18 August 2010 | x p 1 0 r e v i e w s i n t e r v i e w / r e v i e w Jacques Brault | x - p l a n e . o r g

A r o u n d Q u e b e cFlying Quebec, or more specifically, flying along the St Lawrence Seaway from the Gulf of St Lawrence to Quebec City, is to fly within a scenery filled with mountains and pine-studded rocky shorelines, but Jacques Brault has produced a brilliantly executed series of airports and sceneries for X-Plane that makes exploring the region a real pleasure. Join chipsim7 and take a look at some of Mr Brault’s newest additions, and some of our favorites, as we hop around the area.

The Other Canadian CoastlineWhen thinking of Canadian sceneries available for X-Plane, I immediately think of the great pay-ware packages available at http://www.x-plane.org/, these offerings dominated by Tom Curtis’s Inside Passage and Final Frontier. T h e s e a r e m a s s i v e , gorgeous sceneries, and while not outrageously expensive, when taken as a whole they still represent a significant investment. Even so, Canada’s West coast possesses unrivaled, fjord-like scenery and Mr Curtis has captured the spectacular essence of the region. There seems to be no better region available in X-Plane to use the bewildering and excellent variety of seaplanes also available at the ORG store.But Canada is a huge country, and possesses an equally abundant variety of landscape to chose and use in X-Plane. Of particular interest to those who fly the eastern seaboard of North America, Jacque Brault’s series of airports for Quebec hold a special interest, and after downloading a few of his latest

creations you might well consider trying a few yourself–if you haven’t done so already.The region is centered both geographically and culturally around Quebec City, and one could make the claim that the City is still presided over in like

fashion by the Chateau Frontenac (image, above). This building in just one of the iconic hotels built in the late 19th-century by two rival Canadian railway companies, and while these structures defined an era they still present an unmistakable gravitas, even in X-Plane. The LIT textures shown above are especially nice.Mr Brault’s older sceneries

are MsFS conversions, many made by Jean St-Cyr and Gilles Bolly, but his most recent sceneries are all his own and it is on three of his most recent efforts that we’ll focus on here.The first, seen immediately above and on the next page, is of CYML/Charlevoix, and in this case I didn’t want to save the best for last, either. The terminal building, seen on the next page and in the Image Gallery, is a gem. Note the glass texturing: it is translucent and reflective, and the view from

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inside the terminal out is equally interesting. I have no doubt that a certain CRJ-200 in an Air Canada Jazz livery will look very nice out front, but the stock Embraer paint looks decent enough, too. For now, take a look at this image: (http://jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=5825951&nseq=1) and compare it to the file images included here. I feel that Mr Brault’s file is a very fine rendition of the original.This is a smallish General Aviation airport, and the terminal building really makes this facility shine, but unfor tunate ly on ly in daylight. There are no LIT textures for the three files reviewed here, e.g., no lighting other than runway/taxiways, but don’t let that keep you from checking them out.The bas ics : CYML is located 977’ above sea level, has one runway (15/33) which is 4500’ in length x 150 wide. Unicom 123.0 and LWIS weather 122.55; no ILS. Taking off from runway 15, turn east and head along the shore, perhaps 500’ over the water. The MU-2 (right) is flying over the Fa i r m o n t L e M a n o i r R i c h e l i e u ( h t t p : / /www.fairmont.com/Fr/Richelieu/), a not-too-shabby little place to hang your Stetson, and a little further along you’ll run

into the Basilica of Saint Anne de Beaupré (image, page eight, bottom) which has been modeled in more detail still. An impressive sight in person and very nice to have in X-Plane for any number of reasons. Keep in mind that Mr Brault has developed a few packages of VFR landmarks to help those in the area, but these two files really standout–in both size and quality.The next file covers CSE5/Montmagny, and is home base to Air Montmagny, which operates Britten-Norman Islander and Cessna 206G Stationair aircraft

from this cozy waterfront facility. The terminal (next page, top image) is a small cottage, but again if you look at images on the web you’ll find it and the adjacent hangar are very accurately rendered.The single runway (26/8) is 3000’ x 100’, elevation is 37’; no ILS. Again, this

facility is truly “waterfront”; if you ground loop here you better know how to dog-paddle. And while this is

another smallish GA airport it’s the quality of the buildings that will impress. It’s simply a nice, neat GA facility, and well worth h a v i n g f o r G o r a n ’ s Sundowner and Duchess. Getting the ERJ into and out of the place was hair-raising. Well, you know what I mean!

