Faithful reconstruction of the appearance and physical details of the airstrip at the Serra Pelada mining site during the 1980s and 1990s. This area is located in the state of Pará, Brazil. The author, geologist and private pilot Jorge Padilha, worked in the area in 1981 and made several trips in twin- and single-engine aircraft to the mining site. The airstrip no longer exists, but it operated for about 30 years. For this reason, the author created a fictitious ICAO code for the strip, ... Faithful reconstruction of the appearance and physical details of the airstrip at the Serra Pelada mining site during the 1980s and 1990s. This area is located in the state of Pará, Brazil. The author, geologist and private pilot Jorge Padilha, worked in the area in 1981 and made several trips in twin- and single-engine aircraft to the mining site. The airstrip no longer exists, but it operated for about 30 years. For this reason, the author created a fictitious ICAO code for the strip, in this case SN1Y. There are two runways positions, 17 generally to land and 35 to take off. The mining site became famous for the sheer number of miners, which at its peak reached around 100,000 people working daily in a space of just a few hundred square meters. To reproduce this detail, the author used human models, some animated. Three 3D models were created in Blender and exported to the MSFS2020 simulator for now; a version for MSFS2024 will be made available in the future. These 3D models are: The open pit where the miners worked. The piles of mining waste removed from the pit, A gold nugget. Special attention was given to the textures, making them as realistic as possible. For example, the pit is gray, derived from the source rock of the gold (a gray-to-black phyllite), while the waste is red, derived from the sandstone. The phyllite is the host of the gold. The scenery not only provides realistic conditions of the airstrip but also includes an adventure component, since the pilot can “disembark” from the aircraft and search for the gold nugget. There are three gold nuggets hidden in the scenery. The user should use the normal cameras or the developer mode cameras; in the latter case, the user must activate developer mode. The instructions and keys for moving the cameras are found in the game’s Options menu.
