13678

Last week I finished the model of the new railroad bridge near Zwolle for the NL2000 scenery. It was the first bridge model I made with SketchUp and it was an interesting experience. As most modelling tools SketchUp provides a lot of operators and I had not used all of them in my previous objects. One of the tools I have learned to appreciate more with this bridge is the follow me tool. As you can see in the screenshot below the bridge is partly curved and there is also a small side road (of course a bicycle path here in … Continue reading Follow me

I haven’t posted much to this blog recently, because some other things kept me busy. Had a business trip for work, spend some time preparing for the Sinterklaas celebration tradition we have in the Netherlands, etc. But there has been quite some exiting news recently that I want to share with you all. Flight beta Microsoft has announced that the beta testing of Microsoft Flight will start next month. That’s interesting news, let’s hope it will be a good platform for addon developers again. The even better news is that you can apply now to be part of the beta testing. So … Continue reading Quite some news

So this weekend was the annual FSWeekend in the Netherlands again. Just like the last couple of years I was present again at the NL2000 and FSDeveloper booth. It is always amazing to see in how many ways people can enjoy their flight simulation hobby. It ranges from flying in clubs to building cockpits at home, making addons and much more. And this weekend is not only about Microsoft Flight Simulator, Falcon 4, X-Plane and FlightGear were also well represented again. The best part of the event is probably talking to all the visitors. After so much online contact, it … Continue reading FSWeekend wrap-up

I made a mistake in my last blog post about our SketchUp presentation at FSWeekend. We will not be giving this presentation on both days, but only on the Saturday. On the Sunday there are some other interesting presentations. Below is the complete schedule of all presentations. Hope to see you there! Saturday 11:00 – 12:00 – Geert Rolf – Rebuilding a real Flight Simulator, an overview of 3 years work at the Norwegian DC-10 (in English)   13:00 – 14:00 – Joop Mak – The history and development of the NL2000 scenery (in Dutch)  15:00 – 16:00 – Arno Gerretsen and Francois … Continue reading FSWeekend presentations

This year I will be attending the yearly FSWeekend event at Lelystad again. Just like in previous years you will be able to find me at the NL2000 / FSDeveloper stand. This year I will be there together with Francois Dumas (from FSAddon and much more) and we will be showing you have much fun it is to make scenery with Google SketchUp. Every day we will give a presentation at 15:00 as well, where we will give you a crash-course to get started with SketchUp. So always wanted to add your own house to FS? Make sure to visit … Continue reading Learn about SketchUp at FSWeekend 2011

Over the last days I have been working on the Amsterdam Heliport for the NL2000 scenery. One of the tasks I did was to update the ground polygons of this scenery. Instead of using GMax for this, I decided to give SketchUp a try. In this blog post I will give an overview of my experiences. Pros If you use the SketchUp feature to load a background image from Google Earth it is easier to position your ground polygons at the right location in the world. When you draw another polygon in SketchUp that is on top of an existing … Continue reading Creating ground polygons for FSX with SketchUp

This weekend it was the yearly FSWeekend again the Aviodrome aviation museum in Lelystad. I was there at both the FSDeveloper and NL2000 stand. I think it was a good event again, with a lot of people visiting, especially on the Saturday. It was always nice to talk with the users of the NL2000 scenery and to answer their questions. In the FSDeveloper stand we demonstrated the usage of SketchUp. It was interesting to see that many people knew about SketchUp or had even tried it before. But most of them were not yet aware of the possibility to use it for … Continue reading The past FSWeekend

Last week I released my new tutorial about using SketchUp on the FSDeveloper Wiki. While I was writing on this tutorial it grew bigger and bigger. Initially I never planned to write a 75 page tutorial, but it seems there is quite a lot to write about making your own house. Since it almost looks like a book now, I thought why not turn it into a real book! So if you want you can order a full colour paperback version of the tutorial on Lulu. The content is exactly the same as the free version that you can download … Continue reading A book

Like last year FSDeveloper will be present at the upcoming FSWeekend event. It is the biggest Flight Simulation event in the world and will be organised on November 6 & 7 in the Aviodrome aviation museum at Lelystad airport. This year our special theme will be the usage of SketchUp for modelling scenery objects for FSX. We will have a one or two computers available, so that you can give SketchUp a go at the event! And of course some users from the community will be available to give you a hand if needed. If you bring some reference material … Continue reading FSWeekend, FSDeveloper & SketchUp

I have uploaded the tutorial I have written about making a house for FSX using SketchUp. This tutorial is aimed at the novice developer that wants to build his (or her) first object. It covers the following topics: How to gather the information about the building How to model the geometry in SketchUp How to create the texture from photo material How to map the texture on the building How to export the building to the file formats used by FSX How to position the building at the right location in the world You can find the tutorial on the FSDeveloper … Continue reading Build your house for FSX using SketchUp