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I have mixed feelings about this last file. CSS3/Les Cedres is located 30 miles west of Montreal and so is not really in the immediate area around Quebec, but it is one of the author’s latest files and is very well done–and worth having. There is, as with the other two, no LIT texture, however there is one hanger that is glaring white day or night (red arrows, below).

Because it’s so bright it’s a bit distracting at night, and it may well be some sort of inflatable building and is supposed to look that way, but it would work better if the other buildings weren’t so dark (above images are 1] real image and 2] file). There is a fenced-off taxi-way, as well, cordoning off a light industrial area, so don’t run into it! Buildings are once again well rendered and accurately placed.Airport elevation is 160’, one runway (07/25; no ILS) is 3000’ x 75’. Unicom: 123.5. I suspect local pilots will

find this one a “must have”, but it’s my least favorite of the three as it just doesn’t feel as cozy! Maybe it’s the industrial nature of the surroundings or the fenced taxiway, or maybe it’s just not as close to Quebec as the others… Whatever else it may be to me, it is well crafted and close to Montreal, so if that floats your boat

you’ll want to add this one to your arsenal.I’ve included a couple of images from CYQB/Jean Lesage, which is the obvious choice if you want to operate “tubeliners” from this immediate area.A list of links follows even more images on the following pages, but first join us for a brief interview with the developer of these sceneries, Mr Jacques Brault.

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Xp10: Jacques, could you tell us a little about how you became interested in scenery design, and about your interest in flight sims? What attracted you to X-Plane?JB: I was amazed with the capability of X-Plane to interpret a plane geometry and translating it into a plausible flight model, so I started making planes to see how the different models could possibly behave. I started modeling military jets but found it more interesting in the long run to fly slower and lower, thus my interest in GA. Like most of other scenery designers I suppose, I felt frustrated of flying in my own place in an empty world and decided to populate it a bit.

Xp10: Could you tell us about the process you go through to make a scenery, including research and initial design of the scenery, what tools you use to make your final scenery design, and how you feel X-Plane could be improved in relation to scenery development?JB: My basic documentation includes the NAV Canada/ Canada Flight Supplement which documents every airport in Canada, and the NAV Canada approach plates for Quebec. I also use the 1:250 000 and 1:500 000 aeronautical navigation charts of the Montreal VTA. All those can be purchased at any Quebec airport where there is a flight school.For getting to know what an airport really looks like, Google Earth and Streetview are my best friends, together with pictures I make of places I have been to. For making the scenery my basic tools are of course WED and Overlay Editor and I use Sketch-up exclusively for making objects. I use OpensceneryX for occasional generic objects, planes and I make intensive use if the forests and fences included with it.I made a few FS conversions but I found them inefficient considering the number of objects and textures that are generated. Converting also limits your freedom for customizing/correcting some airports because of the

author’s copyrights and permissions, so I prefer making airports on my own.An easy way to correct the mesh in X-Plane would be a very useful feature because in many cases X-Plane gets fooled by the structure itself that you wish to model and adds humps at its exact location. For example dams and bridges get difficult to merge properly into the mesh because of this.Xp10: CYML appears to use different texturing techniques than many other recent sceneries. How did you make the textures for this building, particularly the translucent/reflective glass walls?

