• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
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    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
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    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Been working on this for a while...........

T

Tomt478

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First of all I want to thank 'Gary" for helping me out with learning to do a lot of things I had no idea how to do.

However, there is one thing I just can't figure out...how the heck can you get a 'vehicle' link (ie:Road) to follow a slope? I can create a sloped mountain, but when I try to create a vehicle link (Road) up that slope, the "road" remains at the ARP altitude and won't follow the slope. I can get vector (roads) to do it with no problem, but as far as I know, there is no way to connect a vector road to the taxi link. So, my question is...Is there a way to create a vector road, then link it to the taxi network so that I can connect a "parking" to that "road"? Or is there a way to actually 'slope' a vehicle link (road)? Or....can you make taxi links invisible so that the vector roads show instead allowing me to 'slope' the taxi links (which I can do using ADE ,instructions in the manual)? I have my mountains, but just can't get any roads up to them. The vehicle links work ok, but they simply just 'flatten" the path up the mountain and don't actually travel 'up' or 'down' the mountain, they just remain at the ARP all the way up. This is something I've been playing around with but just can't figure out a way to do it using ADE or even SBX. I'd prefer to do it in ADE as things created with SBX tends to do crazy things on my system which I won't go into. Any ideas how to slope a 'road' up my mountain, the mountain is only 100 ft. tall and shouldn't be such a problem. The process described in the ADE manual only works for "taxi" links, not "vehicle" links.
 
Tomt478 said:
First of all I want to thank 'Gary" for helping me out with learning to do a lot of things I had no idea how to do.

However, there is one thing I just can't figure out...how the heck can you get a 'vehicle' link (ie: Road) to follow a slope?

I can create a sloped mountain, but when I try to create a vehicle link (Road) up that slope, the "road" remains at the ARP altitude and won't follow the slope. I can get vector (roads) to do it with no problem, but as far as I know, there is no way to connect a vector road to the taxi link.

So, my question is... Is there a way to create a vector road, then link it to the taxi network so that I can connect a "parking" to that "road"?

Or is there a way to actually 'slope' a vehicle link (road)?

Or....can you make taxi links invisible so that the vector roads show instead allowing me to 'slope' the taxi links (which I can do using ADE ,instructions in the manual)?

I have my mountains, but just can't get any roads up to them. The vehicle links work OK, but they simply just 'flatten" the path up the mountain and don't actually travel 'up' or 'down' the mountain, they just remain at the ARP all the way up. This is something I've been playing around with but just can't figure out a way to do it using ADE or even SBX. I'd prefer to do it in ADE as things created with SBX tends to do crazy things on my system which I won't go into.

Any ideas how to slope a 'road' up my mountain, the mountain is only 100 ft. tall and shouldn't be such a problem ?

The process described in the ADE manual only works for "taxi" links, not "vehicle" links.
Click to expand...

Hi Tom:

AFAIK, no way has ever been disclosed in FS forums, for creating "sloped" FS2Kx Taxiway Path objects; they are always going to align their altitude with the local airport ARP and/or the _ALT.bgl "stub" ARP (located in [FSX Install Path]\Scenery\World\Scenery.

And AFAIK, no way has ever been disclosed in FS forums, to create a vector road, then link it to the taxi network and connect "parking" to that "road".

This is the draconian way ACES designed most airport infrastructure objects to work, so that AI Traffic can render / move properly.

It is for this reason I recommended to abandon Taxiway Paths as "Roads"; those are only for short paths used by airport vehicles.


The solution is to use CVX vector "Road" objects; these can be made via ADE (but SBuilderX must be used for Freeway Traffic).

Even then, if an Airport Background Flatten is used, the warning keywords are "Airport Background"; these follow ARPs also.


I have not yet found a way to implement a CVX vector AB-flatten-based slope for CVX vector Roads that does not follow ARPs.


So the solution I have found thus far involves use of modified terrain mesh to shape the Road-bed slope (...a complex task).

That method involves use of TINs, which if done properly, may escape the 'insidious, evil', ARP Altitude control of AB Flattens.


The alternative is to limit (severely) the extent of ARP Test Radius values for each of the RWYs in your airport BGL.

Then CVX vector Roads must not be placed too close to the ARP Test Radius.


That may cramp your style, since you also want to use FSX' airport infrastructure and flight features (even if without AI Traffic).


Since your- and my 4.25 GHz/128GB RAM- computer freaks out rendering a 100 Kilometer ARP Test Radius extent, I must again recommend eliminating use of Taxiway Paths and instead use CVX vector Roads, which the FSX rendering engine can handle.

Long Taxiway Paths do not ever get 'clipped' unless an ARP test Radius is kept small / local (per RWY, not per 100 Kilometers).


I though it best to let you analyze all this over a longer period of time, to see for yourself, the basis of my recommendations. ;)

GaryGB
 
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Everything you just said does make sense. I just thought there might have been some way around the limitations of ADE. I do wish I could get better results using SBX, but it causes severe image flashes and FPS hits. It just does work when creating PR Scenery, and even those cause a 'slight' studder , but I can deal with that. So, since it seems maybe not impossible to create a road up the mountain, would it be possible to maybe place a runway on top of the mountain and instead of 'driving' up the mountain, I could just do what FSX was designed to do and that is 'fly' to the top of the mountain, can you adjust the alt. of a runway, and would I be able to have at least one gate and not be connected to the taxi network? I don't use any freeway traffic (uses too many GPU resources) nor do I have any programed AI traffic going into or out of the airport. (At least not for right now with my current GPU). I'm willing to adjust things and compromise by finding other alternatives to making roads up the mountain. BTW: I was finally figure out how to make a mountain using vertices just as the ADE manual suggests. Not perfect, but it does work and I'm satisfied with the results.

Now, I know this is a bit off topic here, and you probably answered this before, but I can't find the thread. Is there a tutorial on using Sketchup or even the older Gmax to create 3D models? I used to know how to use Gmax, but it's been so long ago, that I can't remember. I have Gmax installed and as far as i can tell it is working correctly, I just don't remember how to use it and can't find the manual I used to have for it, it was most likely on an old HD that failed at some point. I was lucky just to find the program. I actually liked Gmax, it was relatively easy to use. I've been looking around the internet to find some info on using Gmax or Sketchup, but the info I do find is quite limitted and they all assume you already know the basics of using the programs, I know some of the really "basic" basics of them, but not enough to do much.
 
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