Marginal X-Plane Scenery Tutorials Hangar Placing scenery

Exporting from Blender

• Choose File → Export → X-Plane v8 Object (.obj):

Any messages or errors appear in the console:

	The console is the window titled "Blender" that looks like a Command Prompt.
	The console is the Console application that comes with Mac OS X and which is found in the Utilities folder.

If the export is successful there are no warnings or errors in the console; the console just says something like:

Starting OBJ export to c:\X-Plane\Custom Scenery\EGLL\objects\VAhangar_open.obj
Finished - exported 56 primitives

We're finished with Blender for now. This tutorial does not cover all aspects of Blender's X-Plane support - to see the reference documentation choose Help → X-Plane in Blender.

• Choose File → Quit Blender.

OverlayEditor

We'll use the OverlayEditor application to place the hangar in X-Plane:

Download:

OverlayEditor

	Run the program that you downloaded to install OverlayEditor. Choose Start → All Programs → OverlayEditor
	Open the folder that you downloaded and drag the OverlayEditor application to your Applications folder. If you're using MacOS 10.3 then download and install wxPython 2.5.3. Double-click on the OverlayEditor application.
	Install the package that you downloaded. Choose Graphics → OverlayEditor from your Gnome or KDE applications menu (or just type overlayeditor in a terminal).
The first time that you start OverlayEditor it prompts you to locate the X-Plane folder: Navigate to X-Plane's top-level folder (ie the folder which contains the X-Plane, Plane-Maker etc applications).

Now to edit our scenery package.

• Press the "open" button:

• Choose EGLL from the list of scenery packages.

Since our EGLL package currently only contains objects and textures OverlayEditor doesn't know what part of the world we want to edit. We need to tell it to go to EGLL - London Heathrow:

• Press the "goto" button:

• Click in the right-hand list (Airports by code).
• Type (quickly) EGLL to find London Heathrow:

• Click on the OK button.

OverlayEditor reads X-Plane's global airport database (apt.dat) and shows London Heathrow's runways and taxiways. We start off facing North and looking down at an angle of 45°:

The Virgin maintenance hangar is located to the north east of London Heathrow, facing Runway 23:

Image taken from CAA Aircraft parking/docking chart AD 2-EGLL-2-2 (5 Apr 03)

• Use the cursor keys and to zoom in on the north east of the airport (you can hold down to move faster):

OverlayEditor lists the objects present in the EGLL package folder on the right of the application.

• Click on our hangar - objects/VAhangar_open - in the list:

• Press the "add" button to add the hangar to our scenery:

The hangar is placed into the scenery and coloured pink to show that it is selected:

The selected object's location and heading is shown as the seconds set of figures in the status bar:

• Use and to rotate the hangar, and , , and to move the hangar so that it lines up with the edge of the apron (you can hold down to rotate and move faster, or for really accurate placement):

• Change your view-point using the cursor keys, , , and to check that you're happy with how you've placed the hangar (you can hold down to move faster).

On some Mac keyboards these keys are labelled as , , and . On Mac portables hold down and use the cursor keys.

• If you want to see what the scenery looks like without the pink highlighting, click on the green background to un-select the hangar object:

• When you're happy with how you've placed the hangar, press the "save" button:

That's it! We've placed the hangar in the X-Plane world.

We're finished with OverlayEditor for now. This tutorial does not cover all of OverlayEditor's features - to see the reference documentation press the "help" button:

• Close OverlayEditor

This is the end of the tutorial. I hope that it was useful. You can run X-Plane, navigate to London Heathrow (EGLL), and see the hangar to the east of the airport:

Marginal X-Plane Scenery Tutorials Hangar Placing scenery