JB: CYML is not different than other sceneries. I used Sketch-up to make the terminal building and I used the alpha channel of the texture PNG to suggest semi-transparent glass. The power towers use the same technique but with a fully transparent alpha channel. When you paint an alpha channel white is opaque while black is fully transparent. Shades of grey will produce semi-transparency.Xp10: What is the first scenery you designed on your own? Which scenery do you think is your best effort to date?JB: The first sceneries I made were a dozen of so airports grouped together under Quebec CYGP Gaspesia. It was very basic and included a lot of OpensceneryX objects.I am especially proud of CYHU St-Hubert because it is a relatively large airport and there were many building models required to produce a fair representation of the area. Xp10: Could you briefly describe the process you use to texture a building?JB: Texturing consists essentially in studying pictures of the object to texture and producing a collage in Photoshop of photos and composed textures of the roof and walls in the case of a building. It is sometimes useful to use the “align view” feature of sketch-up and take a screenshot and then to paste and paint the screenshot in the Photoshop file for a better fit of non-rectangular flat surfaces.

Quebec City

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Applying the texture is a technique used in Sketch-up which is well described in the Sketch-up tutorials you find on the web.There is one point I would like to add on the side of your question. I consider there is a big difference between designing a large airport and designing a much smaller countryside airport because the emphasis is then more on rendering the airport surroundings then on airport structures which are only few. In this case I make use of G8 textures in Overlay Editor to texture the ground to simulate cropped fields and I use taxiways in WED to suggest patches of dirt and grass and roads. Texturing also the neighborhood is a must. The presence of forested areas also helps a lot in creating an ambiance.

Xp10: Could you tell our readers what you're next major scenery will be, what you hope to accomplish with this effort?JB: I always hope for the same in any scenery: to get an acceptable and realistic representation of the airport I am modeling. The next scenery I am about to get started with is CYJN St-Jean, part of a military college south of Montreal.Xp10: Finally, could you speculate a moment and tell us, if ‘time and money’ was not an issue, what one scenery would you really love to finish that might demonstrate all you know about scenery design?JB: My ultimate goal is to have a model of every airport and water aerodrome that appear on the 1:500 000 scale aeronautical chart of Montreal. I am about a new Quebec

Misc Airports 06 that will make this project about 95% complete.

I also hope to produce enough models of landmarks and better representation of larger cities like Montreal and Quebec to make VFR rules flying around most interesting. Xp10: How many sceneries have you made to date? For that matter, how many aircraft files?JB: I do not really know because I did not count them and a few sceneries include many airports. I would say there are somewhere around 100 airports published and about 200 planes.Xp10: What do you think is your best acf to date?JB: Best I do not know, it depends on what you expect. I would not compare a Cessna with an F-22. I have favorites that I fly more often than others. Among others, the Cessna 152, The Stinson, The Norseman and the Beaver. Among jets I like to fly the T-38, the CF-100 and the CF-101 and also the T-33. Within bigger planes I like flying the DC-3, DC-6 and the Boeing 707.Xp10: Of other developers sceneries, which is your favorite?JB: Inside Passage.Xp10: How about other developers aircraft? Any favorites?JB: When you make your own planes you have no tendency to fly other's planes. It is not that there are no good creations around, it is that you get so much used to your own panel layouts that you feel at a loss in a different one.I appreciate very much the work of Paolo Matricardi. I think he is a master to follow.

CSE5

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Image Gallery

Le Manoir Richelieu

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CYHU

CYHU

CYHU

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Where to FIND these FILES:All files are available from http://www.x-plane.org/CYML/Charlevoix:http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?automodule=downloads&showfile=11120Quebec City:http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=7398Cathedral Ste Anne de Beaupre:http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=7395Iles de la Madeleine:http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=8820CSE5 Montmagnyhttp://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?automodule=downloads&showfile=11197CSS3 Les Cedreshttp://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?automodule=downloads&showfile=11198CYHU St Huberthttp://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=10575

Again, there are many more files in the region posted by Mr Brault, and you will find many scattered around page 47 of the downloads section (as of August 2010). That’s a good place to start, anyway. Good luck!