About
Time to get back to my old home town! I used to make one of these flying site project of the same place few years back but now i'm back again to create another site which is very close to my home where i used to watch commercial planes fly by and landed on daily basis. The year was somewhere around 1985 when my family started to move to this town, i lived not far from the old Bintulu Airport. 
The airport handled lots of local flight which host turbo prop type planes particularly FOKKER 27 and the upgraded to FOKKER 50...sometimes i get to see my favorite DHC 6 TWIN OTTER too. I used to hang around with family watching these planes take-off and landing everyday which inspired me into this very hobby of flying RC modeler aircraft, FPV and then flight sim in VR decades later. Extra note that since the airport located in the middle of the township it was well known as the closest airport to town center in Malaysia during that era....literally the planes can be seen parked next to a vendor food & fruit market nearby only to be separated by fences. All i can say on the distance is just 10 seconds away between them that's how close it was. Originally the airport area stretched around 1.6km almost the same length of the town size beside it when i live there between 1980's to the end of 1990's but its narrow runway can only handle smaller regional planes. Town lives revolve around the airport and so am i because i use to walk and cycling to school through the airport perimeter and did awesome experienced plane landed and take-off meters over our heads. Bintulu town was the birth place of my 'everything' i wanted to be. Its the place where i start mountain biking, become inspired 3D modeler/graphics/computing through school engineering class, RC hobby and being adventurous teenagers with groups of friends....literarly my teenage days in this town was awesome!! The airport finally closed in year 2003 and now present day it was a public recreational for many events from kite flying, jogging track, RC model flying and etc. By that time i've graduated Bacheclor Degree in Computer Science, working and live independently somewhere but i still carry that same ambition i had from that very place which is now relfected in this very website.
To keep the spirit of 'Bintulu township' alive i've created this flying site revolve around this old airport runway for eternal memory lane.
The build
For this build i will be using Google Street View to sourced the panoramic scene of that site. But this time to extract the Google Street View panorama i will be using a special tool i've already created, its called: "GOOGLE STREET PANO-CUBE 360". This tool instantly extract panoramic street view from Google then Cube Map it into tiles, other option include image color editing and enhancement before import to file. That saved me a lot of work and free to use for all available through my app website (click here). This tool can output 4096x4096 pixel per-tile/cubemap which is good enough where in Pano format (Equirectangular panoramas) is 16384 x 8192 pixel for full scene.
Through the tool extraction it exported 6x tiles that formed original cubemap properly renamed. All i have to do is to remove Google watermarks which takes sometime on Photopaint program since i have to edit manually. Next process as usual working on Phoenix Builder tools i have to line up the panorama tiles into Cubemap layout for a complete 360 sphere pano. Then put ground platform like grasses, adding elements such as lightings, object collisions, starting points and other attributes to make the virtual site works. Thanks for the early tools i created the whole project only took less than half day to complete. What a joy!!
Tools used to create these custom site:
- Source of panorama photos: Google Street View
- Conversion tool for Google street view: Google Street Pano-Cube 360
- Site builder tool: Phoenix Builder
- Photo editing program: Corel Photopaint
Actual real life flying site:
VR panoramic construction:
Virtual flying site in Phoenix R/C simulator:
Flying site characteristic
Among all my flying site creation for PhoeniX R/C simulator this "Old Bintulu Airport Runway" site have the best 'Line Of Sight' view, very wide runway to land and less worry about hitting distance obstruction because the flying area is quite big and vast if you intend to do a very long low fly-by. It has very usable 380m long runway to take off on any heavy and big flight models and large 600m (length) x 150m (width)7of usable flying air space to roam about in the skies. There's a bit of trees, light poles and small public utility around but still located quite a distances from colliding it. Since the town located near the beach side the wind by default came from the north side, By practise in real world you should take-off from left end side of the runway and through straight to right side (north).
Flying site specification:
- Area type: Old airport runway.
- Google map location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/iqWhEgWXKL7uafp4A
- Field size: Approximately 600m (length) x 150m (width)7of usable flying air space.
- R/C model flight suitability: Large scale propeller driven nitro/gas engine plane, electrics, helicopter and EDF planes.
- Safe take-off & landing runway length: 380m clearance.
- Hazards & obstacles: Trees, light poles and small public utility.
- Flight skills required: Beginner to Intermediate.
Summary
Aahhh!!! This place makes me feel at home again. Didn't realised after years passed and leaving this place i manage to return back to create a virtual place where i once again 'standing & be there' to enjoy my childhood hometown at that very place where me and my family watched plane take-off and landing but this time in modern era i take-off and landed on my RC model planes.....its like going through time machine again.
In real world my friends still went there to fly their R/C planes on weekends. Great places for both beginner and professional level hobbyist to enjoy flying their model planes and helicopters. Wish i could be there but maybe some other times if i had long holidays off. So if you like to try this flying site just download the files, install inside the Phoenix R/C Simulator as add-on and enjoy! Cheers!
Video
General info | site model: Old Bintulu Airport Runway | platform: PC | simulator version: Phoenix R/C v5.5 | type: Flying site | avg ZIP file size: 41.3MB | date released: 21-Sept-2026 | Revision: v1.0
Full gallery preview | Video preview | 
Download this Phoenix R/C flying site
*Installation instruction: How to install custom site in Phoenix R/C
*Note: This virtual flying site are available for free distribution and for non-commercial purposes.
*Credits: Panorama sources are from Google Map + Google Street View.
