangers along the far southern edge of the east-west runway. I had some time today so I reworked the texture files to incorporate some of the new details, then added in the row of hangers and began laying out the farm buildings on the east side of the north-south road. Here are a few screenshots showing the latest developments, (as usual, right-clicking on the image and opening it in a new window will allow you to view it full size).















I won't be able to get back to this project until Sunday, but I may have a good chunk of time that day to work on it.

Later folks.

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Lou;

It is looking very very nice Sir!

It is a masterpiece, as allways, Lou! Great!

I hope these aerodrome mods make it into a proper patch one day

Damn... that is beautiful Lou!

Keep it up... how about Metz, Cambrai, Douai, or Avillers for early war stuff. LOL!

Hell.. can you make "The Hanging Virgin" in Arras??!?!

Lou, this is beautiful. Really admire your work.

Hi Lou, this is indeed very beautiful, next project st Omer???????

Absolutely brilliant
Lou, you already mentioned Boistrancourt - this was a hot Topic, when I just started to play the Game... do you have a Link, where one can download that Aerodrome? I guess, I'm not the only one, who still hasn't got it...

RAF.....very nice....looking forward to a J key tour!!!

Go to the official WoFF sight, it's in the user mods section... user mods downloads

Hmpf... I definitely have to improve my Searching-Skills...
Thanks, Trooper :-)