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FSX default airport exclude

J

José

Messages
490
Country
brazil
Some FSX's airport's runways are at wrong altitudes, in SAME. Some are above terrain level and others are below.

I tried some examples of flatten shown in this forum but didn't find the results I looked for:

1 - delete completely the airport, to load a new one with corrected flatten; or
2 - make a flatten so the runway level appears at the corrected altitude.

Those initial difficulties are somehow expected because there are not friendly tools and knowhow about FSX SDK, except at the level of knowledge of expertises we can find in this forum.

That's why I'm addressing my issue here.

Thanks in advance for any answears,

José
 
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Hi José.

I started a new thread for your post. I understand your frustration, but there simply are no "entry-level" tools to replace airports at new elevations. And in doing so, you may introduce complications with AI aircraft landing and taking off.

There are some very bright people right on these forums that are working on tools that may do just what you want. Everyone needs to exercise a bit of patience with this new sim. We have some very powerful low-level tools to work with, and in "weeks to months", the higher level tools will follow.

At this forum, we cannot address concerns about airports being defective in the sim... those issues are with Microsoft and the Aces team. We can deal with technical issues concerning replacing or enhancing the default airports, but as I wrote, the "higher-level tools are not yet available. The SDKs are available if you wish to invest the time ( and perhaps money ) to use those tools.

Meanwhile, the FSX Mesh forum is not a complaint department.

Dick
 
rhumbaflappy said:
Hi José.

I started a new thread for your post. I understand your frustration, but there simply are no "entry-level" tools to replace airports at new elevations. And in doing so, you may introduce complications with AI aircraft landing and taking off.

There are some very bright people right on these forums that are working on tools that may do just what you want. Everyone needs to exercise a bit of patience with this new sim. We have some very powerful low-level tools to work with, and in "weeks to months", the higher level tools will follow.

Dick
Click to expand...

Thanks for your response and my excuses for my complaints.

I tried some formulas to achieve my goal, even disassembling the original bgl containing the airport, modifying the alt and substituting that by the recompilated one.

This way seems very personal and isn't the best, since it replaces original files.

I'll follow what is discussed here and hope in a few days the experts like you could give us, if not a friendly tool, at least a clear way to accomplish that.

Regards,

José
 
I think for the moment the only way to achieve what you want is indeed to extract the original airport by disassembling the relevant APX-file and copying the section with the airport you are interested in. Then you can work on that extracted xml-file and leave the original file as it is. If you start to adjust the elevation, you must do that for the airport as a whole, for the runways and for the start locations, otherwise you will run into difficulties. You can then recompile the airport with bglcomp and place it in the Addon scenery folder (or some other folder you give higher priority than the original file). Then the new airport will override the original one - as long as the airport ID is not changed.
After that you will have to make a new flatten with the corrected altitude, which is not too difficult with GoogleEarth and the FSX_KLM program; you should put the bgl-file obtained this way into the same folder as your corrected airport (for how to use the FSX_KLM program look to the Wiki section of this site).
 
I don't remember if I made exactly as you wrote.

But, when the airport level is under the terrain, this solution can work. On the other hand, if the level is above terrain, it seems the flatten doesn't work.

If you want to test, I could give you an example I tried to retify without success:

Icao: SDJD; FS X flatten: 896 m; Mesh: 757.1 m.

Coordinates: (-23.17/-46.95) Brazil.

Would you please test your solution on that?

Thanks

José
 
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Your problem is, that it is not only the airport that seems not to be on the correct elevation. As far as I can see it fits with the mesh in the surrounding; so if the official docuemnts say that the airport is more than a 100 feet lower in reality (and that is, what I find on the WEB), you would first have to adjust the mesh, because only adjusting the airport will make it sit in a deep hole in the terrain, which probably is not what you have in mind.:confused: I did not check, but probably you can find somewhere a better mesh for Brazil on one of the usual sites, and when you have installed that more correct mesh you can start to work on the airport.
 
Hi,

I compiled recently the MeshX (51 files covering South America- search avsim). The issue ins't adjust mesh to flatten, but the contrary. I would to know how to modify those airports without working in the FSX original files.
Thanks,
José
 
Hi,
it is called "Airport elevation change in FS X" and it is in the Scenery design category.
 
Trying to change the elevation for a default airport.
My shapefile is slightly larger then the default, it is working (I can see it in FSX). Only problem left is: it does not override the default CVX file.

The only way I get it to override the default CVX is when I compile with replace_cells instead of add_to_cells. Is this how it works? Can the airport elevation not be changed without replacing the whole cell data?

This article isn't specific on this, it doesn't sound like replace_cells is necessary:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=Airport_elevation_change_in_FS_X
 
martin_ktpa said:
Trying to change the elevation for a default airport.
My shapefile is slightly larger then the default, it is working (I can see it in FSX). Only problem left is: it does not override the default CVX file.

The only way I get it to override the default CVX is when I compile with replace_cells instead of add_to_cells. Is this how it works? Can the airport elevation not be changed without replacing the whole cell data?

