FTX US 2S1 Vashon Island Version 1.

1 User Guide June 2010

Orbx FTX 2S1 Vashon Island Version 1.1 User Guide June 2010

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INDEX

TOPIC Introduction and history Orbx FTX PNW Required Comparison of Real vs FSX Manual Scenery Library Configuration Scenery Location The 2S1 Control Panel Choosing Seasons for Custom Trees Quick Reference FSX Settings The Autogen Density Slider General Tips for Flights Product Technical Support FTX Community Forums Credits Freeware Terms of Use ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ............................................... ...............................................

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Orbx FTX 2S1 Vashon Island Version 1.1 User Guide June 2010

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The Good Things in Life Are Free

Congratulations on your free download of FTX US 2S1 Vashon Island (2S1). This scenery is the first of many Orbx freeware addons for our FTX Pacific Northwest region. 2S1 Vashon Island was created by John Hockings whose previous work includes numerous OZx airfields and also Orbx FTX YCDR Caloundra Airport. The Orbx philosophy from day one has to always support its customers with paywarequality freeware addons, and this delightful scenery is no exception to that rule. As a bonus, in addition to the main 2S1 Vashon Municipal Airport, WA69 Wax Orchards Airfield, Vashon Village and local harbors and ferry terminals have been added to the overall scenery package. Keep Vashon Weird! So proclaimed the bumper sticker on the back glass of a rusty little hatchback driving down Vashon Island's main road, along with several other offerings of advice which won't be repeated here. We're not sure if we should classify Vashon Island as weird; we would however call it beautiful and definitely unique. One look at this quaint little island and its small municipal airport and you know youve reached that certain spot just off the beaten path youve been looking for. So taxi over to the visitors parking area, tie your plane down, pull out a folding chair and your favorite drink and enjoy the beauty of the Pacific Northwest and one of the neatest little airports youre ever likely to find. anywhere. A Little History The airport started out as a landing strip built shortly after World War II by Masa Mukai, a well-known Japanese-American strawberry grower who owned a family farm off Cove Road. In the 1950s, the Washington State Legislature voted to make it a real airport, and Islanders agreed, passing a bond to purchase Mukais land from him. Thus was born King County Airport District No. 1 the only airport district in the county. A few years later, in 1963, five pilots asked if they could form an association that would lease the airport at $1 a year, giving them a place to park their planes. In exchange, the association would operate and maintain the airport, pay for insurance and safety improvements and keep it open to the public, and thus was born Vashon Air Service. Today, the association is made up of 44 members, the majority of whom own hangars on sites they sublease from Vashon Air Service. And for the most part, the structure the state, county and Islanders established nearly a half-century ago, where commissioners oversee a public airport maintained and managed by an association of pilots, has worked well, local pilots say. (Most of the preceding two paragraphs are taken from an article in the local paper: By Leslie Brown, Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber Editor Jun 24 2009)

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Ready For a Challenge? Remember how we said we preferred the word unique? Well, unique it is and not just because of the rather large metal sculpture of a crashed flying saucer on the east side of the runway. Vashon Municipal Airport is the only public airport with a grass runway in state of Washington, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The airport is fairly quiet and for good reason. This is not an airport for the faint of heart. With a short runway and a steep descent into it, some pilots simply cant land on its short, grass runway. To make matters just a little more challenging, approaches from the south are best flown with a bit of an offset, you come in at a slight angle, a little east or left of centerline to avoid the trees on the south side of Cove Rd. Oh, and did we mention the 3 foot deep ditch that runs parallel to the runway on the west side? Yes sir, youll want to make sure you keep your nose pointed down the center of the runway. Its a bit of a challenge but oh so worth it. Here's a few photos taken at the airport by Dave Kester, who supplied John Hockings with all the wonderful photo source materials for his modeling of the airfield.

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Orbx FTX 2S1 Vashon Island Version 1.1 User Guide June 2010

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Wax Orchards WA69 Wax Orchards is the other charming airstrip on Vashon Island, in the grounds of the Wax Orchards fruit grove, famous for its jam and other healthy products. The Wax Orchards firm was founded in 1920 by August and Johanna Wax and now produces a line of naturally grown and processed fruit products. The grass strip is lined by picturesque double rows of fruit trees. The airfield even made the front cover of Flight Training magazine as you can see below!

