How can I exclude FSX default airports

[nigelgrant]

I have now decided to divest myself of FS9 and move solely to FSX. I want to port over some of the good FS9 addon airports, where this can be done.

Several I have found look very good in FSX where the various textures are compatible. As an example, with the Freez Zurich I have managed to exclude the FSX default airport buildings with an XML exclude file, except for the default control tower. (I also want to convert the ISD Milan Airport, which appears to have similar issues – it is a beautiful flight between these two points over the Alps.)

However I am having lots of trouble with the FSX default aprons, taxiways and airfield itself, bleeding through the FS9 equivalents, the extent being dependent on the angle of view, and the plane chases the textures down the runway on take-off. The same happens with some other sceneries.

I presume that I need to create an exclude? and/or flatten? file to eliminate this problem but so far have been unsuccessful in finding a program that will do this. I have tried Sbuild, SceneGenX, ADE, ExcBuilder, and I could only find one specific instance of this problem being raised on the forums by neighbour Rob Halmich (maxam66)
but the issue did not appear to be ever fully replied to, and he came to our flightsim club meeting last Friday but was no further ahead.

The strange thing is I updated my own FS9 Vancouver International (CYVR42) to FSX (CYVR5) without this problem. Default FS9 buildings and airfield had been eliminated with both an XML exclude and a visible AFCAD for the airfield facilities such as runways, taxiways and aprons, and these excludes survived through to in FSX.

Does anyone know how to exclude an entire FSX default airport?

Nigel
Vancouver

[jvile]

You don't exclude an airport you delete an airport

<DeleteAirport
deleteAllControlTowers="TRUE"
deleteAllRunways="TRUE"
deleteAllStarts="TRUE"
deleteAllHelipads="TRUE"
deleteAllFrequencies="FALSE"
deleteAllTaxiways="TRUE"
deleteAllJetways="TRUE"
deleteAllAprons="TRUE"
deleteAllApronLights="TRUE"
deleteAllBoundaryFences="TRUE"
deleteAllBlastFences="TRUE"
deleteAllApproaches="TRUE"/>

Once the visual and non-visual scenery is deleted then you use excludes to remove remainding sceneryObjects such as buildings, taxiway signs, etc.

excludeAllObjects = "TRUE"
excludeBeaconObjects = "TRUE"
excludeEffectObjects = "TRUE"
excludeGenericBuildingObjects = "TRUE"
excludeLibraryObjects = "TRUE"
excludeTaxiwaySignObjects = "TRUE"
excludeTriggerObjects = "TRUE"
excludeWindsockObjects = "TRUE"/>

Once those are removed then you exclude the airport ground poly with a shp2vec cvx bgl which will remove autogen if any remains and flatten/conditions the ground.

This does not remove an entire airport. That cannot be done but gets rid of most everything to rebuild it again

[nigelgrant]

Thx Jim, for your detailed and quick response - will give it a try

Nigel

[nigelgrant]

Jim, at the moment non-FS things have piled up on me (darn it!) and I cannot get at this but will do so in a few days and report back to you. Thx.
Nigel

[cbuchner1]

Originally Posted by jvile

You don't exclude an airport you delete an airport

This does not remove an entire airport. That cannot be done but gets rid of most everything to rebuild it again

Does this also remove the ground flatten inside the original airport boundary polygon?

What are the largest LOD tiles to which such an exclude can apply? I am thinking of (optionally) removing all FSX airport runways and taxiways for Tileproxy because they often do not match the photo scenery. I am wondering how many exclude files I would have to provide to cover entire continents

[Golf-HotelDelta]

Originally Posted by cbuchner1

Does this also remove the ground flatten inside the original airport boundary polygon?

No you need an exclusion polygon to exclude the airport boundaries. See Shp2Vec.

The xml excludes are specific to each airport.

