Meigs Field is Being Re-Done (KCGX)

[iheart707]

This is all I'm going to give you. The water should be a dead giveaway.
The game...begins! The person who guesses right unlocks the project behind this post!

[GaryG]

KMDW?

[tomee]

Hmm... my guess is Chicago Meigs Field

[Brett-Hill]

Hmm... my guess is Chicago Meigs Field

I would guess this too

[iheart707]

Well folks, your right. I’m surprised that everyone was quick to tell! The photo itself is actually a picture of the infamous tower located and known to the world as Meigs Field (KCGX). Realizing the airports simplicity with only a few buildings and the fact that it is now a public park, it provides me along with our own modeling team the ability to accurately construct these buildings with relative ease. Most importantly, little paper work is needed to access these now public buildings.

As far as I know, there were a few buildings that were taken down as a result of the airport’s closure, but those were very small and insignificant to the operation of the airport. If you have information otherwise, please let me know. I need better pictures of these buildings as they are few and far between.
Anyways, here’s what’s planned for this add-on.

-Original 3D models for all the buildings and scenery. This means that were going to stay away from as much of the generic FSX looking airport scenery as we can.
-There will be a completely new AFCAD rendition of the airport with nothing being imported from FS2004. The entire airport will be built up from scratch. The Jeppesen approaches that existed in the later part of 2002 will be included with extreme attention to detail being followed.
-There will be as well a newly animated and dynamic windsock.
-The entire island, Northerly Island, will be re-done to accurately represent the actual field in its entirety.

Other things we’re thinking of…
Depending upon the amount of coding and animating we feel we want to do, we hope to eventually include some unique things.

-We hope to create a dynamic airport environment with animated people and cars moving about the field. Some of the cars will be driving around on the airport ground, and some will be driving to the airport from the Lakeshore Drive.
-We also hope to represent moving people in the terminal building, next to static aircraft, the tower, and people taking pictures of the planes landing. (Ok the last one might be farfetched, but we will give it a go later down the road).
-Dynamic airport seasons representing and ranging from the snowiest of days to the clear autumn afternoons. (We’ll see about this one)

As a side note, if anyone has any resources that they think would be helpful, please let me know. Pictures, facts, videos, or connections to individuals who worked at the field would be greatly appreciated. (You’d be surprised how hard it was to find the charts alone!)

Although I do have plans for the project to be completed by the end of this year, I’m not going to make any promises that it will be done. Most of the project’s work will be done over the summer when I’m done with my college finals. As a team, we are unsure if this will be freeware or payware at this time.

Stay Tuned!

[iheart707]

Here's a little history of the airport for those of you who are unfamiliar with why KCGX actually closed...

After all these years, these pictures are still hard to believe. One thing the video does not mention is the bid for the 2012 Olympics. The day Chicago was denied the bid, I was happy to see that Daily would not get his wish to build yet another stadium and that he was prevented from spending more money than we had.

There are conspiracies that because many potential union bids will now go unfulfilled, it may have been responsible for Daily's decision as mayor to step down, (hence the newest mayor being brought in, Rham Emanuel).

[youtube]VqwQbAxhVxs[/youtube]

[iheart707]

News!

I recently was able to track down a ton of publications and articles about the field. Thanks to these, it makes understanding the history of the airfield a little easier.

The weather is warming up finally in Chicago! Soon I'll take a trip downtown and start my GPS and other data recording.

I've also got a little bit more practice with working on objects in 3dsmax, gmax, and Blender over the last few weeks. Some of these projects were not really to build anything, but rather quick refreshers of the unique tools held within each program.

More to come soon!

[Billster8724]

anymore news on this project?

[iheart707]

Actually yes! You beat me to my post!

Tomorrow I am going out to KCGX to get the building mesurements. The interior was closed for the winter season, and they finally opened it up. So, I have a boatload of work ahead of me, but if everything goes well it will be a soon finished airport for you!

[iheart707]

Hey folks, after a long time of silence, here’s the latest news update on KCGX. I’ve been working hard collecting information from the City of Chicago and other aviation enthusiast who have flown themselves into the field. I’ve had discussions with many of private pilot fliers, old air traffic controllers, and a few executive jet owners about the operations, where-a-bouts of stuff, and other things unique to the field. To cut to the chase, this has been done so far…

1. The terrain of KCGX has been completely re-done. Using 30 centimeter resolution topography information provided by the USGS, this has been included to provide a very dynamic looking airport environment. The ground will not be flat and generic looking as you may remember from FS2004 and other freeware sceneries. There will not be a "rolling hill to the ocean" on all sides of the field. Some parts will have a sea wall built in, while other areas will have a rocky terrain that's very bad for airplanes. Just like real life.