This article isn't specific on this, it doesn't sound like replace_cells is necessary:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=Airport_elevation_change_in_FS_X
Click to expand...

You will need to create a vector exclusion shapefile (to exclude the default flatten) and compile it (in the same run as your replacement shapefile) with shp2vec.

See Example 2 in the Terrain SDK.

-Doug
 
There's a bug in FSX, which causes this method not to work at all.
Excluding a flatten and creating another works fine. The problem is with excluding airports.
No matter what you do, the latitude, longitude and altitude of the original airport in the database are used as reference for the new airport. In FSX, the elevation specified in the <Runway> tag is used to create a flatten under the runway, even if there's no specitic vectorial flatten. But, regardless of each runway's elevation, they are all drawn at the 'reference' altitude of the airport. Even if you exclude the airport and create a new one - your new elevations will be solemnly ignored and FS will use the one of the excluded apt.
I enclose two screenshots: the first one shows my floating runway in a 'fixed' airfield (because the default altitude was wrong), and in the second one I just excluded a default flatten and then recompiled the airport code, adding proper exclusion flags and intentionally shifting the altitude to 1000ft higher. Notice the new runway generated a flatten at the correct altitude, but the runway itself was placed at the old altitude, thus making the ground 'transparent' to the aircraft.

rafael
 

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Replacing an Airport's elevation

Hi all.

Here's an old thread from AVSIM concerning FS9 airport elevation:

http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=123&topic_id=24653&mode=full

Peter McClelland seems to be the discoverer of the fix.

Here's my contribution:

I don't see a work-around other than Peter's discovery. The
first instance of the Airport code determines the elevation
of the aprons.

However, only the simple Airport info is needed, not the
entire copy of the new AFCAD. The code to set the ident,
latitude, longitude, and elevation can be done with a simple
XML-compiled code like this:


Code: 
<?xml 
  version="1.0" 
  encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<FSData 
  version="9.0"
  xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'
  xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd">

  <Airport 
    ident="OAKB"
    lat="N34 34.13333"
    lon="E069 12.90000"
    alt="1796.00M">
  </Airport>

</FSData>


This may have some advantage over using a copy of the AFCAD,
as it doesn't include any drawing routines... In this case, I
reset the elevation to 1796.00 meters. When this BGL is placed
in the Scenery Library near the bottom of the loading order,
it works just fine, with the new AFCAD.

Note for anyone just reading this thread: this would only be
needed when changing the elevation of the airport.

I would rather see this implementation, than altering part of
the "AP" code... unless the entire LOD5-sized AP
code is corrected and used as a replacement for the default (
much as I recommend for LWM and VTP ).

A tiny BGL would then "set" the airport elevation. It must exist in the Scenery Library at an earlier scenery level than the default airport. The replacement "AFCAD", with it's exclusions, can then be at the usual Library level... that is later than the default airport scenery.

Otherwise, your only alternative would be to alter/replace the default BGL.. and that is something we've been trying to prevent.

Dick
 
The following seems to work for me now without touching any default files.

1. Exclude Airport Flatten Shapefile BGL in local scenery folder.

2. New Airport Flatten Shapefile BGL with new elevation value in local scenery folder.

3. Mini "Afcad" dummy file also with new elevation value placed in world/scenery (see rhumbaflappy post)

4. Actual "Afcad" file containing visual runway's etc also with new elevation value in the local scenery folder.

If point 4 is skipped the default CVX "Afcad" runway will again pull the runway terrain up or down while drawing the actual visual runway at the correct elevation (see Rafael post).


This is a mess to say the least. FS9 wasn't any better with it's FL file hacks. I don't know what others think but this >should< be so much easier. I don't see why airport flattens in form of FSX Shape- or FS9 "FL" files necessary at all. Doug: Wouldn't it be easier if the engine pulled this "airport background" data from the BGLComp "Afcad", something like a invisible apron poly tag?
 
martin_ktpa said:
The following seems to work for me now without touching any default files.

1. Exclude Airport Flatten Shapefile BGL in local scenery folder.

2. New Airport Flatten Shapefile BGL with new elevation value in local scenery folder.
Click to expand...

Note that the flatten exclude and replacement flatten can go in the same BGL by naming the shapefiles such that shp2vec compiles them both in one run.

martin_ktpa said:
...

This is a mess to say the least. FS9 wasn't any better with it's FL file hacks. I don't know what others think but this >should< be so much easier. I don't see why airport flattens in form of FSX Shape- or FS9 "FL" files necessary at all. Doug: Wouldn't it be easier if the engine pulled this "airport background" data from the BGLComp "Afcad", something like a invisible apron poly tag?
Click to expand...

It would sure be easier for add-on developers. Unfortunately the current architecture of FS will not reasonably accommodate. The terrain system needs the data when it needs it - and that may be at at time when the airport is not loaded yet. Many things (including user settings) affect when a given bgl file will be requested to load. And many things (including hardware and user settings - i.e. FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION) affect how long it takes to load, or at extremes, if it will ever get the chance to load. So, for now, each system handles it's own BGLs. In the future... we'll see.

-Doug
 
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