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KRDU Raleigh-Durham International Airport

Since it's Sunday and a "Day Of Rest" nothing was done with Terminal 1. Tomorrow I am going to do the night textures and if that goes well, then do a few finishing touches and be sure I didn't miss any details. It's then to "clean it up" with the Extension in Sketchup and create the Collada/textures and create the bgl in Model Converter X to test in Airport Design Editor P3D. Now it's time to retire for the evening. It's been a long day.
 
Thank you for that. I wish they had more of the outside and less of the inside for my purposes but it was still cool to watch. I actually found two really good looking KRDU today but both were for X-Plane 11. Too bad. They looked nicely done but after checking online it is totally impossible to convert them for use in Prepar3D V4.5.
 
Thank you for these. I finished and uploaded Terminal 1 this afternoon with a lot of trouble. Sometimes, MDCx just doesn't like something that Sketchup made. After deleting different addons, over a couple of hours, I determined that the fences on the commuter island were the culprits and had to delete them. Then, as sometimes does, ADEx says it's too large at 15.9MB. So I dropped the two non-animated jetways Gates 1 and 2. Dropped 5 MB and now ADEx liked it and uploaded it. I have it positioned and airlines assigned to the 9 Gates A1-A9 properly. Then I added an animated jetway to each gate. Saved that and that's it for today. Tomorrow I am going to add the huge parking garage very simply geometrically. Sadly, there were a lot of parking garages in the Sketchup 3D Warehouse but not KRDU and none of them remotely resembled it to "cheat". As long as it looks like it when you are landing or taking off that's all that counts really like photoreal. Again, none of us is going to drive in and park. Time to start a new "Gourmet Detective" book now, the last of the 8 book series. If you ever watched this on Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, they must have written their own screenplays because the books and Hallmark don't remotely resemble each other.
 
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Update for today: I completed the multilevel parking and placed it into KRDU in ADEx and really pleased with the outcome. I compiled the airport and placed it into P3D. Started the sim and went to the airport. First thing I found was P3D like FSX puts a bunch of autogen builldings where IT wants them whether you want them there or not. Fortunately I know how to create an EXCLUDE RECTANGLE which I did. Reopened it and I think the buildings look great. Only one problem. It's going to need photoreal background for the airport...oh joy. One of the least favorite things I find to do for flight sim airports but I have no choice. That stupid grass background you get for every airport created looks way dumb! So tomorrow's project is over at SBuilder and hope I remember how. Then even worse for me is the Autogen Annotator. I may be PM'ing Falcon409 who was my mentor for these two programs and extremely patient with me. Windows 10 doesn't like 32bit programs so I will be praying for it to work after two weeks of building the airport up to now.
 
There has been kinda of a lull this week in my KRDU creatations. Real life just got in the way. I am now going to tackle the FBO complex with it's really interesting Atlantic Air Office with its many geometric faces. It will be challenging but I think that it will make the airport really interesting.
 
Spent the day today, Saturday working on Building 1650 International Drive at KRDU which is one of four FBO buildings on their own apron. Here are two screen shots: one of the front with the security gate and fence and one from the ramp of the five large hanger doors.

Bldg 1650 KRDU.png

Bldg1650 Ramp side.png


I'm learning not to trust the relationship between Sketchup's Collada export with Sketchup Warehouse downloads and Model Converter X 1.70
compatibility. I had the fence with a matching security gate installed; exported the Collada dae to MDCx and it would not compile a bgl. Much more, it puts bogus files on the desktop that you can't delete until you shut down the computer and start it up fresh, not just a restart. So I had to go back "to the drawing board" The gate I am using is a compatible one that I downloaded for KASH when I created it knowing that it would work perfectly which it did as you can see.

Probably won't do anything tomorrow, Sunday and I have a lunch on Monday so I won't get back to the next building until Tuesday. Ya all have a great weekend.
 
Lunch was postponed to a dinner which I returned home from just ahead of the severe storm they are predicting for tonight. Just in case we might lose power later, I wanted to post a couple screenshots of today's Sketchup work on the next hanger: Atlantic Air large double hanger. I got as far as the apron side before having to quit to leave for Myrtle Beach and dinner at Cracker Barrel which btw was awesome! These shots are in Sketchup. Like the street side of Terminal 1, I pieced together these of Atlantic Air. The hanger doors are still to be constructed from the drawings i was able to find the first time today including specs for tracks. Looking forward to adding these authentically. Google Earth is distorted with no "street view" from the ramp so I am using real information to construct them in Sketchup. I am not a Blender User" or I would animate them.