2. The runway, taxiways, and terminal buildings have been all drawn out. Though much more detail is needed in the project, the basics are there. From here on out, it’s a matter of making everything look pretty by adding a few poly’s here and there.

3. Texturing of the objects has not been completed or even started yet. Soon it will be, but don’t count on an update on this tomorrow…


4. Further animation work still has yet to be completed, but the work has been started on objects like driving cars, waving flags, sea birds, moving ships, and people walking about.

Stay tuned!

[iheart707]

This project is being frozen until the snow starts to fall in Chicago once again. I've started back up in school again and work in real life so my time to model is limited. Plus, many summer related things have already been completed - and now the "winterizing of the airport" modeling has to start. Once the texturing is completed on the winter stuff, the package will be released by or a few days after January 20, 2012.

Public preview pictures and videos will be presented when the project is nearing completion.

[Srilanka]

I'll be the first one to download that

[iheart707]

Ok - It's been a while but this project is still alive. I was originally going to do this entire airport in Gmax and ignore the terrain built into FSX, but that did not turn out as I had expected. As with all good plans, sometimes we need to restart here and there. The photos that are posted below are showing some of the screen-shots that I took while building the scenery with SBuilderX / ADE.

The easy part was placing the runway where it needed to be, but the hard part was working with the stock FSX terrain. In FSX, Northerly Island is actually quite a bit lower in altitude than it is in real life (By about 20 feet or 6 meters). Another problem was the "round world effect" found in Flight Simulator. It took some time to properly create a flat plane for a runway that was actually in contact with the ground. Also note in this photo how blocky and flat the island is in relation to the water.


Here's an early screen-shot of the terrain building of Meigs. Each layer represents a different land class and a different altitude in most cases. A lot been added since then!


Along the way, I forgot to set the altitude of polygons a few times resulting in huge holes! Easy fix.


Another set of glitches. Can you spot them all? There are three biggies on this map. Also, take note of the outline of the water. It should look smoother.



But now, progress is truly taking shape. The altitude of the airport is correct, and now a photo-real texture is correctly overlaying the field. However, I'm going to see if I can import the default water textures again so the water has it's shimmer again. W.I.P...


On top of getting the correct photo-overlay, I also stated to go through a lot of the roadways so your FSX car traffic can drive on the scenery. When I started to compile the scenery and set exclusions, traffic paths were excluded for some reason. This is not complete, but it is getting there. The Stevenson Expressway is featured in this photo.



So, yes. A lot of work is done, but there's a lot more to go still...Finals first, 3D building pic's later! :mrgreen:

[GaryG]

Cool nice job man. This takes me back some good 6/7 years when I was still with FS2002. My early teenage

[iheart707]

Thanks, yes there still is a TON of work still left to do. Night time lighting is one thing - but getting it right with very very few photos is another... That's another bear I have yet to tackle. Another is the fact that the weather station at CGX has been closed. Thus, your "Real World Weather" in the sim is creating a "Eye in a Hurricane" effect. It could be a blizzard at ORD, but it could be 70 degrees with a slight breeze off the lake at the same time. :shock: Active sky does not create this issue to this extreme, but it is still off.

I'm also having issues figuring out the airport lighting around the taxiways, where the airport fence was and what signs were posted, and if I should start building static aircraft (Citation's and Lear's). As I have already found out, It takes knowing all the details to make great things.

[iheart707]

Some small stuff.

PAPI Lights


Airport Chair

[iheart707]

[youtube]9_JWo3cINbY[/youtube]

Here's some "fantastic" plans for the terminal building and the rest of the airport in the next few years. My tax dollars at work...

[iheart707]

Nickvet419 helped me out by providing the base models for me to use in my project. I still have a bit of work to do with the night textures, moving them a foot this way and that way, plus some issues with transparency in parts of the models. Simply getting the models into the sim is a bear in itself. I'll figure it out, but it's gunna take some time.

Oh, and if you were wondering, there's no frame rate hit with these new models (at least on my computer).





(The bumpy road has been fixed)

[iheart707]

I've paused work on my CGX Project for just a few over the last days. I was busy finishing my brand new website where I can post public Beta's and the such with total control over the files uploaded. Work will resume in a few days.

Stay tuned!

[iheart707]

*(Double post...)

[sknepper]

Just wanna post my meaning about KCGX. I spent many hours flying there in flightsim while doing my real-life PPL and loved the location with sports stadiums, sky scrapers and harbours in the area. Political powers seemed to have the upper hand in destroying an icon of aviation. Very sad that these things can happen. I am certainly a supporter of bringing Meigs to life again. Good work!