Welcome to my latest and probably final major airport project for FS9/FS2004 - Abu Dhabi International Airport (2010).

This scenery is for Abu Dhabi airport and for technical reasons there's a micro-scenery for Al Bateen chucked in. Why 2010? Because that's when Apron 4 and hangar 6 come on stream. They're already in this scenery.

Before I even begin to talk about the scenery in any depth, I simply must acknowledge with huge thanks the efforts of five other people.

Dramatis personae
"N" (UK)			- A regular visitor to Abu Dhabi - whom we'll call N Onymous-Bennifacta -
			  airside images and running commentary on changes taking place. If you can't have
			  someone on the construction team then someone such as "N" is, well, 100 times
			  better really, even if you DO know someone on the construction team!
Richard Reed (UK)		- Assistance with AFCADs and helicopter AI.
Richard Faith (UK)		- Main liaison officer (!), later landclassing, road and coast-making and
			  AFCADs.
Richard my-old-buddy (USA)	- Start of landclass work and AFCADs. Desertion of the team in mid-flow because he
                                                   wanted to go and fly in Africa! He now tools around in Cessna Caravans, creaky 
			  Dorniers, a Let 410 and is now qualified on Beech 1900.
			  Not that I'm jealous or anything. Has a great tan and doesn't flinch when guns go off.

These guys were known together as "The Three R's" - reading, riting, and rithmetic.

and Dieter Barthelmeus (Germany)- In charge of giving me a real hard time about performance issues.
			    I'd been kidding myself that they were due to my primitive computer setup
			    and telling myself that other people would be okay. Dieter (known to have an
                                                    eye for detail) was honest, direct, and to-the-point, and that's why I thought
			    he'd be a good person to test this thing. I've not done everything Dieter would
			    like (still too much detail in the AFCAD), but I've acted on all the advice he
			    gave me, to one degree or another.
			    You can thank Dieter for at least 3 FPS, and probably more, and the absence
			    of "blurries".
"Matthew Ministry" (me) (Italy)- Gmax models, texture manipulation, approach coding, first-cut of AFCADs and dragging my heels.

There's also a mention due to Felix in the AIG forums (apparently called "VC-10" there - well, if you're taking the name of a piece of machinery, then it might as well be a pretty one), who tested - via "Richard 3" or "African Richard" or "Per Ardua Ad Ars" according to how you met - the A380 hangar in FSX (the big silver jobbie with the basketwork along the front) way back in summer 2008. It doesn't mean that this scenery will work in FSX, but I was just curious about it.

I must also acknowledge the work of several other freeware authors.

Gerrish Gray - yes, I still use Gerrish's trees!

Arno Gerretsen at www.fsdeveloper.com - for the various useful freeware tools that helped to make the scenery better than it was.
His Object Tweaker was particularly helpful in allowing me to make models that had lights showing (eg the south control tower) overcoming a compiler bug, and to set visibility options of various scenery objects (eg vehicles) to improve frame-rates.
His VGDS tweaker was used to create all the docking systems except for one (this one showed up a bug in the VGDS tweaker and needed to be recoded by hand).

Jörg Dannenburg at www.flightport.de (and a group of people at FSDeveloper.com) for the lovely animated and lit windsock (there are 3 in the scenery, two in marked positions and the third ...? Well, it is where it is supposed to be but I'll let you find it!).

S76 helicopter model by Chris 'Elvis' Jones (based on source files by Lasse Lindh), paintkit by Mal Lloyd and flight dynamics by George Davison.

Kazuyoshi Furuya for his AI Bell helicopter.

Various folks at FSDeveloper forums whose passing advice to others also helped our little project along (eg the PAPI lighting system and the concept of "separation planes").

Martin Gleeson for his ILS-GPS approach creator.

Vladimir Svoboda for his taxiway signs creator program "Creatsign".

Tom Hiscox - whose SceneGenX is still my utility of choice for placing objects in FS sceneries.

Christian Fumey - whose Ground2K4 might not have the friendliest of interfaces (or error messages!) but which gets the job done!