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Special Thanks to Bob Therkelsen A very special thank you! goes to Bob Therkelsen for allowing us to take pictures of 2S1. Bob is one of the three commissioners for Vashon Air Service and also one of the five original pilots who started the association in 1963. We had the pleasure of talking with Bob and listening to his stories about Vashon Airport in the early days. Bob first soloed at Vashon in his own 1946 Aeronca Champ in 1959. At that time there were no hangars at the airport and no airplanes were kept there either, so Bob and a few of his friends kept their airplanes in his backyard and used the service road behind his house for a runway. Thats right, a single lane service road which was only 900 feet long. Bob said he became so use to landing on that short narrow strip of road that when he was finally able to get a hangar at the airport he felt as if he were landing at La Guardia International Airport, it seemed so big! One of our favorite of Bob's stories concerned a friend of his and how he got to work. Bobs friend was a pilot for Northwest Orient Air back then and Bob would fly him over to Sea-Tac Airport so he could catch his flight. PNW days are short in the winter and often it would be dark when Bob returned home. Attempting to land an Aeronca Champ at night on a 900ft strip with no runway lights might seem to pose a bit of a problem for most folks. Not Bob. You see, Bob used a yellow light bulb in his back porch light so he could spot his house from the air when things got dark and orient him to the road/runway. He would then use the landing light on his airplane to light up the road!

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Orbx FTX Pacific Northwest is required for full functionality

This airport scenery addon is designed to work with Microsoft Flight Simulator X and Orbx FTX Pacific Northwest (FTX PNW). It will work fine without FTX PNW but please note the limitations below. Here's what is required to run this airport scenery as Orbx designed it to: PRODUCT Version(s) Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX)
Standard Edition Deluxe Edition Acceleration Addon Pack (not a stand-alone product) Gold Edition (which includes all three versions above) If you don't have FSX already, the best version to purchase would be the Gold Edition, which already includes all versions and service packs SP1 and SP2.

Why
The base product required. All Orbx products are made for FSX and don't run by themselves.

Orbx FTX Pacific Northwest (Download)

This is a downloadable FTX region pack which you can purchase from the Orbx fullterrain.com website. It's designed to work specifically with FSX

The FTX region covering the airport location

Orbx FTX Pacific Northwest (DVD)

For convenient installation, the Orbx FTX USA Canada Pacific Northwest region is also available as a DVD purchase. This offers a quick and easy installation of the entire FTX Pacific Northwest region in which 2S1 is located.

(Optional) An alternative way to purchase FTX PNW on a handy quick to install DVD covering the Pacific Northwest region

WHAT WILL YOU MISS OUT ON IF YOU DON'T HAVE ORBX FTX INSTALLED? - Blending of the airport photoreal into the surrounding terrain with exactly matching ground textures - The Pacific Northwest region beautifully represented by Orbx's FTX textures, landclass, mesh and more - Moving traffic on all major and minor roads, properly aligned to the photoreal ground terrain - 3D light poles along roads and in urban/township streets and around the airport - Orbx's modified autogen houses, custom trees and other objects - The FTX Central application, which is used to launch all the Orbx tools and also switch FTX off Please visit www.fullterrain.com to purchase your copy of FTX if you haven't already done so.

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Comparison of Real vs FSX

Here is a photo and a screenshot shown together to give you an idea of how accurately the 2S1 Vashon Muni airfield has been modeled.

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Manual Scenery Library Configuration

If you do NOT have Orbx FTX installed you can still use this scenery by manually adding the scenery library entry from within Flight Simulator X. Here's the steps required to configure the scenery library. 1. Run Flight Simulator X, then selecting Settings | Scenery Library 2. Click on the Add Area button 3. A folder browser window will pop up. 4. Navigate to the ORBX \ FTX_NA folder 5. Now select the FTXAA_2S1 folder and click OK 6. You will then see two folders displayed, Scenery and Texture. Now click OK* *(Note: If you're using Windows 7, click anywhere in the white portion of the folder browser screen that shows the Scenery and Texture folder, not the OK button - there's a bug with FSX under Windows 7) 7. You will now be taken back to the Scenery Library list of scenery added, and the airport will now be displayed at the top of the list. 8. Now repeat steps 2-7 for the FTXAA_WA69 scenery folder

You can now load up a flight at the either Vashon Muni or Wax Orchards from the "Free Flight" menu using airport codes 2S1 or WA69

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Scenery Location
The images below shows the location of 2S1 Vashon Muni and WA69 Wax Orchards. Note their proximity to downtown Seattle and KSEA Seattle Tacoma International Airport.

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The 2S1 Control Panel

After 2S1 Vashon Island is installed, a Control Panel icon is placed onto your Windows desktop. You can also use FTX Central (if you have an Orbx FTX region installed) to access the 2S1 Control Panel from the main FTX Central interface.

The Control Panel will enable you to disable or enable certain scenery features of the scenery. You can also use the Control Panel to choose which season to use for John's custom modeled trees (see next page).

