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2D: Terrain

Making 2D terrain is one of the most important part of scenery making. FS98 world is covered with all kind of texture files giving color and realism to scenery.

There are a lot of way's to enhance 2D scenery. You can just make new texture files to improve scenery quality. This is a simple way to do it and some people made a lot of money out of this. FSFX is a well selling commercial product just adding new textures to existing scenery.

Before you start you may read this manual about how to make textures using Paint Shop Pro. You may also find this FS-palette file useful. Be sure to use the include palette files when you are working with Paint Shop Pro.
Exclusion BGL Generator
 DP-EXC (Exclusion BGL Generator) (155Kb) Ver.1.0.0.4 This small program can generate the execusion BGL file for FS2000. To use with DP-CLE(Coast line editor), you will not have to write the instrunction for "Exclude" or "Flatten" command in "Scenery.cfg". (DP-CLE can create "Flatten" BGL.) By Masakazu Irie
Easy Mountain Builder
 DP-EMB (Easy Mountain Builder) Ver.2.(366Kb) This program can make source program by SCASM format for the mountain, islands and other 3D-object only for FS2000. By: Masakazu Irie
Coast Line Editor vs. 1.1
 DP-CLE vs 1.1 (Coast Line Editor) (225Kb). DP-CLE is the coast line editor program for FS2000. This program can edit "M???????.bgl" files (compressed/un-compressed) directory and also save these files with BGL format. By Masakazu Irie
CFS MAP
 Elevated Mesh Scenery Design Program (727Kb) . Also update required (399Kb) . CfsTmap is a CFS-only program for visually designing elevated-mesh scenery using the default ground textures. Similar interface to CFSMap with extra features for setting elevation points. Improved image rotation and texture-matching. Includes Scasm 2.39 by permission of Manfred Moldenhauer and Arran example files. By Martin Wright. See this screenshot image to understand what this is all about... Write me if file is not available anymore.
FSTERRAIN
 A program to facilitate the use of GTOPO30 DEM data to create Mesh scenery (398Kb) with the FS2000 "Terrain SDK" tools. By Martin Wright. You need also the authors *.dll file.(executable). Write me if files are not available anymore.
TEXBMP
 TEXBMP2 (8Kb) an update of a popular DOS program called TEXBMP. All it does is convert FS5, FS95 or FS98 "texture" files to BMP format and back after repainting. Version 2.0 is much faster than 1.0 and allows you to view files as you search. By Chuck Dome
Scenery Designers Toolkit
 Scenery Designers Toolkit v. 1.00.(333Kb) This program lets you manipulate Airport (APT) files so that you can translate (move) and rotate your scenery. By Pelle F. S. Liljendal
Scenery SDK
The official MS FS2000 Scenery SDK (953Kb) includes explanations and examples of the concepts and elements used to design scenery for Flight Simulator 2000. In particular, this SDK both explains and provides a programmer's reference for the BGL graphics language; it also explains the BGL files that contain scenery. You'll find sections that include more advanced topics dealing with the specifics of scenery design. By Microsoft.
Terrain SDK
 The official MS FS2000 Terrain SDK (2.305Kb) provides several tools and documentation for those of you interested in adding terrain to Flight Simulator 2000. The Terrain SDK describes how to turn DEM (Digital Elevation Mesh) data into scenery files for use in Flight Simulator. This SDK doesn't require any programming skill, however, it does involve working with the extremely technical information related to DEM data. By Microsoft. US DME datafiles are available but also non-US DME data.
Texture to BMP
 Windows program to view FS texture files and convert them to bitmap and vice-versa. (1,596k) Luis Vieira de Sa'
TerraBuilder
 TerraBuilder(tm) Scenery Design Tool. Lite edition. Elevated mesh terrain scenery designer. (377k) Misho Katulic. Visit the authors site for latest version. Example of the possibilities can be found in the Aleutian scenery (1,4Mb) . You will be amazed.
Mountain creator
 Final DOS version of a program (134k)that can be used to create more realistic mountains and islands for MSFS. It will generate *.api files for use as a macro's in Airport(c), *.scm files for use with Scasm(c) and *.fsa macro's for use with Fsasm(c). By Hans Meier
Coastline extractor
 Coastline extractor. Actually this is not a file but a official US government site giving you vector based information about coastlines. You can import the result in Abacus scenery designer. This is a very powerful option for Abacus scenery designer. I tried it several time and it is really a piece of cake to do the trick and it saves you a lot of time compared to manually drawing coastlines.
R8Paint
 R8Paint (v1.4) (34kb) is a painting program designed for use on Flight-Simulator V5 texture files (*.R8).  It allows you to view the texture file (zoomed and unzoomed), roam through the file, and change individual pixels, or groups of 16x16 pixels at once
CopyR8
 COPYR8 (40Kb) is a command driven windows program to copy sections of an .r8 file to the same file or to another existing file.  This program was designed to be used as an aid to the R8PAINT program by Norm Campbell and uses the identical coordinate system as that program.  This program is freeware.
R8Worx091
 R8WORX 0.91 is a powerful DOS tool for editing and reworking texture files for FS5. Load/Save BMP, load COMPRESSED R8 files! Flip, rotate, darken, lighten, enhance, draw textures, despeckle or add noise, undo/redo, protect certain colors from being changed, overlay two textures and much more! More in-depth and powerful than R8Pak or R8Paint. Beware that it's basicly a DOS program not liking long (>8 pos.) file and dir. names. You are advised to locate the textures you like to rework in a seperate folder (like c:\textures)
ASD MAPS
 A method of using scanned imagery to construct (Abacus) ASD maps. Concept by Ahmet Bedir, description by Jim Stevens. Includes the WINDIG20 data digitalization utility. For experienced users.
Airphoto
 Airphoto (101K) is a tool for importing aerial and satellite photographs into scenery. It also allows converting bitmap files into MSFS textures, generating MSFS palette and haze files optimized for displaying a particular bitmap, and generating a corresponding haze file for any MSFS palette file. Requires SCASM or FSASM (compiler page) with the FSASM Developers Kit. Satelite photo's can be found at a lot locations. This is one of them.
CHANGE HAZE FILES
Hazer, a nice utility to change haze files. Only for experienced users. Read the doc first. Made by Bert Vierstra (11K)
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technical stuff: compiling/de-compiling add dynamic scenery make 3D objects make,view and change textures designers