Thank you all for the effort you make for free, for the rest of us.

Thanks also to the developers of Gmax and Paintshop Pro, which I used for modelling and image tweaking respectively.

Also thanks to the various musicians that make the moments doing scenery more interesting with their music
Hector Zazou and Swara for "In the house of Mirrors"
kd lang for "Watershed"
Godspeed You Black Emperor! for "Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada", "Yanqui U.X.O" and "F# A# Infinity"
Jeff Buckley for "Grace"
Michael Brook for "RockPaperScissors"
Neville Brothers for "Yellow Moon"
the late Scott Walker for "Tilt"
Terry Hall and Mushtaq for "Hour of Two Lights"
Annie Lennox for "Songs of Mass Destruction"
Daniel Barenboim for his work on Saint-Saëns "Symphony No. 3 "Organ"; Danse Macabre; Bacchanale; Le Déluge" (and his ethical stance regarding Palestine, a proper "light in the darkness").


SO WHAT IS THIS PACKAGE THEN?

Gmax scenery for Abu Dhabi, with some API objects (Apron markings).
Animated SSR antenna. Some Gmax lighting (tower, firestations, cargo centre extension).
Arno Gerretsen's Visual Gate Docking System on all stands (requires licensed or unlicensed FSUIPC to detect aircraft types)
Objects optimised (visual distances, LoD (Level of detail) modelling, hidden face removal).
Textures largely from the actual airport buildings.
Night surface lighting using the API "hidden plane" transparent layer method.

Key features.
1/ Airport for Abu Dhabi (OMAA). All areas south of the southern runway, new tower, new parallel runway, and sketchy buildings where the midfield terminal is being built. Basic AI ILS approaches.
2/ Heliport for Abu Dhabi Aviation, AFCAD for this "airport" (OMA1). New approaches for AI helicopters to use OMA1 (approaches all from the south under IFR).
3/ Rough airport for Al Bateen (mainly default objects).
4/ Land class and revised coastlines and islands.
5/ AI helicopters for ABU Dhabi Aviation (Elvis Sikorsky substituting for their AW139).

6/ Uses Gerrish Gray's tree libraries.

7/ Developed using AEU7 (Airport Environment Upgrade V7 - freeware addon) for the ground textures and default buildings.

8/ All buildings placed onto an airport photo, so the locations are all 100%.

So, the scenery.

It has been nearly 2 calendar years in the making (with about 12 months in total on hiatus) being made in odd moments. The longest stretches of work are usually on long-haul flights after the film has finished and the boredom has set in (and with some movies the boredom sets in long before the credits roll). Therefore effort was patchy and scrappy. It is still unfinished. I'd intended to make a proper approach lighting system with "running rabbit" strobes etc, and actually created some early on that I lost faith in, and the other omissions are not quite as obvious but still omissions. I might get around to addressing these things but with the state of my free time these days it was becoming increasingly unlikely and would push the scenery on to late 2010 before I'd got anywhere, so I cut my losses!

History.

This scenery was started in about December 2007 because I wanted to get more involved with Gmax, and by February 2008 I actually thought I was pretty much done with it. I had the "donut" terminal and its satellites, and the arc terminal, and was all set to release a "lite" scenery along the lines of my Mumbai effort of a few years ago, over on Simviation. Then a new member of the team (RF, coming in to fill in for African Richard) mentioned the scenery on a forum (before I had a chance to say "please don't talk about this on forums or email") and an offer of detailed help came in from "N". The trickle of information became a flood and suddenly the scenery "growed and growed" beyond what I'd intended. I still thought it'd be wrapped up by June '08, but it was not to be. The schedule pushed out the night lighting (kind of important) and everything thereafter. Then I went to work in the USA for many months on a film project (I write music, and the film got good reviews) and got nothing done on the scenery. At the time, the scenery had photo ground, which was nice, since it made the scenery look better for almost no effort (especially since RF did the photo work <laughs>). Due to a licensing problem we opted not to use the photo in the end, especially since it was a performance hog for 128MB graphics cards. I prefer my sceneries to work on 3rd world computers like mine.

