Changing Airport Details

[scruffyduck]

We have been asked several times about changing the name and other details for an airport.

First Note that you cannot change an Ident without creating a second airport.

For most things FS will take the information from the last file read. So we can 'exclude' things like runways, aprons, buildings and so on from the stock airport and replace them with our own provided that our airport is in a file at a higher priority than the stock. This does not work for Airport Properties such as Altitude, Name, State etc. In this case FS takes the information from the first file it reads and ignores any other changes.

So to change these we need to create a small bgl file for the airport that loads before the stock file. These bgl files are added to the Scenery\World\Scenery folder since this is read before any stock airport folders.

ADE provides a way to create an altitude change file. Tools > Change Airport Altitude.

ADE does not provide a method to change the other properties. However with a small 'fudge' this can be done with the Change Airport Altitude Tool:

• Go to File > Airport Properties and change what you need to change and save it
• Go to Tools > change Airport Altitude. Make a note of the current altitude
• Change the altitude (does not matter much to what)
• Now compile the airport. ADE puts a Bgl file into Scenery\World\Scenery with the changed data
• Go back to Tools > Change Airport Altitude and put it back to the original and compile again
• The changes to your airport descriptive data should now be available

We are looking at having this work without forcing an altitude change. This will be in a later version.