To disable or enable any feature, simply select it from the list for a brief description of what it is. To disable an item, simply click the tickbox. Any changes are made instantly and there is no Apply button required. You may click on each items description in the list to see the explanation, and this does not trigger the on/off switchbox. This will allow you to consider which items to disable. The 'Airshow' option adds many static aircraft to the 2S1 airfield to reproduce an annual event that takes place there.

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Choosing Seasons for Custom Trees

John has modeled some highly complex and detailed trees around the airport, particularly the low scrubs and tall grasses which are a feature of Vashon Muni. They add a wonderful touch of authenticity to the airport, but to provide for this level of detail they were custom modeled in Gmax. The only downside of this approach is that because they aren't autogen trees, the seasons are fixed through the whole year. To get around that, you can use the Control Panel to toggle which season textures the custom trees should use, to match the currently selected season. A particular favorite of mine is the Fall season, which really looks beautiful all around Vashon Island.

Please be aware though, that you cannot use the 2S1 Control Panel in mid-flight. You must exit FSX, change the trees season, and re-load a flight. Note that the trees in Summer and Spring are identical. The default trees when you first install 2S1 are set to summer.

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Quick Reference FSX Settings

The table below lists in a handy reference the minimum recommended settings required in FSX to enjoy 2S1 the way Orbx designed it. These settings run well on most PCs and take particular advantage of the custom mesh and photoreal imagery used in the scenery area. If you use the settings below you will enjoy a high fidelity experience and good performance.

Setting

Value

Why?

Level of detail radius

Large

Reduces blurring of textures

Global Texture Resolution

Max

Best displays photoreal textures

Mesh Complexity

100

Better terrain definition

Mesh Resolution

10m

The mesh required for FTX Pacific Northwest

Texture Resolution

7cm

Sharpest roads and freeways

Scenery Complexity

Extremely Dense

See all modeled buildings at the airfields

Autogen Density

Dense

Best FPS versus detail More discussion on this on page 15

Road Vehicles

16%

No need to set higher for 2S1

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The Autogen Density Slider

Because FTX uses much denser, more accurately placed autogen objects in its annotation, having it set to Extemely Dense a large city like Seattle will bring even the most powerful PC to its knees. We won't mince our words - FTX is not designed to give you a 60FPS experience with all sliders maxed. The key thing to remember is that 2S1 is designed to be used both today and in the FUTURE, meaning that we did not cripple the product on release to cater for a broad range of PCs, but rather created a standard which will be enjoyed by most people as hardware catches up. Here's a simple table which should be used as a guide for the Autogen Density slider. This has been indexed to PCs as at January 2010, which means this table will become dated rather quickly. We expect the 'Extreme' spec PC to be the Entry Level by mid 2012, so of course as FSX gets older, your PCs are likely to get faster. That said, if you adhere to these slider settings in 2S1 you will get a good balance between visuals and performance. PC Specifications (Circa Jan 2010)
Entry Level Core2 Duo <= 2.5Ghz | < 512MB GPU Mid Range Core2 Duo >= 2.8Ghz | 512MB+ GPU High End Intel i7 9xx < 4Ghz (not OC) | 1GB GPU Extreme Intel i7 9xx >= 4Ghz (OC) | 1-2GB GPU

Seattle City / Urban Areas

Vashon Island

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General Tips For Flights

When in Virtual Cockpit, cockpit or external views, pull the zoom back using the "-" (minus) key all the way to 0.30 This view may not be to everyone's taste, but it has the effect of making all the ground textures much, much crisper. With todays widescreen monitors it also provides a realistic field of view. This may not apply to everyone, but sometimes setting frame rate to unlimited can provide for smoother flights, but at the slight expense of some blurring and the occasional stutter. This is the opposite experience to FS9, where locked frames always performed best. This also works best since FSX-Acceleration/SP2 was released. Try this for yourself to see if it helps add some smoothness. SHIFT+ O (not zero, but the letter O) allows you to look around using your mouse in most views, and simulates head movement. Use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in or out on areas of interest. The "-" (minus) key held down is a simple way to zoom back out more quickly. It's a poor man's TrackIR! Try to keep your Windows desktop resolution the same as that used by FSX. Believe it or not, running FSX at the highest resolution your monitor and video card combination can support, will yield better visuals and smoother frame rates than bringing your screen resolution down to an artificially lower value. When exploring the 2S1 surrounds for the first time, dont be in a rush and whiz across the landscape in your fastest aircraft at 500 knots. Grab the ultralight motorized glider and press the S until the view changes to directly behind it. Press and hold - to zoom right out, then use SHIFT+O to freely look around. Crank up the throttle with F4 and swing your mouse from side to side as if to move your head. Youll be amazed how much fun it is using that combination. Give it a try! Want to explore 2S1 on foot? Why not download Orbx's free "BOB" utility, which allows you to literally walk around the airport and explore. You'll even hear footsteps and birds singing in the trees! You can grab BOB from http://fullterrain.com/freeware.html Pressing "Q" (Sound off) will give you some FPS back, but of course at the expense of total silence! Perhaps a nice mode to fly with when youre listening to your MP3 player. Disable your Anti-Virus program while running FSX. At Orbx we use NOD32 AV, which allows us to "exclude" the FSX folder from virus checks which avoids each file being processed by the AV engine during loading and flights. If you are worried about security, just pull out your internet connection cable (unless of course you are relying on it for real-time weather etc).

