Sorry guys , but I'm brand new at this and I'm middle-aged to boot.   FS2004 was under the tree this past Christmas and now I dream about flying .  Everybody in the forum seems to be a genius and I , and likely many others find this intimidating .  Would  anyone mind terribly if I ( or perhaps some other rank amatuer ) asked what are likely emabarrasingly simplistic questions , such as :  "When I am flying out of my local airfield and am looking for my house or the village near where I live .........and it's not there because it's too small to be of any consequence ........how do I put it there ? "  I would be keen to ask other questions such as,  " Why do I keep on crashing into the ground ?", if no one minds.  Thanks guys.

Hi there and welcome!
Don't be afraid to ask, that's why this forum was created in the first place
Nobody is perfect, we all have been new to flight sim, and while that might be intimidating, you can count on support from us SimV members!

And I'd also like to say that it's really nice to see the "older" generation enjoying this kind of virtual entertainment

The only way to add your house to FS is to create it by using a 3D program call Gmax, which is a free version of 3D Max.  You may go to the scenery design forum here at Simviation and they would be able to explain how it all works.

One way to keep from crashing into the ground is learning how to fly and practice.    FS does a pretty good job at trying to keep things as real as possible with a home computer flight sim.  The physics involved in piloting an aircraft do seem to apply here.  I would suggest reading through the learning center in FS and do as much research as possible.  If you have any specific questions related to flight and how real pilots do thing, just ask away.  There are many people like myself who have their pilots license and are more than happy to share their information and experience.

Another item that might help is to go to your local airport and get an intro flight.  Those are real eye openers to the world of aviation.

Welcome to the world of FS.  At 30 years old I never get tired of this sim....

Welcome aboard airman!
Yep. It takes gMax, which comes with FS2002+ and a little knowledge of the Latitude and Longitude of your house, along with the elevation. FS2002 is a bit bad with placements, would be great to have the buildings in the right places though. I live in the country (kinda) and where I found the Lat/Lon of my house, the buildings of Dallas still existed. Now THAT took some time to fix! lol. Good luck mate, and have fun!

If you have FS2002 pro just look for the files in there. GmaxInstall.exe or something to the like.

Hi Pointerboat & welcome from another old fogey.
I've been messing around with addons for the M$ sims since FS98 & never did figure out Gmax. Not likely to if I live to be 100 which is very doubtful. ???

If you find it a tad daunting may I suggest you try EOD. http://www.echos.ch/eod/
This can be used to create simple API macros* like buildings. You can then import them into a conventional 3rd party scenery design application like Airport or FS Scenery Creator. I find FSSC the easier of the two myself. http://fssc.avsim.net/

*There are plenty of existing API macros posted in the Scenery design section right here. http://www.simviation.com/fsdesign_macros1.htm
This would save you the bother of creating them. You can use them to experiment with even if there's nothing suitable.

Good luck.

AHA !  I thought it was just me .  Everytime my mind wanders for a moment - he announces that I'm not paying attention and I should try again some other time .  Many bad words.....red face.......almost throwing things.......you know how it goes . As Hagar says, " If I live to be a hundred............which I doubt..."  Regards to all.....Terry.

I am a "late middle ager" but enjoy FS like I am a kid.

Although I have had computers for a long long time and have been using FS since FS98 I have only just in the last 6 weeks or so started adding scenery to FS2004.

I have found Airport for Windows fairly easy to use.  Once you get past the "how does this workspace relate to the scenery" thing it all stats to fall into place. As a matter of fact I don't even use a background bitmap of the area.  I find once I place the first object I "relate " to it's symbol on the workspace.

Here is what I use.
-Airport for Windows 3.0 build 188.
-TCalc for nailing the Lat & Long with amazing accuracy!
-The latest BGLCOMP.EXE from Microsoft.
-All the freeware scenery API's I can find.

Pointerboat, when you find or make a house that looks like yours and generate a BGL file to place in FS9 AFW will also generate an Exclude file which does just what it sounds like....it will "exclude" the built in FS9 scenery so your house will show.

Don't get me wrong...Airport for Windows cost me some of the little hair I have on my head!  But as they say at some point "the coin dropped" and it started falling into place.

GMax....I did the tutorial....designed a couple of VERY simple objects but the learning curve looks like a 1000' cliff.  I do "see the light" though as the tutorials built in are very good.

Now....let me say this...all the effort you put in to learning Airport for Windows (or any other scenery adding software) will be useless when FS2006 comes out as MS is moving to XML scenery 100% I hear.

But we are in luck.  The people who write AFW have started a version called SceneGenX which uses the same graphic interface as Airport for Windows. GMax will be the scenery drawer of choice as it's output can be crunched by another program to generate FS9 object numbers.

LIke I said, I was just about to delete Airport for Windows and admit to myself this was all "over my head" when I managed to place my 1st object. I place a wood wharf just offshore on a Pacific island.  I jumped around this room giving High 5's to nobody but me!!! 

If you find a freeware house that looks alot like yours placing it really isn't that tough.  Using Gmax to build the house is going to test your patience to the ....Max. 

FaxCap