Back home in January 09 I started work on it again, slowly this time, because I had several months of unfinished business to finish, and about 1,001 irritating chores to do. Naturally the airport had changed significantly while my back was turned. T3 was coming on-stream shortly, a new external walkway had sprouted along the front of the T1 "Arc terminal" so that pax could transfer between T1 and T3 and remain airside, some bijou landscaping had been done in front of T3, and a new hangar was being built over at ADAT (ex-Gamco). I also elected to make the Abu Dhabi aviation area, especially since RR had put together a basic helicopter AI package for the airport, and I know there are specialist groups (e.g. ODG) who like to simulate oilrig work - and I figured that this might be an incentive for them to put some rigs into the waters of the Gulf.

As all this was being done, ADAC announced "Apron 4" and ADAT announced "Hangar 6", and some plans came across my desk that have let me model these developments in outline too. They take away some of the charm of the older layout (the open-air aircraft shelters at ADAT had a kind of funky quality that I liked) and add a monstrous hangar (that I gave its own BGL - because presently the design isn't 100% finalised and there are no images available, and a final design could be dropped in later simply by replacing one BGL). It was only after making "apron 4" that I realised my a/c parking had been overfilled sometimes. There are times that the Etihad pax fleet spilled onto the cargo apron (usually at night) in the old system, but adding 14 gates at apron 4 alleviated that problem. Trouble is, sometimes those 14 gates are all filled too, so the old layout can't have had enough parking spots to accomodate the growing Etihad fleet. There are actually 22 possible gates at apron 4 (either 18 narrowbodies, or 9 narrow on the northern half and 5 wide on the southern half), but I chose to model the second option to reflect the mix of the Etihad fleet - there are lots of widebodys there. The real-world apron will have docking systems for narrows and wides on the southern apron, but since this scenery doesn't mix parking (it can't, a limitation of FS) I modelled one type to keep things simple.

In the past couple of months a few hangers-on have tried to associate themselves with this project (probably in the hope of getting an early copy and passing it off as their own work). Richard F even had one person from Pakistan saying that if the scenery was made commercial (with more work) then he'd steal it! The authors and testers are all detailed above - the entire team, Italy, UK, USA and Dieter in Germany, and the contributors in other areas (e.g. AI planes and development software) are similarly credited.

I READ THE KEY FEATURES, BUT WHAT DOES IT REALLY HAVE?

Gmax buildings, API ground markings over basic AFCAD layout. Textured using airside images gathered on "N's" many visits to the airport. One of the joys of real airport building work is that it means people being driven from remote aprons get to see a lot of airside stuff. Some ground markings are done in AFCAD (eg pushback lines, helicopter area markings and runway triangles, and the perpendicular marks that define the edges of taxiway corners).

Minimal animations. We have an SSR antenna behind Terminal 2 (where the Indian subcontinent deposits its volunteer slave workers), 3 windsocks.

No jetways or vehicles are animated. Just didn't have the time or inclination. There are about a dozen designs of jetway and individually animating them would have been long-winded. Unlike my previous sceneries I have at least made them look nicer, since after landing the docking experience was perhaps a bit of an anticlimax with more rudimentary jetways. The advertising on them is out-of-date, but it was up-to-the-minute when I started this thing!

LOD models. Most of the buildings have LODs for performance's sake. Light poles have LODs so that they don't have to vanish at 2km distance (its really obvious when a light pole disappears), they just get simpler and simpler, and I make them disappear from the scenery only when they're almost invisible anyway. If a building is boxy, it probably isn't LOD-ed. If you see a structure and think "that's just way too complicated" then its LOD-ed and is probably invisible from the runway (where performance is most important).

Vehicles, pallets and clutter. Lots of vehicles, pallets and clutter. These simple models are quite repeatable with visibility distances applied (at the T1 apron all the ones over at T2 and T3 are not there in the sim).

Visibility distances. Vehicles particularly have visibility distances applied so that they don't drag frame rates into the toilet from 10 miles out (or even 300 metres out, in some cases). Some objects might be fairly obviously appearing and vanishing at times, particularly larger ones like buses and crash tenders, particularly if you happen to be looking at them.

