K2 Scenery

[Xavier]

K2, Qogori or Chogori

The Karakoram Range, the last Alpine Frontier.

At the beginning of the 21st century, only some paragliders dared to fly over the Karakoram range, flying over Hunza Valley, Hushe Valley, Indus Valley, etc., and some of them finished their trek in jail by lack of administrative papers.

Few crazy paragliders started from the summit of K2, Broad Peak, Nanga Parbat, and Gasherbrum for a short and frightening flight.

The 23rd of July 2016, the paraglider Antoine Girard, during a flight of 120 km starting from Paju, flew over the Baltoro Glacier to Concordia, then reach the top of the Broad Peak (8157 m) and finished after a final glide of 70 km, nearby the Shyok Valley.

At high altitude, oxygen is mandatory and 2 tasks' templates, with one Turn Point with maxi altitude set to 10000 m, are added for each airport. This Turn Point can be duplicated.

And don’t forget to get the virtual inner-line permits to fly over these strategic and disputed borders, between China, India and Pakistan.

So go and take a glance to the K2 Read me.

___________________________

K2 Read-Me



The native name of K2 is "Qogori" (8611 m). This is the main peak of the Karakoram Range.

Five peaks are over 8000 m (14 in the world): K2 or Qogori (8611 m the 2nd highest peak), Nanga Parbat or Diamir (8126 m), Gasherbrum I or K5 (8068 m), Broad Peak or Fachen Kangri or K3 (8047 m), Gasherbrum II or K4 (8035 m).

The scenery takes place in Spring, with green valleys, snow starting at 5000 m, tumultuous waters in every river, and glaciers still covered with a white thick snowy coat. This is not true in Summer and Autumn when valley slopes become brownish without grass, and glaciers show their moraines' rocks. In Winter, quite all the scenery is covered with snow.

To be in the mood for flying over the Karakoram Range, have a look to

https://www.facebook.com/antoinegirardfly/videos/536424379890793/

One of the best panoramic views all around the K2 and the Broad Peak, with few clouds.

Or this beautiful trek, walking the Braldu Valley, till Concordia upon the Baltoro Glacier.

https://youtu.be/FWRodNPJY4A



LOCAL NAMES:

As almost vowels are not written, we use the most common English orthography for the geographic names.
The ‘Q’, ‘Kh’, ‘Gh’, as in all Indo-European language, are pronounced as the ‘jota’ in Spanish language with different inflexions, a tough guttural [r].



TECHNICAL DATA:

This scenery is built with Terragen Classic, and OpenStreetMap data, for main cities, are embedded in Terragen tiles.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
(Web Site http://www.openstreetmap.org).

Standard Terragen tiles are 4096 x 4096 pixels.
Terragen tiles with embedded OSM data are 8192 x 8192 pixels.

There are 228 (19 x 12) Terragen tiles, that is a map of 437 x 276 km (120,612 km²).

Only 6, military, civil, or semi-disaffected airports cover the scenery: Kargil (2928 m), Thoise (3064 m), Daulat Beg (5013 m); Skardu (2233 m), Gilgit (1466 m) and Chilas (1158 m).
Three emergency airports had been added, two in China: Cha_E (2970 m), Yingfang_E (3654 m), and one in India: Kralpora_E (1797 m). All these 9 airports had been tested successfully with a full water load ASW22 towed by a Zlin.

Thermals, waves, and ridges flight had been successfully experimented.
Multiplayer tests had been carried.

The Forest Map is void, because there are few trees and not one reaches the standard height of 35 m, coming with Condor Forestmap.

No blue screen happened during tests, in spite of some HD tiles. Normally you can use safely in your Graphic Set Up "Very High" visible distance, with Window 7, i3, GTX 750 Ti.

Standard FPS are between 130 and 300 FPS with this configuration.

In order to complain with some V2 specifications, all objects are made with only one texture and built with Wings 3D.



STRM DATA

Fair SRTM data, from different roots had been found and cleverly mixed. General mountains morphing is correct for a square mesh of 90 m, with an altitude smoothing, after UTM transformation, fewer than 2%. For example, the K2 Qogori is 8577 m in the scenery for 8611 m in the real world. For K2 the smoothing is minus 34 m, that is 0.3%. The quality of the SRTM data are illustrated by the above live videos.

