Beginnings

I've flown from Liverpool John Lennon Airport many times, both in reality as a passenger and also a pilot myself when doing my PPL.  At that time years ago I ran FS9 on a rig that was, well, a little on the slow side.  I dreamed of a setup where I could have great almost photorealistic detail and still get smooth enough flight characteristics to make the sim imersive.  I downloaded and found Paul Derbyshire's EGGP VFR landmark scenery which made a massive difference, but even this left gaps.  Since I couldn't get the experience I wanted, I sadly lost interest.

I left FS9 for years, until only recently acquiring FSX and building a new rig that would be capable enough to running it at a decent level - my interest was reborn.  Quickly, I installed Horizon Gen X photo-imagery.  That was followed by Gary Summon's VFR airfields 3 and REX2.  All the old FS9 scenery addons were next, including UK Ports, UK Refineries, UK Power project and Paul Derbyshire's landmark sceneries.

Still I was to be a little disappointed though.  Not all of the scenery matched up with the GenX and plenty of it looked tired.  Textures left a lot to be desired, especially running at 1600x1200x32 framerate locked to 30fps and all scenery settings maxed out and it all just looked too fake sitting on top of the aerial imagery.

'If only I could make my own scenery', I mused, 'then all this could look so improved.'

And so events were set in motion.

A day of research and investigation followed and I stumbled on Arno Gerretson's blog about using Google Sketchup to design FS scenery.  One pdf file download and installs of Sketchup and ModelConverterX later the plan began to solidify - I would design scenery using Sketchup, map my homemade textures onto it, create FSX models using MDLCX and then import it into FSX using EZ Scenery 2.  Could it really be as easy as that???