MSFS How to get runway to follow terrain?

[FlyingsCool]

Hi,
How do I get the runway to follow the existing terrain? Apparently, I accidentally pulled the altitude of the runway, and I don't know what variables to choose to get the runway to drape over the terrain as is. I'm recreating a closed airport (69NH), so the terrain is already correct. I expected a switch, but I don't see one. (nor do I see a field for setting runway altitude at all).

(Sorry, I posted in the wrong forum, can someone move this to the Airports forum, unless it's ok here.)

 

[SinusJayCee]

I found no "snap to ground" option for runways, which is available for, e.g., scenery objects. However, in the scene XML file, there is an "alt" parameter that is not accessible through the scenery editor. You may create an arbitrary object at the center of your runway and let it snap to the ground in order to get the desired altitude. After that, you manually set the altitude of your runway to that value.

Alternatively, you can recreate your runway and don't touch the altitude arrow

 

[FlyingsCool]

Great idea, thank you

Also a good idea to get exact coordinates of a point.

Yeah, I didn't even realize I did it till I rotated down and so my runway was below sea level (facepalm).

 

[SinusJayCee]

I just figured out how to manually set the position and altitude in dev mode: click View -> Gizmo in the scenery editor.

Let me know how it worked out for you!

 

[Kronzky]

I have the same question, but the altitude setting wouldn't really fix my problem.
The airstrip I'm creating is in the wilderness, and I don't want to terraform (i.e. flatten) the surroundings when I place a runway. The terrain should stay exactly the way it is, but I didn't see any option in the runway properties to allow this.

 

[edugodoi]

You have to change the runway slope manually. There is no way to make the runway to follow the terrain.

Select the runway, go to terraforming option > show profile editor.
Then .. you need to add all the point and set the altitude of these points (use meters).

Check the image attached.

 

[Kronzky]

Thanks for the tip! Yeah, looks like my only option is to recreate the original terrain, once it's been flattened.

If anybody has similar issues, here's a helpful video, explaining terraforming:

 

[CaptHawkeye]

I've been working exclusively on grass bush strips. The issue I have is that many of them have slopes from left/right or right/left besides the front/back slope of the runway. I find it impossible to adjust both in any way that produces an acceptable result. I thought I read somewhere that there will be new terraforming shapes coming in the next SDK update. Hopefully that'll help with these issues.

 

[Kronzky]

Yeah, it's a bit of a PITA with natural airstrips.
But if you add a few additional terraforming polygons/rectangles to fine-tune the runway it can turn out all right.
Here's two I just did for some Idaho strips:

https://imgur.com/a/LWNqofP

 

[Jay Bloomfield]

Here's a tutorial that someone did on terraforming with the MSFS SDK:

 

[Benney]

You did a good job @Kronzky on making those runways look realistic. I'd be interested in seeing what the layout of terraforming polygons/rectangles looks like in dev mode.

 

[Kronzky]

There's really no hard rules on where to put what. It's mostly trial and error. Actually, mostly error...
Here's what Mile Hi looks like in dev mode:

 

[Benney]

There's really no hard rules on where to put what. It's mostly trial and error. Actually, mostly error...
Here's what Mile Hi looks like in dev mode: View attachment 63188

Wow, I was expecting a lot more than that haha! Do you have downloads for those strips?

 

[Kronzky]

Wow, I was expecting a lot more than that haha! Do you have downloads for those strips?

Ok, I've stripped it down to just the Mile Hi components, and you can download it from here.
(I hope I didn't delete too much from the project, but when I loaded it here, it seemed to work.)

When smoothing out the terrain, don't try to "microfix" stuff. You will spend ages jumping from one issue to the next.
Think BIG. Do large strokes, and let them blend into one another.
Sort of like coating a drywall...

BTW - the area at the bottom of the runway is very rough on purpose. It's unusable in real life, so I didn't want anybody to take it easy, and use the whole mountain for a runway!

 

[karlo922]

Somewhere else I found this: If you increase the priority of an underlying terraforming rectangle to >11, the runway will follow this. So you can delete the terraforming within runway properties. I just tested it and it works. So you then do not need to align your runway exactly with the terraforming rectangle but you can just let the runway follow the curve of the rectangle.

 

[BattleMetalChris]

The 'ISOline view' mentioned in the terraforming video Jay posted earlier might be a good way of getting the curve for your runway profile.

Before you add your runway, switch to isoline view and grab a screenshot. Then place your runway and add a profile curve. You can then look at the contours of the isolines and use them to see where and how high you need to place your control points on the curve for it to follow the existing terrain. Maybe someone could even write an application to spit out a curve given a screenshot?

 

[Kronzky]

The method I'm using now is pretty efficient and accurate; so in case anybody's interested:

1. Place some small scenery object at every spot on the original runway location that you think is significant (i.e. has elevation changes).
2. Write down the elevations of those objects.
3. Put your new runway on top of it. Adjust its length to match your first & last reference object.
4. Add terrain manipulation points, so you have as many as you do reference objects, and adjust their positions, so they match.
5. Manually enter the elevation values for the adjustment points, from the list you created before.

 

[Benney]

The method I'm using now is pretty efficient and accurate; so in case anybody's interested:

1. Place some small scenery object at every spot on the original runway location that you think is significant (i.e. has elevation changes).
2. Write down the elevations of those objects.
3. Put your new runway on top of it. Adjust its length to match your first & last reference object.
4. Add terrain manipulation points, so you have as many as you do reference objects, and adjust their positions, so they match.
5. Manually enter the elevation values for the adjustment points, from the list you created before.

The scenery object method is clever, I like that.

You can try to get runway elevations from charts, but usually only the high/low points in touchdown zones are shown (and obviously there aren't generally charts for little grass strips like these).

 

[Kronzky]

Yeah, charts are rare for these strips, and even if you do have them, I wouldn't rely on them for absolute values (i.e. elevation), as that is sometimes quite a bit off in MSFS (and you would have to adjust the whole mountain range to make it fit). They do come in useful at times for getting the runway incline correct, but again, I'd only use that as a relative value to the game terrain.

Here's a quick video on the method I described above:

 

[=Hollywood=]

There may be a simpler way than terraforming, download ASTER DEM for your airport, then draw your polygons, they'll be saved as SHP files (I'm assuming, I haven't messed with runways yet), go into QGIS, ArcGIS or GlobalMapper, load both your shp and dem data, highlight the vector points and tell it to assign elevation to the data. You may need to check the values for the DBF file but that should save you a lot of time and effort. You may need to do it on the terraforming SHP file, not sure about runways. Sorry I don't have any time to look into it at the moment drone modeling the house