• 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.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • 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.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    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.

Moving an airport

Messages
258
Country
unitedstates
What is the best way to move an airport? I'm working on the airports of Jamaica and have one I have to move a good bit. see below:
The circle is where FSX has it, The arrow shows where it should be.

Thanks
Joe W.
 
Last edited:

scruffyduck

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
34,853
Country
unitedkingdom
Unfortunately the current version of ADE does not support bulk moving of airports. This was not made available due to issues with approach code and the effect on that and other similar factors when an airport is moved.

Now that ADE does have an approach editor the functionality to move an airport is on the development list. Obviously if there are only one or two elements at an airport then they can be moved singly to the new location

I believe that FSX Planner does allow the bulk move of an airport. not sure about AFX.
 
Messages
823
Country
us-arkansas
You do realize that the aerial image is over 6 1/2 years old? Is 2 to 3 years older than the data used to create FSX.

The airport has no approaches in the default FSX, so those are not an issue.

You want to move the airport a little less than 3 miles, so you should be able to drag and drop the individual items of the airport. I would not bother with trying to move the airport reference point. 3 miles is close enough for the real world for a 2,500 ft VFR only daytime only airport with no lights.

That is the problem - many small airports in the US and the rest of the world are not surveyed to the precision needed for FS, or visible from aerial photos like your image.

I was able to find six references to the airport location in a quick web search. The three real world flight planning sites had the airport at the location it is in FSX. One major GPS manufacturer had an optional software update which moves the airport closer to, but not exactly the position in the image. The other two reference sites had the airport at the FSX location.

To move the airport, there are 13 items which have to be moved. It is a pretty small airport.

You also need to create a small polygon on the old runway location, but not on the airport reference point. The polygon needs to be "Exclude Specific" -> "Airport Backgrounds Flatten MaskClassMap Autogen"

You also need to create an Airport Background polygon with the same tag at the new location.

Your biggest concern is your mesh and the airport altitude. If the new location altitude varies more than about 3 ft / 1M - you are going to want to use the Change Airport Altitude tool in ADE.

Small moves of airports with no approaches are acceptable, just tedious since ADE does not have a multi-object move capability.

But as Jon pointed out - airports with approaches are a whole different animal.
 
Last edited:

GHD

Messages
12,243
Country
england
The defaukt MKNG has only a runway, apron and a single parking spot. Rather than moving it, it would probably better to delete everything and start from scratch at the correct location. As you have a photographic background, it should be fairly easy to position it accurately.
 
Messages
823
Country
us-arkansas
One thing I noticed from Tom's images.

Google Maps and Google Earth have the airport at two different locations - about 2 1/2 miles apart.
 
Messages
823
Country
us-arkansas
FSX go the airport in the wrong place if my version is near default. The only thing which should impact that area is FSGenesis mesh. You can see from the FSX image and the GE image, the airport is on the wrong bay.

This is going to be much more difficult than I though.

There are many buildings set in the area - I guess to represent the tourist hotels. Many are outside the ADE airport area.

The roads are wrong, the buildings will have to be moved. This is a big SBuilderX project. You need to redo the entire costal area.
 

Attachments

  • MKNG-FSX.jpg
    MKNG-FSX.jpg
    100.1 KB · Views: 332
  • MKNG-GE.JPG
    MKNG-GE.JPG
    90.5 KB · Views: 412
Messages
258
Country
unitedstates
FSX go the airport in the wrong place if my version is near default. The only thing which should impact that area is FSGenesis mesh. You can see from the FSX image and the GE image, the airport is on the wrong bay.

This is going to be much more difficult than I though.

There are many buildings set in the area - I guess to represent the tourist hotels. Many are outside the ADE airport area.

The roads are wrong, the buildings will have to be moved. This is a big SBuilderX project. You need to redo the entire costal area.

Yes sir .......... I already know that. That's why I'm reworking all the airports in Jamaica as most are off a bit. This is the worst so far.
I wont redo the coast but the road and a lot of buildings are going to be replaced. Also there is an island near this one that is not there in FSX.
I would like to keep the work to a minimum. I moved most items already and the oil spots get all messed up ( another thread) and I can't get them back right. I have deleted that bgl because of that. I will try that other program, FSX Planer, but I never had much success with it.

Thanks for the help.
Joe W
 
Messages
258
Country
unitedstates
While this may be true, I doubt that the airport moved itself those three miles;)

Wicky shows it at the FSX position, which is in error from a visual on Google. I have it moved now but it still shows as being in the same place as the original. Is there a file somewhere with a list of airports and positions that FSX uses? Seems like I remember one somewhere but can't recall where it was located.
Thanks all for the help.
Joe W
 

scruffyduck

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
34,853
Country
unitedkingdom
Wicky shows it at the FSX position, which is in error from a visual on Google. I have it moved now but it still shows as being in the same place as the original. Is there a file somewhere with a list of airports and positions that FSX uses? Seems like I remember one somewhere but can't recall where it was located.
Thanks all for the help.
Joe W

There is a database in ADE called AirportList.dat. Not very friendly but as I recall the location co-ordinates are in there
 
Messages
258
Country
unitedstates
I have the airport moved. But ....... when you look in the map view or the GPS it shows at the "old" position ...... until you zoom in, then the runway shows at the new position with the name and ICAO in the old position.
How can I get the pink dot to show in the new location. There should be a data file somewhere that the map and GPS uses to place the airport.
Anyone?
Thanks
Joe W.
 

scruffyduck

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
34,853
Country
unitedkingdom
I have the airport moved. But ....... when you look in the map view or the GPS it shows at the "old" position ...... until you zoom in, then the runway shows at the new position with the name and ICAO in the old position.
How can I get the pink dot to show in the new location. There should be a data file somewhere that the map and GPS uses to place the airport.
Anyone?
Thanks
Joe W.

Joe

Did you move the airport reference point? I think that is what is shown on the map etc and that will be where the ICAO is placed
 
Messages
258
Country
unitedstates
Yes ..... I moved everything. The only thing that didn't move was the windsock. I was gonna delete that anyway. :)
Joe w
 

tgibson

Resource contributor
Messages
11,327
Country
us-california
The GPS may use the default location (in the default BGL files) until it reaches a certain zoom factor. Probably nothing you can do...
 
Messages
1,269
Country
us-northcarolina
umm...Could you make another .bgl with only the ARP moved and place it in the scenery/world/scenery folder? Would that work?:cool:
 
Messages
258
Country
unitedstates
The process is done. I used FSX Planer to move it but as you can see above the original airport position remained while the runway was at the new position. I used this "ARP" file saved as a XML and generated to a BGL.

<?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="MKNG"
lat="18.342150"
lon="-78.333594"
alt="3,048M"
country="Jamaica"
state=""
city="Negril"
name="Negril Aerodrome"
magvar="3.0"
trafficScalar="0.7"
airportTestRadius="5000.0M">

</Airport>
</FSData>

This resulted in this (see below)
I want to thank all who helped including Mike. I would never have thought of doing an ARP file.
Thanks Again

:D:D:D:D
Joe W.
 
Last edited:
Top