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P3D v4 Water runways and aerodromes

P

PhilK

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129
Country
france
I recently wished to make some flights with float or amphibious planes, being first more interested in finding some runways to depart from, and some others as destination.
Unfortunately, P3D, as FSX, are pretty poor outside of the USA (720 water runways), plus two in Germany, two (closed in P3Dv4) in Midway, and 6 in Puerto Rico.
From the OurAirports site, I could identify at least 347 seaplane bases or water aerodromes in the neighboring country, Canada, and would have been pleased making some hops over there.

After downloading, reading and checking included files of the ai_float.zip released a while ago by Holger Sandmann, I made my first trial, completely fancy work as no actual documentation on hand, just a Google Maps topdown view, and created my CEZ5 (Whitehorse) water runway + some taxiways and one dock_GA parking.
My first finding so far is that if I start my sim at the dock, pure float planes will will show with floats into the water, whereas amphibious aircrafts will show landing gear down and on the water. Starting from a runway start position, the amphibious is sitting into the water.
I understand from Holger's writings that amphibious have some specific behaviour when used as AI (gear down syndrom...).
Did meanwhile some trick show up, to have (non AI at least) amphibious sitting into water when parked at a dock? Or is this type of parking only to be used for pure floaties?

Second question : which resources are available, to get some information about the Canadian water aerodromes or seaplane bases? I found reference to a NavCanada Seaplane supplement, but is it the only documentation available?

Thank you for your comprehension

Blue Skies
Philippe
 
You ultimate goal is not entirely clear and based on that I would leave things as they are. However, you could modify the amphibious AI models to remove the landing gear. If there was a displacement issue, you could also change the relative height. Obviously these changes would apply only to water operations and would negatively affect other parts of the sim, like airport landings and traffic. You could have two sets of AI models, one set for normal operation and one set for water runways.
 
Rick,
Thank you for your return.
My first goal is to get some water runways from/to where I can fly flyable aircrafts.
So far I understand I must forget starting from a dock_ga parking with an amphibious, but only from a runway, and that I can start from a dock_ga only with a pure seaplane, or aircraft on floats.
I guess I can live with that for the moment.
Building some AI traffic was my second eventual target, but here it is clear to me that if I do it, this will be with floaties only (stock AI DHC-2, or other 3rd party floatie).
When you write removing landing gear from amphibious models, do you mean deleting the land contact points from the aircraft.cfg? I have no idea nor knowledge about modifying the models themselves... (absolute rookie there)
Have a good day
Philippe
 
To remove landing gear, you would need to use the application ModelConverterX, featured elsewhere on this site. Familiarity with the program is required, but the relevant skill level is approximately equivalent to what you already possess in relation to ADE. You can initiate a flight from water with amphibious aircraft, you have to retract the gear after the flight commences.
 
Thank you for the information. Will read MCX tutorials and make myself more familiar with this program, then start some "test and try"...
Blue skies
 
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