Miri Town Center Open Field - Phoenix R/C simulator - SupermotoXL Designs

Details: Published: 23 December 2021

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About

Here's one of my favorite flying spot but not so frequent. So welcome to the center of my home town: MIRI. Miri is a small humble urban located in the tropical island of Borneo...always sunny, moderately hot and good amount of rain plus people here are having layback life style. Originally was an undeveloped fishing village in early 1900s and today its a moderately modern urbanized community. Famous for discovery of first drilled oil well in the state in the year 1910 by SHELL company and also home of the diverse tropical flora and fauna...almost. In the center of the town is an old and well maintained open field adjacent to first tallest building in town. This field locally known as 'Padang MMC' meaning "Miri Municipal Council field'. A general recreational and sport field for the public. This used to be our favorite flying spot. dev site xl miritown 52

This place has been very nostalgic for me since the early 1980s where most of the school outdoor activities and sports takes places on this field. Our primary school is located across the street next to the field on the north side so its just a few minutes walk crossing the streets. Even at my parent government workplace they would organized family day on this very spot too. Nearby is the first tallest commercial shopping complex in the called 'WISMA PELITA' highly visible as tall white building in front of the field that accomodate many small shops and restaurants. It used to be the most popular spot for towns people to go about shopping, recreation and also housed many government office in the early mid 1980's till end of 2000. As for me it was most nostalgic moment as a kid wondering about in there with friend s after school, dining in with family, toys and also place to hang out daily with friends. It's also where my parents used to worked at top floor too. Overall these area has huge impact as i spent most of my childhood time wondering around here after school. As the town grows over time the urbanization spreads to the outskirt these place no longer become hot spot for general public interest and remain dormant till this day especially for 'WISMA PELITA' building which started to aged, not well maintained, partially vacant and almost forgotten by new generation. To sum up, this open field is a staple place for any organized outdoor activity in this small town community....that include us R/C hobbyist. Although its a good ample size for park style flying however we seldom fly in this field since its always been occupied by other share activities like soccer, track actives and others so we tend to avoid during busy days. We mostly fly our flight models at old runways located 20 minutes on the outskirt of the city. If the field is vacant and we're too lazy to travel this is our favorite spot to reach.

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The place indeed is a breath taking to fly and good enough for park flier size plane with wingspan between 800mm to 1100mm and 700 size helicopter models. Ideally is a good place to fly light weight 3D planes, aerobatics and slow flyer scale planes because the limited size of the field. Its very encapsulated field perimeter surrounded with trees, light poles and solid wall barrier so R/C pilot need to be caution and agile enough to fly within the perimeter of the field. Another key factor why we love this place is of accessibility reason, shelter from the sun and also very stable wind condition. There's toilet, transportation facilities, food stalls and shops if we need to take a break from flying. There's a roof to shelter from rain and even under the big tree. Parking space a great too! The wind also is very calm and moderate because the field is wedge between high hills and wall of buildings around it so any aggressive wind from the beaches are blocked from all direction. Since its located in the middle of busy town general public and passer by can enjoy watching us flying at the same time promote the hobby to curious audience. With all those good points mentioned above i've decide to create a virtual site of this field so i could enjoy flying on PHOENIX R/C SIMULATOR via computer without physically being there plus giving chances to my fellow R/C flyer and community whats its like to experience flying in the center of my home town.

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The build

To ease the development of flying site for the first time i've used advance photography tool to create sphere panorama photo, yes i just bought myself a DJI MINI 2 drone....and my pocket gets thinner again but it dev site xl miritown 05 was worth it! With RAW photo support, excellent manual shutter, BW and ISO adjustment, full 360 degree sphere photo function, stabilized gimbal and automatic stitching my life is getting much easier than what i've been through in the past. Plus since it has rotors i don't to go the site 'indirectly' to take all those photo shots, just sit under isolated shelter and off it goes! lol! How did i ended up with MINI 2?...we'll that story will be told on my next article soon.

By default the DJI MINI 2 drone takes 26 photo shots of RAW (*.DNG) 360 degree sphere tiles which will be manually stitch inside MICROSOFT IMAGE COMPOSITE EDITOR. But before stitching together RAW photos it needed to be edit to adjust the ambient color, BW factor and few filter setting inside the RAW THERAPEE program to get the color right since i've taken the photo in the afternoon with average lighting condition. The output after the RAW adjustment will be tiles of *.JPG at 3992px x 2992px resolution. After stitching process it produces on piece of full panaromic 19968px x 7367px resolution high resolution *.PNG files which will then needed to be resize according to 2:1 ratio (where width is size is twice the height) at 14968px x 7484px resolution before turning into 'cube map' layout via 'Panorama to Cubemap' online generator tools (here) which required to fill the 'boxed' environment in PHOENIX R/C dev site xl miritown 10 SIMULATOR. Before cube mapping process the stiches have to go through intensive photo editing in COREL PHOTOPAINT. Originally the field comes with extra third goal post in the center which may obstruct the flight models movement on the ground. So i've manage to do some photo editing trick to remove the goal post and replace it with clean flat grassy ground. So now i have more space and clearance for flight models to roll about freely without hitting anything in the center of the field. Since the sphere pano photo taken from DJI MINI 2 drone the gimbal camera have its limit taking photo on the upper part of the sky ceiling which was compensated by adding blank and auto matching sky color, so i've manually added composite cloud to fill in the gap. Once done its ready to be cube map which will produce 6x tiles (Boxed) at 3742px x 3742px resolution in *.JPG format. Finally all the cube map tiles in *.JPG format are to be compiled into PHOENIX BUILDER tools rendered in 'box' where its then will be layout with solid base foundation, object collision, lightings, weather elements and other items required to make the flying site more realistic to fly. Unfortunately for me this field takes a lot of work to create the collision elements than other virtual flying site i made in the past since the area is surrounded with solid urban objects. Exhausting but i know at the end its worth it.

