Mifflin photorealistic scenery

Mifflin County airport in Reedsville, Pa.  Click any picture for a big view.

I spent a LOT of time last year learning how to make a photorealistic scenery for Condor.  So much time, in fact, that I took a break from it after finishing my Harris Hill scenery.  However, several people have been using my comprehensive tutorial and spreadsheet to generate their own scenery and I thought that now I know so much more about it, that I could generate a new one quickly.

Sure enough, I have it down to about a week of off/on effort.  I took one of my favorite nearby soaring areas -Mifflin, and built a photorealistic version to supplement the existing terragen one.  Figuring I didn't need to reinvent the wheel, I used the same size soaring area as the original.

Upper left corner points are: 41.3868, -79.2801 and lower right is 38.6139, -76.7205.  The blue markers show the corners of the soaring area and the map below is the flight planner map from Condor.

Blue markers are the corners of the scenery.  Almost 32,000 square miles of soaring 171 miles across and 186 in height.

Questions

1.  What are the 'must have' airports for this scenery?  For soaring, I have just a couple so far - Mifflin County, Eagle field, Ridge soaring, Mid Atlantic Soaring Center.  I'll put certain airports around the map just because you may want to start in different sections of the map.  For example, soaring over the nation's capital might be fun since you'll never get to actually do it.

2.  What waypoints?  I've included the Mifflin points but as you go further south, there's still plenty of room for more points to the south.

3.  Is there a need for a 'learning' landscape?  The texture that goes on the surface of the scenery is an aerial photo.  But, I can edit that photo and add ANYTHING.  For example, I could paint the name of a ridge on the side of it, put arrows or circle good landing fields, etc.  While I'd keep one version clean and just with the aerial photos, making a second version with those markings on it is a cinch.

4.  Condor doesn't simulate ridge lift very well and unfortunately, that's something I can't change.  It has to do with the resolution of the terrain and the angle that Condor sees the ridge meeting the wind.  Unfortunately, you'll just have to crank up the wind and fly it that way.

I'm linking to this blog entry from Rec.Av.Soaring so if you've come here from there, you can either comment in that thread or put your comments in here directly.