Foula Airfield – EGFO/EGZR/FOA – Heading to the Edge of the World v1.0.0
Introduction
Hi!
Thanks for clicking on this!
With this mod, you will be heading to the edge of the world, on an island called Foula. This mod will bring a complete transformation to the whole island.
Foula is located in the Shetland archipelago of Scotland, with the island being one of United kingdom’s most remote, permanently inhabited islands, it was a surprise to me that this island actually had an airport. The Island is located about 20km from the nearest island, Shetland. The nearest mainland is the tip of Scotland, about 180kms away. This means that there is some good flight exploration available, even if you have to fly over a bit of ocean. There are about 30 people living on the island, with most of them living of off sheep farming or bird watching tourism. Birds, Horses, and other wildlife love this island, with its big cliffs, 400 meter high hills, and plenty of lakes all packed into a single 4×6 km small island.
Furthermore, this island is the perfect place for challenging flights!
Laying in the Atlantic Ocean, the airfield is often exposed to challenging to fly through weather, consisting of fog, strong winds and heavy rain. And with almost no emergency services available, you have to be a very good pilot to land your plane safely. It doesn’t help that the runway is not paved and, with its small size of 13x400m, you will have to immediately land, or you will risk overshooting the runway.
Features
The main feature of this island is the custom-made aerial imagery, that I’ve sourced from Bing.
How I made it:
I got the imagery from bing maps
cut it in to pieces
recolored all of them, making and them way greener, so that MFS generates 3D grass.
georeferenced all the pieces seperately in QGIS
exported from there, to MFS
I went through all this effort because the default island was terrible, you can see a comparison picture above. It looked like it came straight out of Mars..
And, ofcourse this mod also changes other things, here is a full list of all the things that have changed:
For the whole island:
A completely hand-made Aerial Imagery, sourced from bing. (read below for more info)
Roads that have been recolored using aprons
Some auto-generated 3d buildings have been removed, because they were spawning on ruins.
Some terrain fixes (read down below for more info about them)
A few 3d cars placed on top of ones that were visible on the aerial imagery
And for the airfield:
A retextured runway
A single parking spot, as the airfield can’t handle more as 1 aircraft at a time
How to install
1. Download the 2 zip files
2. Unzip both of the zip files
3. Read both of the text files
4. Put the 7 unzipped folders all seperately into your [Flightsim]\LocalCache\Packages\Community\ folder.
5. Launch the game
6. Find the airport on the map, and fly there!
Do’s and Don’ts
Do:
Share this link with friends
Post screenshots of it
Enjoy it
Give this mod a like, if you like it
Don’t:
Sell this mod
Edit this mod
Note
I know that the files of this mod are big (2,5gb), that is due to the aerial imagery that is in it.
Currently, aerial imagery is stored in CGL files, and their size is dependent on the amount of area that they cover. I didnt notice any difference on the file sizes when going from zoom level 20 (better quality) to zoom level 19. Neither visually, nor in the file sizes. So, currently it is on ZL 19.
and thus, I can’t decrease the size of the files for now (until asobo makes a change), or there is a way that I dont know off. If the second is the case, please notify me either in the comments, or on discord.
Another thing, the terrain. The terrain is currently not to my liking. I would’ve liked to be able to add a heightmap to it, and fix the whole terrain with that. However, currently we are just not able to do this. That is why the terrain of Foula looks subpar to the rest of the mod. I did still want to release this, because I thought it would’ve been a shame for this project to sit on the table for any longer. (and it has been laying there for a while) So, this feature will come whenever I am able to put a heightmap in.
About the ICAO code in-game:
The ICAO code of the airport in-game is EGZR. This is because the default airport is also called EGZR, and if I don’t use the same one, the default airport will end up not getting deleted. Leaving you with a asphalt runway and a double icon on the world map. Thats why I had to use EGZR, instead of the more commonly used EGFO. More about that below V
About the three ICAO codes in the title;
The airport doesn’t have a real ICAO code because it is to small. These ICAO code are therefore made up.
The first one, EGFO, is the one that most sites seem to use.
The second one, EGZR, is what its called in the flight sim.
The third one, FOA, isnt a ICAO code (as it’s only 3 letters), but you’d call this a IATA code. A lot of sites use this code as their main one, because it doesnt have a real ICAO code.
Thats why I decided to put all three in the title.
Future updates
I am planning to make some custom 3d buildings for the airport.
A heightmap for the island, when asobo gives us the tools to do this.
Minor fixes, when you guys notice some.
Request to you
If you notice any issues/inconsitincies/whatever, I’d really like to hear it from you! If possible, I will fix this as soon as I can!
Why should you tell me? This will help me fix the issue, and it will improve all of my future sceneries as well!
Same as with recommendations or something else, feel free to tell it to me!
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