You seem to be absolutely correct. I have uninstalled the premium/de luxe installation to get the modified taxiways and signs visible. That works, but the airports look very dull compared to the enhanced. And it is not only the airports one aims at that go missing. For us naives that payed for a de luxe enhanced sim to uninstall and on top of that modify the airports for taxiways and signs - well...
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MSFS20 Premium vs Default airports in ADE
- Thread starter Olly Pollard
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I think you are correct.
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Interesting read. It bothers me greatly that with Asobo and payware scenery designers that they spend much time and effort into creating addon scenery's that they totaly neglect the afcad file, it's really frustrating. I am getting quite a few requests now to edit the premium airports such as EHAM and LHR, at least i can give them some sort of explanation as to why i cannot give them what they want.
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I don't think it is the designers fault. The fault is with Asobo when they decided to integrate all that stuff into a single airport BGL file. There are pros and cons to the way scenery is loaded in the sim. One of the pros is that it is much easier to package and distribute mods to stock airports using a small package placed in the community folder. One of the cons is that it does not work for non-stock (encrypted payware and "hand crafted" but not encrypted) airports.
I recently tried to fix some issues at KATL. Got a nice working mod all done, but when I used the mod, it wiped out the changes made by the US World Update that included a "hand crafted" KATL, even though that "hand crafted" airport was not encrypted.
What appears to be missing right now is a way to mod an airport that has its own folder in the "Official" folder, ie; is not a "stock" airport. My best guess on how ADE might be able to do that, when creating a new project, is to pull the data from the stock airport, then pull the data from the airport's folder that is in the "Official" folder, then merging the two data sets with the "Official" folder data taking precedent. Of course, if the "Official" folder airport has models and/or textures, that would have to be taken into consideration as well. I have no idea how that would be done.
...jim
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I had also tried using ADE to assign airline codes to parking spots throughout KATL. After building the package and moving to the community folder however, the sim CTDs as soon as KATL is selected as a departure airport, or even when viewing the airport on the world map for that matter. Since KATL is not a "premium" airport, I would assume it doesn't have the encryption that the premium airports do. I am a little lost on what where to go from here (I am rather new to ADE and scenery editing in general, admittedly). I had imported KATL-airport.bgl from the Official folder into ADE, and only have "Airport and Scenery" checked in Asset Groups. Since the compiled .bgl is named differently than the MSFS version, I assume the issue is not a conflict of naming or in the layout.xml file, but rather some conflict between data coming from the ADE-compiled .bgl and the original .bgl file that was imported. The .xml of my project is attached.
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Shiv
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My understanding of the issue is that the katl-airport.bgl in the official folder does not contain the entire airport, it only contains the changes and additions from the stock airport. The sim loads the stock airport information first, then loads the official folder addon information, merging it with the information from the stock airport.
My best guess is that the sim loads the stock airport, then loads the official folder extra info, then tries to load your community addon, but your community addon is missing stuff causing it to CTD.
In my case, I had loaded the stock airport into ADE, made my modifications, built that and added my stuff to the community folder. As I said, it worked, but it removed the official folder changes. Again, my best guess is that ADE adds a bunch of deletes so that it can import what it has deleted ready for modification, but because it is reading only the stock airport, it does not import what the official folder changes are. So, the sim loads the stock airport, then loads the official folder changes, then loads the community folder addon but because the community folder addon deletes a bunch of stuff but did not import the official folder changes, those changes are lost.
...jim
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microsoft-airport-katl-atlanta might be something Patrick could look at. It doesn't decompile properly.
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Concerning the KATL hand made by Microsoft:
There are no Hold-Shorts... they need to be added whenever a taxiway is going to cross a runway.
Here's the default setup for taxiways:
Here's the Microsoft version:
... no hold-shorts.
Also the jetway for F-14 is compiled as a library object, instead of a jetway:
So this might be a problem.
Another concern is the BGL from the handmade Microsoft version is a lot larger than the compiled output from either ADE or A2P. That makes me think something is either missing in the decompilation, or there is some sort of file protection going on (or Microsoft screwed it up somehow).
There are no Hold-Shorts... they need to be added whenever a taxiway is going to cross a runway.
Here's the default setup for taxiways:
Here's the Microsoft version:
... no hold-shorts.
Also the jetway for F-14 is compiled as a library object, instead of a jetway:
So this might be a problem.
Another concern is the BGL from the handmade Microsoft version is a lot larger than the compiled output from either ADE or A2P. That makes me think something is either missing in the decompilation, or there is some sort of file protection going on (or Microsoft screwed it up somehow).
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Interesting for sure. I was wondering why no 3rd party had released a package with AI gate assignments on freeware distribution websites like flightsim.to--looks like I found my answer. Has anyone else had any luck editing even standard airports, or do they also have issues decompiling in ADE? Frustrating how difficult it seems to be to change things in MSFS that would be so simple to do in P3D/FSX with a quick AFCAD edit.
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I have been doing default airports if you would like to take a look. https://flightsim.to/profile/Ollymsfs2020
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I've also done a few default airports. Mostly just removing extraneous hold short nodes. A couple have parking updates, but none have parking codes (don't know where to get those).
...jim