A rough building-site look to the midfield construction work. With cranes.

Custom landclass. Devised by Richard Faith, this makes the look of approaches to the 13s far more realistic.

Kinky approaches. Well, for the helicopters at least. These approach from the south and turn short final to a stretch of taxiway F down at Abu Dhabi Aviation (ADA) a bit like they do in real life. The approaches they make in this scenery are probably a bit more exciting than in reality (especially at the eastern end where they turn final at about 50ft AGL). Approaches from the west come in from the south and turn eastwards onto final just over the donut terminal apron at about 450-500ft AAL). Just take care when taxying along there, because they're landing at OMA1 ("kopter") and not OMAA ("Abu Dhabi"), so they can't "see" you. Some of the choppers fly VFR and ignore the kinked approaches to perform a standard circuit pattern. I did this intentionally to provide some variation and also because sometimes choppers can really stack up on final.

I recommend that you set up the helicopter AI, because its fun and definitely a part of the real airport's daily life. As a result, with the kind consent of Chris Jones and tacit consent of Kazuyoshi Furuya, the helicopter AI has been made as easy to install for the novice as it can be. Ideally we'd have an AI model for the AW139 that ADA Helicopters actually use, but the Elvis Sikorsky S76 will have to fill in until then. I appreciate that some people have a phobia about installing something that isn't 100% exactly what it is supposed to be, but for those people that managed to shed their anoraks along with their teens, this might just do until something better comes along.

Naturally, AI experts will prefer to merge our AI helicopters with their existing models for these types, if they have them installed, to avoid duplicate models. Provided the helicopter's names don't change ("title="), the existing flightplans will obviously continue to work fine.

I've also recoded the approaches for AI. The south runway uses the old FS code for the original runway, but changed to use the new runway designators (instead of 13-31 it is now 13R-31L) so that AI and the user can still fly automated approaches. The new runway uses some instant just-add-water coding (file MM_OMAA_13L_31R_Basic_Approach.bgl) provided by Martin Gleeson's approach creator. I would have hand-coded these approaches (and full "transitions") but just don't have the time (one of the team has included charts in case anyone else wants to have a try) and Martin's program was helpful in at least enabling the north runway for IMC arrivals. 

AFCAD
The Afcad gates for OMAA are partially coded. The reasoning is that T3 and apron 4 are for Etihad, so those gates are coded to get Etihad favouring those gates, and T2 gates are for most Indian subcontinent flights (except Jet Airways) and most African flights eg Sudan Air and Sun-Air. Operators such as Yemenia also use T2, and the T2 gates segue into cargo gates with some of them serving different types at different times of day. The cargo area adjacent to T2 tends to fill from the west-to-east. T1 is largely uncoded, the reasoning being that AUH is getting more flights from different parts of the world (eg Swiss and Air Asia X are planning flights to AUH) and if every conventional gate is coded, these carriers will be pushed to uncoded gates elsewhere on the airport, and that means the Amiri area! So T1 accepts new airlines, pending their gates being coded up (eg if they are meant to be at T2). When the airport is particularly busy, Etihad and the occasional T2 operator may overflow into T1. If there's a real rush, some aircraft (particularly freighters) will be pushed over to the Amiri overflow apron which actually hosts non-Amiri planes from time-to-time.

The Afcad gate sizes have been created so that specific types will generally favour parking at T1. RF used the Simmer's Sky aircraft to help test parking allocations, and 747, 772, 773 etc all have their preferred parking at T1 unless the airport is very busy (when something else might have that gate). On occasion you might be told to park over at Amiri despite the fact that you're operating a commercial service, and there's only so much we can do to control that situation. If you fly for a fixed airline and/or use a fixed type, you could always re-size the gates slightly to increase your chance of being allocated a realistic parking spot (it does nothing for realism to arrive in a BA 772 at Heathrow and be allocated a spot at Terminal 2). When FS allocates you a gate it ignores airline coding, so it all comes down to gate size.

