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P3D v5 Sloped Airport Taxiway Creation

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118
Country
france
Greta job!! I suppose Aprons had to be flatten ...

Apron are always flatten, but you can make taxiways to follow the mesh.
At LFOH it's fun to take the taxiway Bravo, you have to play with throttle to keep taxi speed along the mesh ;)
Here is it

1588933696-lfoh-taxiway.jpg
 
Messages
393
Country
newzealand
Altitude wise; does it smooth between points? or do you need to define a lot of points to get a smooth result?
 
Messages
118
Country
france
Altitude wise; does it smooth between points? or do you need to define a lot of points to get a smooth result?

I tried both and the better is to add only a few points because P3D smooth itself the profile.
For example on the runway, you have to add start and end points of course, + highest and lowest + a points at taxiway junctions, and a few if needed where there is a significant slope change.
 
Messages
152
Country
france
Hello all,

Someone said - and tested as fas as I understand - that apron do not follow the terrain. Does that mean that we cannot create a sloped apron ? I did not find such option in the last dev version of ADE. Is it a P3DV5 limitation or is it still work in progress ?

If true this would be quite frustrating now we can create sloped runways and taxiways.

Any thoughts ?
 

scruffyduck

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34,853
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unitedkingdom
Aprons are flat with a single given altitude. This is the way LM implemented it. I guess you could use sloped land class polys but I am not an expert on this
 
Messages
435
Country
us-newyork
Is the coordinate system for ADE taxiway signs, pitch = latitude and bank = longitude? Or is it something else? I assume that the clamp settings allow the taxiway signs to follow the mesh.
 

scruffyduck

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unitedkingdom
Pitch is front to back, bank is left to right. Clamp tells the sim to ignore the relevant settings. So I assume that the sign will be aligned to the mesh. I can't confirm that since I haven't tried these. I use the excuse of being a humble programmer.
 
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435
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us-newyork
Thanks. That makes sense. I haven't found a stock airport yet that uses these settings, but there might be one somewhere.
 
Messages
118
Country
france
Hi,

I tried for the first time on sloped airport to build some GP marking's. The apron on which I draw GP is below the official airport altitude.
Unfortunately the GP marks are shown around 1 meter above the apron in v5.

I wonder what is the current rule to expect with GP on sloped airport: Is the official altitude is retained, or is it possible to set a specific altitude?
I tried to set an offset on GP's but negative values are not allowed.
 
Messages
26
Country
italy
Hi,

I tried for the first time on sloped airport to build some GP marking's. The apron on which I draw GP is below the official airport altitude.
Unfortunately the GP marks are shown around 1 meter above the apron in v5.

I wonder what is the current rule to expect with GP on sloped airport: Is the official altitude is retained, or is it possible to set a specific altitude?
I tried to set an offset on GP's but negative values are not allowed.

Hi,
I tried that as well, it was a long GP over a sloped taxiway (with no flatten under it, just a taxiway sloping the terrain), north-south direction (about 5000ft long), about 10ft of difference.
What I've observed was that the "anchor" point of GP altitude was somehow in the mid point of the taxiway length, as if GP editor does a mean between highest and lowest point.
I wondered if that was the ARP elevation, but it was not, it seemed to me that the altitude reference for the GP was just in the midpoint of minimum and maximum terrain altitude.
The result was the GP being over ground at the lowest point and underground towards the highest point.
So far, GP seem not to follow terrain.

Looking forward for a word from GP experts!
 

gadgets

Resource contributor
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9,388
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ca-britishcolumbia
There is no elevation set by the GP Editor. Elevation is set to 0 AGL at compile time. It's up to P3D to determine ground level. So, it seems like ground polys in P3D are not really ground polys at all; they are horizontal planes drawn at some reference elevation (determined by P3D).

It would be possible for ADE to request the ground elevation of each vertex via Simconnect at compile time. But that would not be enough, since the GP would have to conform to elevation changes within its boundaries as well.

So, it seems this is another item to add to the PV5 deficiencies list.
 
Messages
118
Country
france
Thanks for your comment Don.
And do you think it would be possible to allow input with a negative altitude offset to GP in ADE menu compile time?
It could be a suitable workaround in the meantime.
 

gadgets

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9,388
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ca-britishcolumbia
Such a change would only work it all vertices in the GP were at the same elevation and the area bounded by the vertices were absolutely flat. That seems rather unlikely on an airfield with sloping runways. Indeed, since you seem to be placing a GP over a sloping runway, how would such a change help you. The GP would still b e horizontal.

In any case, as I noted above, there is no elevation associated with GP vertices, the elevation being established at compile time. There is no facility for inputting data at compile time, so even the simple thing you requested would mean "major reconstruction".
 
Messages
118
Country
france
Such a change would only work it all vertices in the GP were at the same elevation and the area bounded by the vertices were absolutely flat. That seems rather unlikely on an airfield with sloping runways. Indeed, since you seem to be placing a GP over a sloping runway, how would such a change help you. The GP would still b e horizontal.
That's correct, however it would be useful when we build GP over apron which are also flat and horizontal.
 

gadgets

Resource contributor
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9,388
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ca-britishcolumbia
it would be useful when we build GP over apron which are also flat and horizontal.
That shouldn't be necessary. If the GP is wholly on the apron, it should be displayed at apron elevation.
 

gadgets

Resource contributor
Messages
9,388
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ca-britishcolumbia
but that's the issue I have currently, GP floats 1 meter over the apron.
Yes, I should have realized that, but I failed to appreciate I was dealing with two users with different issues, one with runways, one with aprons.

Nonetheless, the answer is the same. If the GP is wholly on the apron, it should be displayed at apron elevation.. But, in your case, Roland, it appears the terrain elevation computed by PV5 (the elevation at which a GP is displayed) is not apron elevation. What you suggest may (and I stress may) solve your specific issue. But, if you have numerous aprons in a sloping airport, I doubt that the PV5 internally computed terrain elevation is the same for all aprons - which it appears PV5 places at ARP elevation regardless. And it certainly wouldn't work for GPs on runways or taxiways - even level ones - where such an offset would bury the GP.

But, "I feel your pain". For a permanent solution, LM will have to fix PV5 so that ground polys are "on the ground". Then, if changes to ADE-GP are required, I'll do my best to comply. In the meantime, I've created a development release of ADE-GP that will allow you to "fix" individual GPs for horizontal areas. Previous releases of ADE-GP deleted the GP .mdl files it creates since they can consume a lot of disk space. However, ADE-GP Development Release 2.2.23.3, available from http://stuff4fs.com, leaves that folder intact when compiling for PV5, thus allowing you to modify the _GP.bgl file.

To do so, compile your GPs normally. Then, locate the file ADE-GP.xml in the ADE folder. Edit the elevation parameter of the XML segments that pertain to the GPs of interest and save the .xml file back into your ADE folder. Open the PV5 SDK folder World\Scenery and you will see bglcomp.exe. Drag the icon of the .xml file over bglcomp.exe. After a slight delay, an updated ADE-GP.bgl will appear in your ADE folder. Rename that file as necessary and copy it to the relevant \scenery folder.
Please do not ask for assistance in this regard.
 
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