[WIP] Bear Island, Florida

Greetings all!

Bear Island started off as a simple scenery produced by another developer and myself back in 2013, as we were just learning the ropes of scenery development for FSX. Years later, in April of 2017, Bear Island had become one of my personal favorite locations to fly into, as well as a favorite for many simmers. However, I felt that with the knowledge I had gained over the years, the scenery no longer held up to my standards. So, I decided to create a redux of the scenery, utilizing every skill and tool I knew at the time. A personal challenge, just to see how far I could go.

Over the years, I have continued to update and improve the scenery, and after releasing it for FSX and P3D back in 2017, it quickly became one of my most popular creations (Now succeeded by my Solomon Islands X regional scenery).

Now, almost 4 years after releasing the redux, it's time to bring the scenery over to MSFS! (Fun fact: The redux was also done nearly 4 years after the initial release, meaning that this addon unintentionally receives an upgrade almost every 4 years, so far..)

The conversion will follow the layout of the original scenery for FSX and P3D. However there will likely be some differences, depending on what I can achieve with the SDK. To start, the imagery is the same, however it has now been upscaled from 30cm to 15cm (LOD20) using AI software. All of the features handled by SODE on the other platforms will hopefully show up sooner or later. Some models may be swapped for newer renditions, while others may be updated a bit. To what extent, I currently have not decided.

As of today, all of the library objects included in the scenery have been converted and are now placed. The aerial imagery present at this very moment is the first rendition, so it still has many imperfections. Although it may not look it, don't be fooled, there is still a lot of work to do yet, but I will continue sharing progress along the way. My main development thread for this project is over at FSDeveloper, which will always be up-to-date with my current progress. You can find that here. I have not decided whether or not I will post all updates here (on this thread) as well, or just milestone updates. Time will tell I guess!

More progress updates coming in the near future! Until then, here are the few development shots I have so far:

(Note: These screenshots represent an unfinish project at various stages of completion!)

Sorry for the lack of communication. I completely forgot about the flightsim.to forums.

No major progress right now. Spending most of my time wrapping up a payware for FSX and P3D. Hoping to get the initial release up sometime after. Likely sometime this summer.

Quote from JohnG

looks very nice. I don't fly around there very much, but once this is out, I'll make some special flights, just to oggle the scenery.

Silly question, but I trust that you are aware of the various libraries of "pre-made" pieces of scenery available here to help you populate sites like this one? If so, apologies for teaching granny to suck eggs/if not, you might like to check out the work of badmed, amongst others.

Thank you! And yes, I am aware of all the great libraries produced by various devs. I do have my own collection of libraries that will be used in this scenery. Most all of which have already been converted for this scenery, however, I'm looking at adding some additional models, as well as replacing some, so I still have those to do yet!

Quote from JohnG

You may choose to share hour libraries with everyone by making them available here? Just a thought to help other developers.

I think that's what I will ultimately do. They are available here now, just unlisted until I'm ready to allow others to use them, publicly. So far, I've let anyone who wants to use them in a project do so.

I still have some more objects to add, and I really need to document all the models before I do a public release, just so everyone knows what's included. It's just finding the time to do that bit of extra work.

Quote from JohnG

If you already have some just about ready to go, I suggest that you document them and release them ASAP. Developers are crying out for more library items. You can always update later to add new ones, as you have them ready, or even create another library.

Emerald Object Library is now publicly available for freeware use. I was planning on releasing an update to go alongside it, but I'm having trouble with one of the new models after the latest MSFS update.