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FSX Aiport elevation problem

robinhutter

robinhutter

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65
Country
germany
Hi folks,

I am working on a new mission using an airport in South America (SKSJ). The airport elevation (from the Airport Design Editor tool) corresponds to the real world altitude, but the surrounding area in FSX is much higher, resulting in very steep slopes. Particularly nasty is the fact that one slope starts right after the end of the runway making the airport virtually impossible to use.

I would need an advice how to deal with this for a mission to distribute.

1.) Should I try to raise the airport elevation (how?) And how would I incorporate the files needed to distribute the mission?

2.) Or should I try to lower the surrounding terrain? - This could prove to be difficult as there is a river right next to the airport which would first fall down in a huge waterfall (not like in real world, but possibly acceptabe) and the flow upwards again (not a very comfortable thought for me...).

3.) What if users have different terrain meshs? Will that interfere with my PlayFlightRecordings?

Thankful for any insight...

Robin <><
 
From what it looks like on this end, it seems the airport is the correct altitude, and the surrounding terrain mesh is incorrect. My take is you should lower the surroundings to proper altitude, but you would probably need to find a rather large piece of mesh elevation data which you can place in there, which is big enough to mask the deficiency in the default mesh. The added benefit here, would be that you would simply distribute the new mesh, and ensure all end users see the same thing.

Since the USGS shut down their international seamless server, I do not know where else to get elevation data for Columbia. EarthExplorer would be my bet, but they seem to be down at the moment.

If raising the airport is your thing, I would make sure you have an accurate altitude reading of the river up to which you will be bringing the airport level. The necessary changes can be made easily enough in a program such as ADE or AFX, by excluding the existing background, increasing the airport altitude, and adding in a new flatten to raise the desired terrain area.

**EDIT: I found an SRTM data provider and downloaded a 3-arc-second dataset for a big portion of Columbia. See attached for the effect of the new terrain. Both good and bad results. Good, in that it fixed the problem with the airport being sunk, and bad in that it cannot fix the non-terrain hugging water which forms the river. If someone more experienced than me knows of an easy fix for that, then I'd say the fix + new mesh data added to the mission would make it a winner. With the new mesh, it looks far better, just not the final result we were looking for.

If you are interested, here's a link to the elevation set I used. It's already in GeoTIFF format, so compiling through resample is a breeze.
http://droppr.org/srtm/v4.1/6_5x5_TIFs/srtm_21_12.zip

If the link doesn't work, you'll need to navigate the data server (simple task) found here: http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/

//On a side note, I noticed that Google Earth shows a major settlement next door to the airport, but FSX shows jungle. Any chance of an SBuilderX touchup?

Now, terrain experts, converge!
 

Attachments

  • Columbia.jpg
    Columbia.jpg
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Hi SoloWing,

thanks for all the effort you have put in this. I am really unexperienced with all of this terrain stuff and have to say that although the airport is now usable, the result is still far from satisfactory. Maybe raising the airport elevation would be the easier alternative?

Just in case I would take this option: I suppose I would have to create a BGL file (how?) and include it as an add-on scenery?

Thanks a lot again,
Robin <><
 
I'd say that if you chose to raise the level of the airport itself, you would indeed require a flatten polygon to raise the airport surroundings with the airport surfaces. You can easily make this flatten poly through the ADE or AFX design programs when you change the airport altitude in either. I do not know how the AFX process works, having never used the program, but I know that ADE has an altitude change option that will automatically create the alt change BGL for you. All that is left is to add the exclude poly for the original background, add a new airport background polygon, and export.

If you choose to use SBuilderX, you will need the coordinates of your airport, including the altitude you wish the airport to be in meters. Then you can place an exclude poly first (to get rid of the default flatten) and a new airport flatten poly over the top of that, set to the correct altitude (converted to meters) at which you wish your airport to sit.

Note that when you change the altitude of an airport, an extra alt change BGL file is added to Scenery/World/Scenery once you compile the new airport. This is a necessary file to raise the level of airport surfaces, and must be included with any distribution you make.

In effect, you will have two directories to install to:
1.) Addon Scenery\Scenery
2.) Scenery\World\Scenery

You will need to fine tune the new flatten poly, to make sure the surrounding land is raised evenly and no "holes" are left over once you are finished with the edit.
 
Thanks, SoloWing for these helpful remarks. I already experimented with the ADE and found out the hard way about the extra BGL in the default Scenery directory. It almost drove me nuts that the airport was still elevated even though I deleted the Addon Scenery... What I did not succeed in was to raise the direct surroundings of the airport. I guess that's what you mean by using an exclude polygon. I have seen that there is such an option, but did not know what that does exactly. I will check this out ASAP.

What I also found out is that my Flight Recordings still start at the old airport elevation, which means they do not start at all. So if I choose to raise the airport level I will have to re-record all these flights... :o

Thanks again for helping.
Robin <><
 
I got it working:

1. Changed airport elevation
2. Exclude General Airport Backgrounds polygon
3. Airport Background Flatten Exclude Autogen polygon
4. Landclass Grass Polygon

Tried to use a Landclass Concrete Polygon on top of the grass one. That didn't work, but at least the airport looks like an airport and not like a mine. :D

Thanks a lot,
Robin <><
 
Glad to hear you got it working the way you need it to! Let me know when you finish the mission, via PM. I'm interested to see the end result!

If you really want to have that concrete texture showing, SBuilderX can make holes in the grass polygon, and you can convert that hole to a poly and label it as concrete. I admit, you've got my creative juices flowing, I feel the need to work on my Aspen CVX more now!
 
Hi SoloWing,

you'll get notified. Practice your heli flying skills and/or get an autopilot for rotorcraft in the meantime. ;)

Robin <><
 
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