The north runway is active and, if you've put all the approach coding into the right place, AI should use both runways in IMC. Unfortunately most traffic likes the northern runway (geographic orientation coupled with the origins of most flights make this inevitable) so many landings will take place a mile away to the north, while all departures will be from the south runway because all parkings spot are closer to it. If you want all the landing action to be close to the scenery, I'd advise that you use AFCAD to close the north runway entirely.

Installation.

Well, if you've installed scenery, landclass and AI before, most of this will be familiar. The scenery has several components all of which require you to manually install the files. These are abbreviated installation instructions. A little more detail is available with each component in its separate folder. There are also remarks in each subsection about why I consider installing it to be important.

1/ The airport. Put this in your Addon Scenery and activate it in FS9.
2/ The kinked helicopter approaches and rewritten fixed-wing approaches. Put these in your "scenery/generic/scenery" folder
3/ AI Helicopters - put these in your "aircraft" folder
4/ AI Helicopter flightplans - put these in your "scenery/world/scenery" folder
5/ Additional afcads for the Emirate ofAbu Dhabi - put these wherever you put your existing addon AFCADs (mine go in "Addon Scenery/Scenery" but your setup may do it differently)
6/ Landclass. Put this into an existing "Landclasses/Scenery" folder if you have one. If not, set one up and identify it as a low-priority scenery layer in FS9.

And that's all. For details, go to each subfolder!

Disclaimer and copyrights. It is important to read this and understand the implications.

You install this scenery at your own risk. It hasn't harmed anyone else's computer setups and should not harm yours provided you install using common sense and backups if you feel uncomfortable about any particular step. I cannot and will not be held liable for any adverse situation that you feel has arisen from your use of this scenery. I have provided the scenery and it is up to the user to understand what they are doing. 

Support - If there are any doubts on the installation, consult either online tutorials or ask a general question in a forum. I don't have email and therefore can't personally assist with any problems. Richard Faith has helped me in this regard, and Richard Reed has made available an email for support contact (auh-at-idealimage.flyer.co.uk) that RF will occasionally check. You must respect the fact that it is not his job to provide instant turn-around of problems and it is possible that because of personal commitments a query might take longer than 2 or 3 weeks even to be answered, in some cases he might also need to ask me something if it is outside of his area of expertise, which will add to the delay. Given that timescale, you might find it more useful to figure out what mistake you have made for yourself before asking for help. Since the above address has aggressive spam filtering on it, messages will be dumped unless the subject line is "AUH Support Query", if the Subject text is even slightly different, the message will be filtered out! Of course the most sensible option is to access online tutorials before installing anything (not just this scenery) that does not employ an automated installer.

Copyright and usage. All the images and code in this "product" are covered by existing international laws that protect a developer's IP (Intellectual Property) rights. We have already (pre-release) had to deal with one infringement of IP law in respect of this project and will do so again if required. Further to this, there is the possibility that this freeware scenery will be used as a basis for a commercial scenery that would succeed this one, therefore all original scenery-related contents of this archive are subject to commercial copyright protection.

All the data in this scenery can be used only with this scenery, textures cannot be re-used in whole or in part in any other Flight Simulator project, no exceptions.

The AI aircraft are copyrighted to their respective developers as detailed in the aircraft readme files (included with the aircraft).


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One other thing I'd have liked to put into the scenery was a timed sound effect, of a muezzin making the call to prayer at the appropriate times (audible only in external views such as "spot plane"), but time constraints meant that this idea could not be realised.

I'd also planned to make a version of the mega-mosque that is right beside the approach path to r/w 31 at Bateen, but again time was working against me, which is why Bateen is all default buildings (a patch for Bateen might follow in the fulness of time).

In conclusion, this scenery was created to be freeware and is provided to the community to be enjoyed, and to make a few more "sectors" a bit more pleasurable to fly. It isn't perfect and will never be (the real world is changing more quickly than I can respond to it!) but hopefully it will provide some of you with a worthwhile experience in flight simulation.

Enjoy

MM (Italy 2009)