[WIP] Bear Island, Florida

Rotornut44 · January 27, 2021, 2:53am

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!)

Eydis1096 · April 24, 2021, 11:27pm

Love this hope you are still working on it. I would like to see some bears but maybe a little boat and some people. Immersion is the key, fsdreamteam got it right adding people and other stuff, just milling about the boat house. Good luck with your project.

Rotornut44 · April 26, 2021, 7:14pm

Spoiler Alert: There are no Bears on Bear Island. Probably just Snakes. Why’d it have to be Snakes…?

Bear Island is on the backburner for now. I’m trying to get a 2-year FSX/P3D project wrapped up before I jump back on this one.

In the FSX/P3D version, SODE is used for its dynamic abilities, so I still have to get all those elements pulled into MSFS as native dynamic elements. I’m also debating redoing the building models, or at least the textures.

As there likely wouldn’t be any people hanging about here IRL, I likely wont be adding any to the scenery. I’m not even sure if the island is occupied these days. But, as far as other features, you never know.

speedwoblz · May 31, 2021, 8:49pm

Sheesh…How did I miss this?

This looks wonderful!

Is this available yet?

Rotornut44 · June 5, 2021, 11:40pm

Not yet. Still the same status as my last post. Although, I may have the initial version ready sometime this summer. There isn’t a ton left to do. Probably a few weeks of off and on work. I really just want to get this other project done and out the door first.

Once that’s done, it’s go time!

speedwoblz · April 16, 2022, 4:25am

Hope life hasn’t hit you with too hard a curveball.

Will this project continue any time soon?

Rotornut44 · April 17, 2022, 12:28am

Now that I have finished my other project and figured out how to do most of the dynamic stuff featured in the original FSX/P3D scenery, I’m hoping to jump back on this project fairly soon.

The windsock and water puddles are finished. I believe there was only one other dynamic object I needed to do, but it’s like a 20 minute project.

I’m still trying to decide how much of the original scenery I’m going to keep in the MSFS version, or if I need to redo some of the vegetation and models. I’m going to be redoing the buildings with PBR materials, for sure. The main shack will probably be remodeled a bit as well.

Real life is going to be busy for a few weeks here, but I’m hoping to start on the modeling in the next day or two.

speedwoblz · April 17, 2022, 2:29am

Wonderful, thank you for the update!

Rotornut44 · April 19, 2022, 1:32am

OK. This one has been on the backburner for quite a while. When I first announced this scenery and started to bring it over from P3D, the sim’s SDK was not mature enough to migrate it how I wanted to. Now, fast forward over a year later, with a few more projects completed, tons of new experience, and a completely new toolset and workflow, I believe it’s finally time to get this one knocked out.

Over the last two days I have been working on the main dock house model, bringing it over to Blender and cleaning up the mess that Sketchup left behind. On the old model, pretty much all of the detail was painted on. Now, almost the entire model has been completely reworked, adding in a lot more detail.

Modeling on this building is pretty much complete. As I get time over the next few days, I will be working on getting it painted up in Substance, and then, on to the hangar!

Rotornut44 · May 1, 2022, 12:49am

After being busy with work, followed immediately by getting sick, I finally caught a break and found a day to get back to work on Bear Island. Since the last post, I was able to finish off the remaining details in the model.

Today, I brought the model into Substance and worked on getting all of the PBR materials in place. I have painted it close to how the original model was done. However, the materials obviously had to be changed for PBR. I have also added some more aging and grunge into the materials as it has been several years now since the release of v2.0 for FSX & P3D. I figured this would add a cool time progression aspect to it. (Though, I kept it somewhat subtle, as it hasn’t been that long)

Note: These are renders in Substance using 4K textures. The final model will use 8K!

N316TS · May 3, 2022, 5:09am

I just saw this thread, and I thought it said, “Beer Island” and I got very excited!

In all seriousness, though, I downloaded one of your products before, and it looked awesome. And this one looks awesome, too!

Rotornut44 · May 13, 2022, 1:05am

FINALLY… a worthy update.

I have been taking advantage of my available time the last few days. I got the hangar stripped down, rebuilt, and painted up in Substance. Much like I did for the dock house, I have painted the hangar to be similar to that of the FSX/P3D version. The overall model has been improved with better wood framing detail inside. It features an environmental occluder to keep the grass and rain droplets from coming through the model, as well as a collider on the floor to make it solid. I have also added a parking spawn inside of the hangar, opting not to include a static aircraft in this version.

I have also finished out the dock house, fixing a couple issues I found with the model and textures. I used the windshield glass material for the windows so that rain droplets will form on it during those nasty weather days.

With all major modeling now complete, it’s time to start bringing the scenery all together. Today, I also made some adjustments to the aerial imagery, as well as included a new 2-meter Digital Elevation Model to give the mostly flat island, at least, a little definition. Besides that, I have began tweaking on vegetation placement around the scenery.

There is still a ton of work to be done here, but I’m finally starting to make some good progress. And for those who have been waiting patiently for it, here’s a round of in-sim screenshots showing off the new models!

Stay tuned!
RN44

Rotornut44 · May 16, 2022, 3:46am

Bear Island is on short final! These will likely be the final shots before release.

Those of you that flew this scenery in FSX or P3D will notice that it’s layout is very similar. There are a few areas which have seen improvements, but I should also note that some elements are a bit more dumbed down than in FSX & P3D. One big area of immersion that will be missing at launch is the addition of the custom ambient sounds that were in the original scenery. Some of these sounds are no longer needed with MSFS’ built-in ambient, however key sounds like the summer Cicadas and croaking Frogs cannot be added at this time due to limitations with MSFS. I do hope I will be able to add these back in the future!

Luckily, I was at least able to bring back dynamic rain puddles and “The Frog” who really likes the rain. hint hint Though, without his croaking, you’ll have to know where to look to find em’.

Along with building out the scenery, I also made some time to overhaul the old rock models throughout the scenery as well as the flipped row boat. The rock models have been cleaned up and have received new 4K PBR textures. The row boat was originally modeled to be low poly, but not with the best practices. So, I have cleaned up it’s mesh, slightly reducing the poly count, but drastically cutting the vertex count.

This doesn’t really do a lot for MSFS, but hey, at least I know it’s done right.

Stay tuned. Hoping to have things wrapped up tomorrow! That could possibly mean a same-day release if all goes well!

Rotornut44 · May 16, 2022, 9:31pm

Thanks to everyone who waited patiently for me to get back around to this project! I am happy to announce that v1.0.0 is now available for download! You can view the official release thread here:

Don’t forget to grab the latest update for Emerald Object Library!

Enjoy!
-RN44