Atlantic Aviation Front.jpg
Atlantic Aviation side.jpgAtlantic Aviation Hangers Ramp Side.jpg

Windows were constructed with the fantastic Window Maker plugin in Sketchup a free download.
 
My lesson learned today. If I hadn't downloaded the real hanger door information I would have never know about this. I always saw hanger doors either swing up on small hangers, bi-fold on larger hangers or sliding on track doors that met in the middle and had equal sections on each side of the opening. Today I learned after studying the information and then studying Google Earth, unfortunately overhead is distorted. The hanger that I just completed has 6 30 foot wide by 20 foot high uni-directional doors. You can see the real info and then my screen shot completed.

08.04.2025_15.48.34_REC.pngAtlantic Aviation 6 section.png
Atlantic Aviation's hanger has the outer flush door on the right and the insert hanger on the left. Otherwise you can see that all doors slide in one direction to close the opening. They also have rubber gaskets but IMO that is overkill and takes up fps not needed. The other hanger see above is open and is in Google Earth too. I may try and see about detailing the inner walls and leave it that way with a parking space inside.
 
Haven't been back here because I have been studying online (virtually) with a real flight instructor fine tuning all my skills. I got side tracked with KAPF Naples Florida where all the videos are filmed because when I uploaded Art Poole's KAPF, it was 2009 and there were quite a number of changes as so happens with airports you download online. EVEN the payware ones can be out of date. So i am going to work concurrently on KRDU and KAPF alternating days work. Today was KRDU and here is the result with a screenshot in Sketchup.

KRDU Signature FBO.jpg
I am going to see about merging the background parking lot and see if that works in ADEx/MDCx. I have seen it done not as photoreal but as an image other wise I will just place the FBO. Stay tuned. Tomorrow is Naples PADF custom building. I'm just never done it seems.
 
stansdds said:
I try to keep the add-on airports in my install of FSX up to date too. That can become a full-time sim job.
Click to expand...
I found that Flightaware is not always up to date with their Airport diagrams. I found this out by accident when I planned a flight on Skyvector which is free to use just register to be able to plan flights. Anyway, when you print out your navlog, the departure and arrival airport diagrams are included and they are Jeppsen and up to date. You also have a choice of VFR low airways as well as sectional and other backgrounds.
 
I agree, Skyvector is usually quicker to update airport information. I also use Google and Bing satellite images as well as using YouTube videos.
 
I use Google Earth and Google Maps when I am creating buildings in Sketchup for my airports. Sometimes they have good views and then sometimes i have to rely on the satellite images too. Street view is too distorted usually but from an angle I can usually get what I need. I wish that they would give better ramp views of the hangers.
 
Next week I am going to get back to KRDU. Tackling that challenging geometric FBO HQ and then I will do a quick check and I think that will be it for KRDU so I can send it out to my beta testers before posting it here to share. Stay tuned. Busy weekend coming up.
 
Well, after working on KAPF a lot longer than I anticipated I posted it for beta testers. I think that I got everything covered (except for the complex new General Aviation Terminal) which will come after I finish the last building here which is the Atlantic General Aviation Terminal which is currently under construction and looks good so far. It probably won't be done until next week but then I will pack this all up and post for beta testers input.
 
All in a day's work, well two days work. Here is the front of the Atlantic GA Terminal so far. More work to do but that's enough for today. Color is exactly matched from a screenshot in Google Earth Street Level so I think it looks pretty close.I am really pleased with the canopy and the area underneath will be illuminated in the night textures.

Atlantic GA Front.png
 
Here is the progress on the Atlantic GA Terminal I did today. It is challenging but rewarding too with all I am learning more about using Sketchup.
The top is a full two days (8 hours each) work to complete and is not joined to the bottom. More tomorrow if I have time. No wonder the architects get the "big bucks" LOL!
Atlantic GA Terminal.png
 
The Atlantic General Aviation Terminal is complete and added to the airport. I am next going to add all the taxiway markings in Airport Design Editor with the ground poly for enhanced taxiways, Enhanced Hold Short and ILS Hold Short as well as the red box runway markings. Yesterday after adding the above building where it goes, I updated and corrected all the taxiways which is what started this project in the beginning not having been updated by anyone since 2010. Navigating around the airport is correct for 2025 now according to the latest Jeppsen Airport Diagram. I won't have to look like I don't know how to get around an airport to VATSIM anymore. He was really nice and patient when I had a "Progressive Taxi" and said that the taxiway said "Charlie" NOT "Juliet" like it should. I apologized for not realizing that this freeware scenery was that old. Then doing a search for any other KRDU I discovered that there WAS nothing newer. Now anyone who wants to fly here can have an up to date version for free from me here in the Resources when it's all complete.
 
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