The Logan Airport Project - Download

It doesn't do anybody any good to keep working on Logan and never release it, so I have put together a release of the Logan airport scenery.

Logan Airport for X-Plane 7.41

Logan Airport for Mac and Windows - public beta 1.

This release of Logan Airport requires 7.41 for the new material attributes OBJ7 commands that allow the taxiway signs to be read at night.

At this point all of the tools we used to create this scenery are available in released or beta form.

Screenshots

Click on a thumbnail for a larger image.

These pictures were taken on my P-IV 2.5 Ghz Dell desktop (533 mhz FSB, DDR2700 RAM) with a GeForce 4 MX 64 MB VRAM. (I recommend the TI if you can afford it.) Framerates are better than 30 fps when parked, and around 22 when you can see the entire airport from the air, "very high" resolution.

Terrain

X-Plane no longer fills in terrain under airports; instead the most recent GLOS renderings fill in some land under problematic airports. (The global coastline data used to make the most recent scenery sometimes does not include land-fill put in place recently for airports.)
For Logan, however, I am going to use custom terrain textures in PNG format to create precise coastlines. The waterways separating the Logan Airport peninsula from East Boston and Winthrop are very narrow and cannot be precisely modelled using regular X-Plane coastlines. However by using PNG files for custom terrain textures and setting the water to transparent, precise coastlines can be built.

Terminals and Buildings

Terminal objects were created using ObjectMaker 6.51 and a command-line tool to build walls rapidly. The buildings were built from orthophotos of the airport.
In the future I will be rebuilding the objects using SketchUp 3D, a wonderful 3-d editing program that helps rapidly design buildings.
The Jetway was built and textured by Sergio Santagada. I have placed a number of Jetways around the airport in an attempt to model their real positions, based on Terraserver-USA orthophotos.

Navigation Data

I have rebuilt the taxiways for the airport again. My previous taxisways were not quite accurate; the new taxiways will be sumitted to Robin and also will be used in this scenery. With "GetImage", it is possible to make very precise taxiways.

Taxiway Signs

The taxiway signs have been redone based on new bitmaps by Sergio. The taxiways contain more polygons, look 3-d, have poles, etc. This has a cost in framerate, but the new X-Plane 7 level-of-detail attribute offsets this cost by limiting the distance the signs can be seen from. (Previously X-Plane would draw a 1-meter taxiway sign even when you were 10 miles away.)

Still To Be Done

Refine, pollish and color correct terminal textures.
Use Sergio's apron light and others to model Apron lighting, clutter, etc.
Custom alpha masked terrain textures for accurate coastlines and some kind of roadways.
Custom Object models for the road system and hotels, other airport facilities.
Build cargo loading area for South Boston.