FSXA Best way to change Airport Elevation?

[mmann]

I am looking for an easy way to change an elevation for an airport that already has an elevation change. I have been developing a number of airports for Orbx PNW and have run into a bit of a snag with Courtenay Airpark (CAH3).

The stock FSX elevation for this airport is 2.743 meters, Orbx has an elevation of 4.572 meters and the real world elevation is listed as 3 meters.

If I use Orbx's elevation then the Airpark Lagoon that I have added (which is at sea level) looks real bad. But because Orbx used an elevation change stub already, any stub I create seems to be overridden. The scenery is Freeware but I don't think I should have people deleting the Orbx stub file.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Regards, Mike Mann

 

[scott967]

You might try renaming your stub file to zz_filename or 00_filename and see if that causes it to be used. I would try that first.

scott s.
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[rhumbaflappy]

The first instance of airport elevation controls the elevation for the airport. So you need to make a stub, and place it in the datastream before ORBX' stub. A simple way is to name your stub alphanumerically before the ORBX name... such as !CAHE_Stub.bgl, in the same folder as the ORBX stub.

The ! should ensure it is placed first.

I haven't tested this, but I believe it should work this way.

Dick

 

[mmann]

I had tried naming my file so it appeared before the Orbx when I first started developing my scenery. It was hit and miss; sometimes my elevation showed up and sometimes the Orbx one showed up. I did not think this would be acceptable for people using my scenery! Many thanks for responding though; any other thoughts on the matter?

Regards, Mike Mann

 

[scruffyduck]

ADE can do this automatically - create the stub file and place it in the correct folder. Tools > Change Airport Altitude. It will also make an adjustments necessary to airport elements to align them with the updated altitude.

 

[mmann]

ADE can do this automatically - create the stub file and place it in the correct folder. Tools > Change Airport Altitude. It will also make an adjustments necessary to airport elements to align them with the updated altitude.

ADE is what I used to create my stub. I don't know what Orbx used (could be ADE as well), but with two stubs both adjusting the same airport with different elevations settings, produces unpredictable results.

Sometimes the Orbx stub elevation takes effect; at other times my stub elevation overrides the Orbx one but not on an absolute basis. FSX (on my computer anyway) does not like two elevation stubs for the same airport.

Regards, Mike Mann

 

[scruffyduck]

It is always the FIRST stub read that sets the alititude. So if you have two stubs for the same airport then the one that comes first alphabetically by name will be the one that gets used.

 

[GHD]

The problem is that ADE places the stub in FS\Scenery\World\Scenery which us where the Orbx stub will be.

Create a new sceney area, say Mystubs\Scenery, move your stub to there, add to the scenery library and move it below "Default Scenery" in the Library order. This will ensure that it is read before any other elevation data.

 

[mmann]

Creating a new stub folder and adding it to the addon library at the correct location would be beyond the scope of understanding of many potential users.

There would be times when people might want to disable my scenery and forget about the extra folder which would wreak havoc with Orbx's scenery at this airport.

Unfortunately this would be equivalent to my first idea of creating a stub with the same name as the Orbx stub; then I would provide a second stub with the original Orbx elevation. But then people might forget to switch to the correct stub when deactivating my scenery.

I think I may have to issue this airport as a separate entity with warnings in the readme file.

Mike Mann

 

[rhumbaflappy]

As you state, changing the airfield's elevation is a problem.

Real world elevation is generally not what is listed, because airfields are not flat in the real world.

I'd leave the airfield alone and rework the lagoon to a slightly higher elevation, as I'm sure that's not real world elevation either.

And speaking of sea level, most people are not aware that the ocean is not flat. Besides tides, waves and swells, earth rotation and currents can alter elevations.

Our mesh is made from DEM sources that smoosh all the defined ocean areas to 0 elevation... so right from the start, there is no reality to any of our elevations.



Dick

 

[scott967]

Not to mention there are various vertical datums in use around the world, and might be referenced to mean sea level, lowest low water, or other. Hence why the trend now is to reference to the geoid used for WGS84/GPS. If you use SRTM elevations for mesh, and local vertical datums for airports (from local data) there can be differences. Let alone there is rarely mention made of vertical accuracy of elevation data.

scott s.
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