UPDATE NOTES FOR V0.2.0

So SU16 (and MSFS 2024) brought us new(er) Bing aerial imagery. And WU21 added some more. Most of it though is woefully out of date, even the new(er) stuff. A good example is the first strip I created for this pack, YX01 Dundee Beech. IRL this is a well-maintained airstrip these days, with cone markers, nicely graded and grassy except for a narrow centre strip. In the sim it still looks like a gash in the forest.

But even so, many of the strips in this pack that previously dated to a time when they were merely abandoned/marginally usable, have now more or less faded into the surrounding landscape. It doesn't take long in the tropics for an open patch of ground to disappear under weeds (I just need to look at my backyard to see that), and even in the arid regions nature takes its course and quickly turns dirt into spinifex, mulga ... or weeds. Add the downgrading of the imagery resolution that came with SU16 (which was already native with 2024), and there's often little left to work with. At least a dozen of the strips in this pack ought to therefore be gracefully retired, but I know there will be one or two people out there unhappy with this. So, I tried my best with aprons and polygons to create a reasonably believable scenery, not always entirely to my liking, but anyhoo...

Apart from fitting things in with the SU16/MSFS imagery changes, I've incorporated a number of additional updates:

• More realism in object placements. If there's no windsock IRL, there most likely won't be one in the sim either. As a bush pilot, you'll just have to deal with it.
• I've also added fences to many sceneries where they exist in real life, but not all. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to draw proper fences in MSFS, probably as much time as the rest of the scenery.
• By popular request, I've made all strip "Star Airports". There's a lot of them now, until you zoom in. I trust you use AddonsLinker or similar to keep your community folder and world map in check.
• I use a tree height modifier when I play with MSFS 2020. Because the default tree heigh in the sim is just ridiculous. I would strongly recommend you do too, especially when flying into tight strips, like many represented in this package. I can tell you, because I'm quite familiar with the region, that the trees/bushes around Dundee Beach (YX01) and Crabclaw Island (YX02) are mostly the height of a single-story house. There is no Amazon rainforest anywhere in the NT! Anyway, many people don't want to use other mods, so where appropriate, I've adjusted the vegetation around the strips to have lower trees regardless. That also means that people who do use a tree height modifier will have even smaller trees. Oh well.
• Asobo left us in a bit of a lurch as far as airport names and designators are concerned. There's tons and tons of incorrectly named/designated airports. And there's no way to fix many associated issues. For example, I can't create a missing airport "YLAE Labelle Downs" (which is the official Australian AIP name/designator, because Asobo used YLAE for something called "YLAE Larrakeyah" (which in real life is YEDERR, and doesn't have an ICAO designator). I've previously used an invented designator (YX03 in this case), but I've decided to just use whatever the real-world designator is, and add a "1" to it to keep the SDK happy. So, in my example, we now have "YLAE1 Labelle Downs". I have also combined incorrectly identified strips with the correct ones under one "airport", thus eliminating the invented ID. For example, YNCW now contains both the strip at the homestead and the nearby correct roadside strip, thus eliminating YX43. However, this only works if the two strips are relatively close to each other, otherwise the SDK complains.
• As a result of the previous point, there are now "holes" in my fictional YXxx line-up. This is intentional for now, and I will try and fill them in a future update (there are at least 200 more airstrips in the NT that aren't covered yet). YX03, YX10, YX11, YX15, YX20, YX24, YX25, YX39 and YX43 are intentionally blank.
• I also disabled ground services for all these strips, so you won't get those silly push-back contraptions.

MSFS 2024 Notes

These sceneries were developed in MSFS 2020 and have been fully tested in MSFS 2024. Overall, if you have a choice, MSFS 2024 is probably the platform to use when working these strips. The improved vegetation models and the enhanced ground textures, especially those of dirt and grass runways, make it visually much more appealing. Having said that, there are several issues with 2024 that introduce considerable negatives in my mind when flying in Australia's arid regions:

• Vegetation colours: The cartoonish green tree colours in contrast to the red/brown ground is just dreadful. (Conversely, they look ok at ground level.)
• TLOD/OLODs: making the above even worse is the aggressive Terrain and Object Level-of-Detail behaviour, making the green trees appear at a distance too close to the viewer. So, you're looking the typical Central Australian red soil landscape in the distance that turns to a rainforest green as you approach it.
• Autogen: 2024 doesn't fully respect vegetation changes made in 2020. I suppose this is because 2024 has a different, more detailed biome map. However, this results in relative sparsely vegetated areas at some airfields, whereas in 2020 the vegetation placed by me would be denser and match the underlying imagery.
• Displacement mapping: A feature that is ON by default. It adds a more or less randomly AI generated micro-mesh to the terrain. While it potentially adds interest to a scenery, its algorithms don't reflect reality. As such I consider it totally fake. Making it worse is that sceneries developed in 2020 have very little control over it in 2024, leading to floating objects and terrain inconsistencies where scenery surfaces (aprons and polygons) meet the displacement mapped terrain. I have attempted for the most part to minimise these glitches, but there is no way to fully eliminate them except by creating separate 2020 and 2024 sceneries, which I won't be doing for 86 small airfields. By the way, "Displacement Mapping" can be turned OFF in your settings. It will eliminate the glitches for you, plus give your CPU and GPU the opportunity to work on something else.

Final note: the download is significantly smaller in size than V0.1.0 because it requires fewer custom aerial images. If you’re updating the previous version of this pack, please ensure that you delete all the folders from the old pack. Some folder and file names have changed. If you keep the old files in your community folder it will lead to conflicts at several airfields.

DISCLAIMER. NOT TO BE USED FOR REAL LIFE NAVIGATION! SEVERAL AIRFIELDS IN THIS ADD-ON ARE NO LONGER SERVICEABLE IN REAL LIFE!

Up for some really, really remote bush flying? You’re in the right place then, because the NT is as remote as it gets!

Welcome to the 4th instalment in my “Missing Airfields of Australia” series, covering 86 airfields that are not available in the default sim. Yes, EIGHTY-SIX, you read that correctly! Tropical Top End fishing spots vie for your attention, as do arid Red Centre wilderness resorts, million-acre cattle stations, a few mine strips, Aboriginal family outstations and, last but not least, the ghosts of World War II.

Included are 29 airfields that are listed in the Australian AIP as Authorised Landing Areas (ALAs), which have official ICAO designators. For 5 of these, however, the creators of the default MSFS airfields, in their wisdom, have allocated the IDs to random locations elsewhere. You will find these among my YX__ designators.

As always, whenever I create one of these “bush strips”, it will be fairly basic. But unlike many of the default non-bespoke airports in the sim I provide:
•    Correct runway locations, orientation and lengths
•    Corrected (terraformed) runway slopes
•    Ground markings where appropriate
•    A parking spot or two enabling cold & dark starts
•    A bit of bling (windsock, static aircraft and vehicles, etc.)
•    Added missing vegetation
•    Corrected water masks

The list of airfields is too long for me to include the details here, but you’ll find a PDF with all the info included in the download.

So, what are you waiting for? See you (in the) NT!!!

Dependencies are listed below. There are a lot of them ... but there are a lot of airfields, so don't skimp on downloading them. They are also in use for many other creations at this site. As always, many sincere thanks to the creators of scenery object libraries, without which my creations would be a bit of a bore. In addition, I have placed a few static aircraft from JP Fillion.

Credit:    Jean-Pierre Fillion, Quebec

    quebec-fs2020.org
    jpfil.com

Also, you should have the UK2000 library active, which is available for free in the Marketplace. And there's the odd object here or there that I borrowed from one of the world updates.