George

[ckd76915]

... the best Application for removing Autogen, Landclass and all other Things is FSXKML.
Have a look here for Manual and Download http://fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=FSX_KML

Regarsd Chris

[nigelgrant]

Jim

I have spent the past couple of weeks on these files, I managed to create the exclude/xml file to get rid of all the default objects but I kept trying to create the delete/xml file but all that would delete was the control tower. I then decided to re-install the FSX SDK which had some more-up-to-date files and all my default aprons, runways etc have now disappeared, so I guess something wasn’t compiling properly before.

Thx for your input, now I have the problem of importing the FS9 airport.

With the Freez Zurich for FS9 I found there were some bgl’s for the layer of runways, aprons, grass etc and this layer was marginally above the airport base (I had originally thought this was the FSX default bleeding through), I tried flattens to try and bring layers together but no success. I will raise the question at the Freez Zurich forum, it is such nice scenery and its import into FSX seems so close yet so far.

I would appreciate some more advice, if I may - what is the difference in the end result of using:

1. SBuilder to create and compile a flatten and/or autogen exclude BGL; or
2. SBuilder to create a BLN file for a flatten and/or autogen exclude then compile it throughShp2vec; or
3. BLNMarker to create the boundary of the airport polygon, create a BLN with BLN2SHP then compile it through Shp2vec to get the BGL.

Thank you for all your help

Nigel
Vancouver

[scott967]

I'm not sure what your problem is with that specific airport (could you give a link to it?) but I've been playing around some with an FS9 airport.

In the ideal case, a scenery is produced using current (FSX or FS9) SDK methods. That means:

1. The airport terrain is flattened using an LWM flatten polygon (FS9) or an airport boundary flatten polygon (FSX)

2. The airport scenery is placed on this flatten using bglcomp-compliant scenery (that is, XML code compiled with the bglcomp compiler from the FS9 or FSX SDK). Runways, Taxiways, and aprons are constructed using the bglcomp elements and attributes. The listed elevation of this airport scenery is typically very slightly higher than the flatten.

When scenery is built in this method, it is possible to modify the scenery using the same tools, and the provided deleteAirport or exclusionRectangle elements. Due to design limitations, changing the elevation of an entire airport, or parts of it, from the default is somewhat problematic, but with care can be done.

The difficulties come in when other methods are used in building airport scenery. Some of these are legacy methods, and some are backwards compatibility methods. Here are some methods that might have been used:

a. scenery.cfg lines for flatten.0= and/or exclude= I think the flatten only works through FS9, but exclude still works in both).

b. BGL assembly code (such as generated by SCASM) which can create FS2k2 runways, taxiways and aprons, as well as textures placed on the ground. some of these (for example the runway command) take elevation commands, and some are referenced to ground level (AGL).

c. Other BGL assembly code for so-called Area 16N flattens.

d. GMAX objects including ground textures, again placed by elevation or referenced to AGL.

e. Tweaks of FS9/FSX bglcomp xml code, using the elevation-setting attributes in non-standard ways.

These various methods all can cause problems with the scenery engine determining the proper draw order when stacked one on the other.

scott s.
.

[nigelgrant]

Hi Scott

Nice treatise on all that stuff, I am going to copy and paste into my docs library.

The aiport I have been working on is Zurich by FreeZ
http://www.freez.aero
but I believe that from what they have just told me, that they will be working on an FSX update. It is nice scenery.

I am now going to look at the ISD Malpensa and see if I can get that to work properly, their website seems to have disappeared.

Thx for your help
cheers
Nigel

[scott967]

I took a look at the FreeZ, and see that some of the files, such as LSZH_GND_Rwy28_Base place textures on the flattened ground, using the scasm DrawTriList command. I think the problem in FSX of "flatten" still following the "round earth" model comes into play with this command. Even though the vertices all have Z value of 0.000, and the ref point is relative to ground level, it creates a plane surface which won't follow the "round earth" for more than IIRC 100 meters.

scott s.
.