Base The aeroplane maternity ward - Everett Paine Field & Toulouse Blagnac Airport

Cosmic Penguin

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Hi - while reading about the upcoming first flight of the Airbus A350 (probably in mid-June), I was thinking that making use of THE two places that widebody passenger airplanes are built today, Boeing's Everett Paine Field near Seattle and Airbus' Blagnac Airport at Toulouse (well not quite - there's a second Boeing 787 construction line in Charleston, SC, and there's the almost forgotten Russians too - but both are small scale lines with respect to the big 2) in Orbiter as a major test flight, maintenance, operational flight and spaceplane construction base would be a very good idea.

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=5629"]Someone already did a Toulouse airport add-on[/ame], but there are no base textures and the "hangars" cannot hold airplanes, so I would like to request these two bases with usable hangars for various aerospace companies to base their XRs, DGs and other space-liners there. Thanks! :tiphat:

GPS
 

Urwumpe

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Since Blagnac is also used for ESA training flights, it might not be the worst choice.
 

N_Molson

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Well, as I live in Toulouse, I did a rough draft of the town and its runways using BaseMaker. A pity it is limited to lvl4 Landsat images. Still, the main layout of the airport is recognizable. Notice that the tiles seem outdated, as there have been a lot of new factories built over the fields at the ends of the runways.

There are 2 others active runways : Francazal ex-AFB, now used for light/buisness aviation, and Balma-Lasbordes (short, 900 m long), used for light aviation amateur pilots. There is another runway you can see on satellite pictures, in the town : Montaudran. It has been closed because of urbanization of the area but still exists. However, two huge concrete blocks have been laid on the runway, but though it is strictly forbidden you could land an helicopter or a VTOL like the DG, I guess.

QD1rH6a.jpg


Of course I would be interested by such a project, but I've not the graphical skills to correctly edit tiles (edges smoothing, etc...). Still I could give advices on the main town landmarks, and even take pictures of some areas (but BTW it is forbidden to walk inside the airport beyond the passengers terminal !).

PCUMID031V501XL9_1_Cite-de-l-espace-vue-generale-manuel-huynh--1600x1200-.jpg


One of the coolest landmarks would be that one : the City of Space, a theme park about space :cool: The Ariane 5 mockup is scaled 1:1, so is the Soyuz on the foreground and the training Mir station modules right below the "Earth building" :cool:

So really, I'd be glad to help as much as I can !
 
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Codz

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I only live a few miles away from Paine Field and see 787's flying by here every few days.
 

astrosammy

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USGS seems to have some good imagery for Boeing field from 2009.
It certainly looks good (propably less than 50cm per pixel, hiding the runway under a standard Orbiter runway would be a criminal :p), but there's no information about redistribution.

Questions concerning the use or redistribution of USGS data should be directed to: [email protected] or 1-888-ASK-USGS (1-888-275-8747).

http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ (registration required, the dataset I used is called High Resolution Orthoimagery)

For Europe it certainly is much harder to get good data...
 

N_Molson

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I just did a quick fast (2h30 :p) mesh of the mockup and its support tower, as low-poly as possible, I'll be glad to share it, with basic textures it would make a nice landmark :

oBLqr8M.jpg


---------- Post added at 11:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:45 PM ----------

And here's the thing in simulation with textures :)

a5Xn7fn.jpg
 

Kendo

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I don,t like it, I love it (as my 4 yr old Grandson would say.)
Yes, this is going to be good. Great idea.
 

N_Molson

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There is an epidemy of level 8 tiles in downtown... :shifty:

9sqUYGL.jpg


The central plaza "Place du Capitole" is a good spot to land a VTOL (though scaring people to death and blowing the windows of the town's most prestigious buildings would probably cause you some troubles) :)

---------- Post added 05-12-13 at 04:38 PM ---------- Previous post was 05-11-13 at 11:35 PM ----------

Laying the main frame of the "Capitole" town hall (that gives its name to the Capitole Plaza)

Yw76vwn.jpg


17-19.jpg
 
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N_Molson

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Tiles tiles tiles... The not pretty building is a covered market "Marché des Carmes" with a cylindrical parking lot inside it. It's not pretty in real life either.

toulouse-23.jpg


zKXiGzD.jpg


The riverside definitively looks better.
 

N_Molson

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A view of the smallest airfield in town, Balma-Lasbordes. In the foreground, a construction materials store. The Cité de l'Espace theme park is just on the other side of the highway, you can see the rocket.

3omTL9T.jpg


I'll remove the approach lights, that airfield isn't equipped with that. It doesn't even has a control tower. You won't land a Space Shuttle there, for sure ! I tried it with the DG, there you feel that your approach speed has nothing in common with that of a Cessna 192 :)

---------- Post added at 06:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:13 PM ----------

Added the "Earth-like-building", next to the rocket.

L17mV4n.jpg
 
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N_Molson

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Level 6 treatement of most of the main airport (Toulouse-Blagnac), looks a bit better :)

pXif02L.jpg
 

N_Molson

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Departing from Toulouse, destination Washington DC for a suborbital express intercontinental flight. :)

bvaU3Ha.jpg


Sadly there was something wrong about my trajectory and I disintegrated over Nova Scotia... :(
 

Kendo

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Great surface tiles, it looks like quite a large area.:thumbup:
 

N_Molson

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Great surface tiles, it looks like quite a large area

Hehe I've played a bit with them and covered whole France :p
 

Kendo

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Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. :tiphat:
 

N_Molson

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Anyway, trees will be required. And the less polys they will have, the better they will be. Here's an attempt :

MjV8CI6.jpg


---------- Post added at 05:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:53 PM ----------

The foliage is a bit flashy, but this is easy to fix. And they look a bit too much tropical. But at least they provide some shadow :p

lKrSfZG.jpg
 
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