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Moving airport

A

artmartin

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us-arizona
In my new scenery I and other users have noticed that some of the more obscure airports are offset slightly from the image on the photoscenery I've installed. I downloaded AFCAD 2.21 and have found it's relatively easy to move all or parts of the airport to fix the alignments. However, there are runway signs, parking structures (ramadas) and other buildings that seem to be part of the airport that don't show up in AFCAD and can't be moved. Where is this information located? Is it hidden somewhere in some .bgl file in the FS maze or is it somehow connected to the airport .bgl file and just doesn't show up?

Art
 
artmartin said:
...or is it somehow connected to the airport .bgl file and just doesn't show up?
Click to expand...

That's it. If you decompile the bgl you'll find the taxisigns.
You can't do this with AFCAD at the moment, but I hope it will be possible with future versions.

The other thing is to move these objects. You'll have to use your own calculation, maybe with Excel, to move all objects around precisely. Good luck with that. ;)
 
Hi Art,

The taxisigns are indeed in the AP*.BGL file, together with the airports. But they are not part of the Airport object itself, they are just placed by their coordinates. That is probably the reason that AFCAD does not show them. So to replace them I guess you have to exclude the current ones and then place new ones (or place the old ones with new coordinates :)).

For the buildings to solution is the same I guess. Exclude the current ones and replace them in a new BGL file. Of course you can use the decompiled source as a source for this new BGL file. 3D objects aren't part of the Airport object as well, so they are not linked with the specific airport. They are usually contained in the OB*.BGL files.
 
So how do you know which AP file to look into? AFCAD doesn't seem to give you that information. It basically just robs the airport info from it and creates a new file with an entirely different naming convention.

Art
 
Alright, this has my creative juices flowing. I hate doing repetitive tasks. Here's what I think I want to do. I'll create a program where you can name the airport you want to retrieve sign info from and the AFCAD output file you want to add them to (the one that AFCAD creates for you when you move the airport). At this point in time the user must find the FS bgl file the airport is located in and extract it to XML as well as the AFCAD bgl file. The user then tells the program how many meters North to bump the signs/objects and how many meters West to bump the objects. The program parses through the bgl file and finds the most NW sign/object and the most SE sign/object and creates an XML file to exclude all the signs and objects. The program then writes the entries back into the AFCAD file with the lat/longs offset by the number of meters desired.

Does that sound like it'd work? One thing I need to know though. I know I've gotten this answer before but I don't want to hunt for it. What's the offset in meters or feet for the additions/subtractions I'll have to make to the lat and long? Should be a simple ratio like .000000754 minutes/meter for longitude or something like that. If I have all these things I figure it'll just take a couple of hours to create this. It's just text manipulation.

Would be nice eventually for the program to handle the decompiling into XML but I'd have no idea how to do that short of calling an external program with parameters. Does NewBglAnalyze take parameters on a command line?

I'll certainly share this one.

Art
 
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When you open an AFCAD-file, you can see in the "properties" of the airport in which bgl-file it's included. ;) In this file you have all the airport-commands plus the taxisigns.
I think the easiest way is to decompile this file and just change the lat/long there. You don't have to exclude the signs and creat new ones, just move them. Then recompile it and ev'rything should be allright. :)
 
Horst18519 said:
I think the easiest way is to decompile this file and just change the lat/long there. You don't have to exclude the signs and creat new ones, just move them. Then recompile it and ev'rything should be allright. :)
Click to expand...

The reason I suggested to create a new file is because changing default files is not really the way to go. Especially if you want to distribute the file afterwards.
 
That's right, of course. I thought he only wanted to move the signs/airport for personal reasons... :D
 
Art --
On your concept, how do you determine that you need to move everything a certain number of meters? Wouldn't you be able to determine the offset directly in units of degrees lat and long? Otherwise, ISTM that first you have to project your data, then determine the offset in easting/northing, apply the offset, and convert back into geo corrdinates. That seems like a lot of work, unless you are getting this offset data from somewhere else.

There is a program Corpscon 6.0.1, which can take a CSV file of points and do the projections.

scott s.
.
 
Only reason I chose the offset in actual distance instead of degrees is because my feeble brain thinks that way. After you move the airport around to get it to line up right, you generally go into FS and look at things in an overhead view. It's pretty apparent then what way and how far to move the taxiway signs. Usually the tweeks are 30 - 100 feet. In terms of latitude and longitude changes required it comes out to tiny fractions of a minute. Now I have a pretty analytical mind but looking at the picture it just doesn't come up with "you need to move that object North by .0008543 minutes. Much simpler to think in terms of moving by 30 meters North and 20 meters West.

The program's working exactly as I thought it would and it's been a big help but it's got one drawback. It's only truly valuable when I move the airport as a whole completely intact. If I find after alignment that some of the taxiways weren't placed correctly, I have this tendency then to go in and redraw them. A global move of the signs doesn't handle that. You still end up with a few really misplaced.

The real valuable tool would be a graphical interface with a link to being able to slew around in FS. You'd make your airport edits and find all the runway signs and other objects. You then present them on a graphic screen and give the user the ability to select and move the coordinates while slewing. I'm hearing that SceneGenX does something like that but haven't tried it yet.

Oh well, great fun playing with this anyway.

Art
 
Hi Art,

artmartin said:
The real valuable tool would be a graphical interface with a link to being able to slew around in FS. You'd make your airport edits and find all the runway signs and other objects. You then present them on a graphic screen and give the user the ability to select and move the coordinates while slewing. I'm hearing that SceneGenX does something like that but haven't tried it yet.
Click to expand...

Indeed. It would be very nice if we have a tool like AFCAD, but then with a few more features (like being able to place every XML command). And also loading a background image like SGX in the GUI.

The most perfect tool would combine all that with the mesh scenery things. So that we have a big combination of AFCAD, SBuilder, Ground2k4, etc :). Maybe we will see something like that in the future.
 
That would definitely be great. :)

But who will create that tool? You, Arno? :D ;)
 
I have posted for a couple years for one of the great programmers that we know exist in the FS community to do exactly that.

Take AFCAD, and allow the insertion of backgound pictures. Pretty much give AFCAD all the abilities of FSSC, taxi sign creator, Ground, etc... And after 2 years of asking for this on many different sites, it doesn't exist.

As many scenery designers that exist, and you know some of them must be programmers, I find this to be absolutely amazing. Of course, I am sure, the first few to actually create this program, will try to sell it for a fortune. And many, like probably me, would buy it. But, we'll see. Again, over 2 years of me asking for it on designer sites, and it still doesn't exist.

- Greg
 
Horst18519 said:
But who will create that tool? You, Arno? :D ;)
Click to expand...

I would love to, but I know I don't have to time at the moment to start such a big project. With a new version of FS coming as well, this is probably not the right time to start something that big either :).
 
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