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Tools used to create these custom site:

Photography tool: DJI MINI 2 drone
RAW file editing tool: RAW Therapee
Photo editing program: Corel Photopaint
Sphere 360 panorama compiler: Microsoft Image Composite Editor
Cubemap tool: https://jaxry.github.io/panorama-to-cubemap/
Site builder tool: Phoenix Builder

Actual real life flying site in pano mode:

Sphere panoramic construction in Phoenix Builder tool:

Virtual flying site in Phoenix R/C simulator:

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Flying site characteristic

This is quite a compact size field ideally cater well very for small and slow pace flyer both in real life and in the simulator itself. For a scale propeller powered warbird plane at wingspan of 1100m it takes less than 5 dev site xl miritown 15 seconds to reach form one of the field to the other end at 80% throttle while slow flyer 3D profile plane would take between 15 to 20 seconds to cover both end for the same throttle range. So flying EDF jet planes or any high powered models even smaller ones can be a bit too much soon it will run out of space to move around swiftly. Although the field size is at approximately 148m x 90m by length and width the available air space above still too tight and enclosed to fly outside the field range because its surrounded by tall buildings, trees, solid structures such as highway light poles, overhead bridges and even hill sides. Probably would have extra 10 meter of buffer zone outside the field to fly about around the perimeter before hitting solid objects. Yes it does feel like flying in encapsulated fish bowl only with taller ceiling, so the only best models to fly are anything smaller, slower or rotored models such as park flyer models, 3D profiles, aerobatics, F3A/F3P, helicopters, STOL/VTOL models and drones or anything that doesn't consume too space to fly.

Flying site specification:

Area type: Urban area
Field size: Approximately 148m x 90m
R/C model flight suitability: 3D profile plane, park flyer size models, helicopter, rotored model or fixed wings with wingspan under 1100mm.
Safe take-off & landing runway length: 60m
Hazards & obstacles: Buildings, trees, fences, cars and roads
Flight skills required: Intermediate

Although space are limited the advantages this field can offer what others can't is dev site xl miritown 30 the wind are very calm and less turbulent than other flying field i've been before somewhere out of town. Which means its a best place to perform lots of aerobatics maneuver, F3P/F3A, aero musical flight or stunt flying performance where flight models are not interrupted by abrupt wind flowing into the field. So flight model handling are more predictable and controllable in such condition which is why its a popular site for displaying 'localized' movement of aerobatic tricks and stunt performances to impressed the audience or passerby at the field in real life. Even flying in simulator i do find it much more fun to fly without the distraction from external things such as traffic and hustle bustle of town noise....well didn't have any real audience to impress with my flying tricks i guess. But the feeling of flying in virtual site versus with real site doesn't have much significant differences other than losing audible ambience of towns people and traffic. The feeling flying virtually just right and accurate enough to emulating the actual field. At least i'm able to practice on replica site rather before attending the actual site to keep up more usable air time on the field.

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For other environmental details; rendered site are taken at around 2.30pm so the bright sunlight almost on the top side located on the left side of the pilot so be aware when flying against the sunlight to avoid problem with orientation when the flight models started to cast shadowy silhouette. There are two ways to take off; the main take-off in the center of the grassy field while the other one is located at the back of the pilot which can be take-off and land on solid track lane but quire narrow since its side are walls of concrete. There's only two solid goal post on the opposite side of the field since its actually build to cater soccer activity, so be aware not hit it during landing, take-off or even low altitude fly by.

*Disclaimer note: Well if the wind is too calm you can cranked up the wind gust magnitude from the menu setting side the simulator....however in reality this field shouldn't have such.

Summary

I love to fly on this field but didn't have much air time or chances, the field always crowded during weekends so my best alternative is just flying it in the simulator which is the reason i decided to create one. However the enthusiasm to fly remains strong on both real world and virtual world since i love to toy around with my slow 3D plane especially the SBACH 342 EPP profile plane. Plus the ambient of flying in the hustle bustle in the center of the town give good dev site xl miritown 51 vibe and wholesomeness being close to civilization....yes as human being we feel more alive with surrounded with living people rather than flying isolated airfield in rural area.

Even inside the simulator when i fly this site i felt more nostalgic and attached to this place because as a young kid in early 1980's; the field (Padang MMC), the tall white building (WISMA PELITA), my nearby school and the office my parents used to worked which all of them in closed proximity bring lots of sweet memories of the past. Its just made me smile thinking about how much great stuff i did and do when i was between 4 to 7 years old doing cool sport activities on the field, having a great breakfast every Sunday with my family inside that shopping complex (SUGAR BUN restaurant), playing hide and seek around the same area, hanging out after school with friend and few funny kiddy level mischief i did in the past centered around this vicinity. When i looked back...ah! i did lots of stupid things and crazy adventure that will makes my parent spanked my butt but still my young life was super fun and extremely memorable ! Those are my awesome days...we we're the bad ass trio in the school, lol! Anyways this are some the reason i've decided to create this replica flying site in PHOENIX R/C simulator since its a place full of my great memories of the 80's embedded in the air. When ever i fly at this field my epic childhood memories resurrected!. Hopefully this digitized form of my memories will drift freely into the sea of internet forever.

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