Very important corrections for main valleys had been made manually. The water flow always runs downward. Black holes had been suppressed, but few irregularities are still present.

New lakes had been added as Attabad lake. Attabad lake, was created in 2010 by an huge landslide and flooded a part of Hunza Valley, upstream Karimabad and its famous Baltit Fort.



CUP FILE ORGANIZATION DATA

The cup file has been made from scratch, and it refers to the altitudes and the mesh positions of the trn file. So don’t use this cup file in real flight.


** Abbreviation & Translation to English and French

K. -> Kangri = Peak, Pic
S. -> Sar = Summit, Sommet
T. = Tower, Tour
La = Pass, Col,
G. = Glacier
V. = Valley, Vallée
L. = Lake, Lac


** Notation

In this scenery you will find a lot of geographical homonymous.

- Example: The Gasherbrum group

Peaks: Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II, Gasherbrum III etc..
Glaciers: Gasherbrum Glacier, South Gasherbrum Glacier,

- The valleys (up to 300 km) and glaciers (up to 70 km) cross the scenery and TP had been placed at strategic points, in order to facilitate the tasketter’s job.
- Many Turn Points are over 5000 m.
- The maximum of signs that can be displayed on the PDA is 14.


So in order to avoid ambiguous reading on the PDA, the following rules are applied for the TP's denomination:

- All Turn Points over 4750 m begin by a star character [*]. Notice that the [*] is quite invisible in Landscape Editor. It is a reminder to set TP max altitude over 5000 m.

- The Peak number is always displayed in first and in Latin number (i.e.: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, etc.)

- For Glaciers, Valleys and some Lakes, TP numbers are displayed in Arabic number preceded by G (Glacier) or V (Valley) or L (Lake) (i.e.:1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), followed if necessary by N, E, W, S or C for North, East, West or Central.

Examples:
The TP over the South Gasherbrum Glacier, at 5600 m, is registered in the cup file as ‘*G1 S Gasherbrum G.’,

and is displayed on a PDA as:

*G1 S GASHERBR

and with this notation, there is no mix up with:

The 3 TP of the Gasherbrum Glacier (North East of the Gasherbrum group) which are displayed as:

G1 GASHERBRUM
G2 GASHERBRUM
*G3 GASHERBRUM

and the 6 peaks of the Gasherbrum group which are displayed as:

*I GASHERBRUM
*II GASHERBRUM
*III GASHERBRUM
*IV GASHERBRUM
*V GASHERBRUM
*VI GASHERBRUM


Same kind of notations with the Valleys:

Example: The Indus Valley is 300 km long in the scenery

There are 41 TP named:
‘V1 Indus V.’ to ‘V41 Indus V.’.


Standard starting or possibly finish Turn Points are also set in the cup file all around airports.

Examples of Skardu Airport:
S Skar 3793 or S Skar 3092, etc. 3793 and 3092 are the altitude in meters of the Turn Point.



TASKS’ TEMPLATES (A short video shows how to use the templates)

All the parameters are already pre-set in the tasks’ templates and you can change them except ** fixed properties ** of the TP1 as you want. It is a fair advantage, because there is no forgetting.

In order to facilitate tasks’ building, for each airport, 2 templates are already built with a start gate and a finish gate and one turn point set at 10000 m, with standard properties.
The max altitude of this TP1 is displayed in the flight planner as [0-100] into a green or red box.
All these 3 TP can be moved to another place, but the take-off airport is fixed.

These TP will take the TP name automatically set in the cup file if you use the red flagged yellow point.

You can always edit Tasks' Templates with the Notepad or create a complete new task.



DEFINED PARAMETERS OF THE TEMPLATES


** Fixed Properties **:

TASK tab

- Landscape: K2 [1.00]

- Task points:

* 1 TP1: XXX

--- TP1 is either built with :
------ a cylinder sector with 400 m radius,
or
------ a 90° sector with 3000 m radius and a max altitude of 10000 m and a min altitude of 0 m.