Give the above tips a try and you will find 2S1 a smoother more enjoyable experience, and in some cases, you will be able to drag the autogen density sliders further to the right.

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Product Technical Support

Orbx has a very simple support policy: No question unanswered. That means, should you have any questions about 2S1 or its use, please feel free to register on the forums at fullterrain.com and then log a support question in the FTX Freeware Support Forum section. Orbx FTX staff will be available to review your support questions and you will usually get a reply on the forums within 24 hours, often much sooner than that.

To visit the our support forums, click on the button shown above from the fullterrain.com front page or click on Help | Orbx FTX Support Forums from FTX Central
Please do NOT email support requests Orbx provides world-class support on our forums, and it's the only way in which you can receive support for 2S1. Provided you adhere to the forum terms of use you will always be offered our support at no cost as we work toward a problem resolution each time. And just because it's freeware does not mean you'll be treated any differently. We pride ourselves on the support we provide to all our products, payware or freeware. However, if you email Orbx asking for support, you will most likely not receive an answer at all, since our policy is that all support is provided through our forums only. Use the forum Search function Before you post a question, please try searching for the answer first, using the forums built-in search function located on the forum menu bar.

What to Include in Your Support Forum Requests

If at all possible, this is what wed like to see provided for each request you log: A separate post on the FTX support forums for each issue (don't tag new issue reports onto others) A screenshot to highlight what you are talking about A descriptive post title which clearly states what the issue is Detailed comments in your post about what you are reporting on

The Orbx support team is always on standby to assist you with any problems you may have, or will comment on your issue reports. Please remember, our priority is fixing any urgent issues first, and addressing bug reports second. Clearly though, any show stopper bugs will be given top priority though.

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FTX Community Forums

FTX already has quite a thriving and active user community on the forums, with over 7,000 members as of May 2010. You dont need a user account just to view preview and user community screenshots and selected information posted by Orbx staff, but if youd like to join in on the discussion there and view tips, guides and in-depth support questions and answers, simply create your own account. Its instant and no validation email is required. We like to keep things simple. We hope to see you there soon!

Thanks for reading!

Youve stuck with me through all these pages of information, and I appreciate your taking the time to read the user guide. I hope it gave you some tips and insights. I know youll have a fantastic experience bush flying and exploring this amazing scenery. See you on the forums!

John Venema
Orbx CEO

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Credits
John 'Prof' Hockings Ground terrain, seasonal colouring, autogen annotation, APX development, custom modelling, texturing, object placement for 2S1, WA69 and Vashon Village. Photography, object placement for airshow mode, Vashon Village, coastal harbours and ferry terminals User Guide and installer Source models for static aircraft (used with Ken's kind permission)

Dave Kester

John Venema Kevin Burns

Beta Testers

Dave Kester, Philip Manhart, Patrick Scharnowski, John Dow, and Ryan Mason Download delivery infrastructure by Jay Kae and Adrian Lehmann

Servers

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FREEWARE TERMS OF USE

These airfields and associated object libraries and / or scenery and associated files are provided as FREEWARE for private use only. You may install and use these airfields freely for private non-commercial use only. You may install these airfields on as many private-use PCs as you wish. These airfields are virtual depictions of real locations and may not be used for any official flight training purposes whatsoever. It is absolutely forbidden to repurpose any or part of these files or libraries for any other project or product without the express permission of the original authors. It is expressly forbidden to use these files for any commercial or for-profit purpose including commercial flight training, flight schools, tourism or any other purpose other than for recreational and/or entertainment use by a private individual. It is expressly forbidden to digitally alter, manipulate, host on websites / FTP servers or any internet hosted domain, serve, bundle, burn to CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, charge for, levy fees for and in any way generate revenues or profits arising from the use of these files. No guaranteed support, warranty or indemnity is provided from the use of this installer or airports. You install and use them at your own risk. The original authors may at their own discretion provide support or assistance for the airfields they have created.

COPYRIGHTS Microsoft Flight Simulator X is a Copyrighted trademark of Microsoft Corporation FTX and Full Terrain Experience are brands of Orbx Simulation Systems Pty. Ltd. Static aircraft models by Kevin Burns and used with his written permission.

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