TURN ON WORD WRAP ----------------- Randolph Air Force Base, Texas ------------------------------------------------------------ By James Shaddox This scenery is of Randolph AFB located just northeast of San Antonio, Texas. RAFB has great historical significance for the U.S. Air Force. It was built in the early 1930s to fulfill a need for a pilot training facility. Most of the original buildings were designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. For many years from the '30s to the '60s it was the main site of the Army Air Corps' Aviation Cadet program. It is still active today, with pilot training programs in the Cessna T-37 and the T-38 Talon. I enjoy scenery which uses custom structures rather than generic FS buildings, therefore every building you see here was designed specifically for this scenery. It took a while (whew!) but there are no generic FS buildings in this version of RAFB, and I hope you enjoy the results. The only structures which are not custom-made are the elevated water tower and the two fuel tanks (I think that's what they are) on the west side of the base, and I intend to make new versions of those in future releases of the scenery. Those of you familiar with the base will immediately recognize the building nicknamed "Taj Mahal", which is the tall white building near the center of the base with the beacon on top. Hopefully you will recognize other buildings as well, including the distinctive hangars on the east and west flight lines. Other buildings to look for are the elementary school, barracks buildings, base exchange and commissary, clinic, chapel, base commander's house, officers' club, and base operations, as well as housing. Also included are ground textures for the nearby cities of Universal City, Schertz, and Converse. I made use of textures instead of buildings for many areas on the base itself to keep frame rate decent, but I will probably be adding more buildings in future versions, provided future versions of Flight Simulator permit larger bgl files. You can use the scenery complexity settings to remove some scenery if frame rate is a problem. Future plans also call for some dynamic scenery to be added, probably of Air Force T-37s and T-38s. Some personal recommendations for the fullest enjoyment of the scenery ( or any other FS scenery, for that matter) are a Pentium II running at least 233 Mhz and a 3D accelerator card such as a Monster 3D. I also find that a texture upgrade package such as FSFX from Papa Tango provides more realistic textures than the stock FS ones, but it's a matter of personal preference and not necessary for this scenery. I find, though, that without a 3D accelerator, some of the textured ground polygons such as I use for Universal City tend to "breathe", or jump around a little bit. I don't know the cure for that, and I would appreciate it if anyone who does know can tell me. I welcome comments good or bad. If you happen to be stationed at Randolph, I could sure use some dimensions which I was not able to access, specifically the distance from the ramps on the east and west flight lines to the edge of the runway. Mine are merely educated guesses. Comments can be directed to me at Mrshad@Compuserve.com INSTALLATION ------------ In the main scenery directory of FS98, create a new folder for the files and name it something like "RAFB" (or whatever you'd like), within that folder create two other new folders entitled "scenery" and "texture", unzip all .bgl files into "scenery" and the texture files (all .r8 and .pat files) into "texture"...start FS98 and go into the "Scenery Library" mode. Under "Add Files", create a path to the new scenery. Here's mine, for example: C:\FS6\SCENERY\RAFB\SCENERY\*.BGL After creating the path, hit "OK", activate the scenery with the pushbutton on that page, and return to the simulator. Under the Go To menu, select Texas and under airport select Randolph. You should find yourself sitting on the runway. ------------------------------------------ NAVIGATION FREQUENCIES are as listed in the FS 98 Airport/Facility Directory, under Texas/Universal City - Randolph AFB. REQUIREMENTS ------------ You will need the following: - Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 - Standard textures from Airport V2.02 (or higher) - Standard Visual Object Designer (VOD) textures CREDITS ------- For his invaluable help with information on Randolph AFB and for helping me obtain video footage for use in designing this scenery, I want to thank my father, Leon Shaddox, USAF retired, who spent his flying career in the service of the United States and finished out his Air Force career at Randolph AFB. This scenery is dedicated to him. ------- SCENERY BUILD PROGRAMS: Airport V2.10 - Pascal Meziat SCASM - Manfred Moldenhauer LEGAL ----- This project was created as FREEWARE and cannot be included in any for-profit compilation or uploaded to any pay site without express written consent from me. This scenery is (C) 1998, James Shaddox.