As said above, it can be moved to any other geographical place.


--- CAUTION: any change of the TP properties (Radius, Angle, Min Alt) will get back the max altitude to 5000 m. If you want to change one property of a TP with max altitude set at 10000 m, you must edit the flight plan and save it. However, you can read the properties of this kind of TP.

--- Flight-tracks, with TP set at 10000 m, are already accepted by Condor Club.

--- Adding another TP to the task:

Right click on a TP set at 10000 m and use the ‘Insert’ item of the popup menu to duplicate the TP. Move this new TP to the wanted place.



** Modifiable Parameters and Properties ** in the flight planer:

- Task points (other TP)
* Start Gate of 180 °, radius 3000 m, max altitude 5000m, min altitude 0 m. Except for Daulat-Beg airport (5133 m), the Max altitude is set to 6000 m and it is a fixed parameter (see restriction above).

* Finish Gate of 360 °, radius 100 m, Max Altitude 5000 m, min altitude 0 m.
Except for Daulat-Beg airport (5133 m), the Max altitude is set to 6000 m and it is a fixed parameter (see restriction above).

If the starting or finish point is over 5000 m, just click to 100 m the minimum altitude to put the max altitude 200 m higher of the TP height

- Timing:

* Date: 06/21/2016
* Time: 12 h 00 min
* Race in = 5 minutes
* Time window = 25 minutes

- Task description: Template Name.

WEATHER Tab:
- Wind
* Wind direction: 0 ° or 180 ° (N or S)
* Variation: Low

* Speed: 23.4 km/h (6.5 m/s)
* Variation: Low
* Turbulence: Light

-Thermals:
* Cloud base: 3000 m,
* Dew point temperature: 8.5 °C,
* Inversion height: 4000 m.
* Variation: Medium

* Strength: Moderate
* Variation: Medium

* Width: Normal
* Variation: Medium

* Activity: Normal
* Turbulence: Moderate

- Weather preset: Custom
- Randomized weather on each flight: No (Un-notched)



PLANE Tab:

* Plane class: All
* plane type: ASG29
* Skin: Default

You can always use the class and the type of glider you want.


NOTAM Tab:

- Realism:
* Plane Icon range: 15 km
* Thermal helpers range: 0 km
* Turn point helpers range: 5 km

* Allow PDA (yes)
* Allow real time scoring (yes)
* Allow external view (yes)
* Allow padlock view (yes)
* Allow smoke (yes)
* Allow plane recovery (yes). Flutter speed is less than 200 km/h at high altitude!
* Allow height recovery (no)
* Allow mid-air recovery (yes)

- Penalties:
* Cloud flying: 120 pt/min
* Plane recovery: 120 pt

(Anti-cheating penalties)
* Height recovery: 200 pt
* Wrong window entrance: 200 pt
* Windows collision: 200 pt
* Penalty zone entrance: 200 pt
* Lost knuckle: 200 pt
* Thermal helpers: 200 pt/min

- Start options
* Start type: Aerotow
* Aerotow height: 700 m

- Acro flight
* Enable acro box (no)


MISCELLANEOUS


** Blue tinted maps are available, with coloured main watershed lines.


** Template Task name description: K2 'airport name' followed by C (cylinder) or S (sector) 100.

Example: K2 T Skardu C 100 and K2 T Thoise S 100.



** The tasks’ templates are registered in the ‘Templates’ directory of the scenery.

It will be clever to move these templates, or some of them, to the ‘Default flightplans’ directory, in order to get a quick access by the "Load" Button of the Flight Planner.

A little video to show in HD (720p) how to use the templates' Tasks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egueh6kqNfg

If you read this notice until there, you get all your virtual inner-line permits and you are fully approved of flying over this scenery.

Have fun!

[Xavier]

K2 Video

Alone in the Wild 1 & 2. Two flights riding the ASK13 ship, flying over K2, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II, Gasherbrum I and the Nanga Parbat. The five peaks over 8000 m in this Scenery. The relevant tasks are on Condor Club.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlYsNcVdKxI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq33gCCTJQs

and a short illustration of a wave flight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPlIFS0QXEk

All video in HD 720
Have Fun!