Building new airports with ADE

[A36 Apache 0]

I discovered a few airports in an area of the world I have an interest in (Philippines) like Iloilo (RPVI). In Iloilo they have built a new International airport at a new location. The problem I run into when moving the airport is:1) the terrain is MUCH lower than in reality. How do I plateau the area of the airport?2) how do I get FSX to recognize the new airport and ignore the old one?I have tried moving the airport designator, the tower and completely rebuilding an airfield. No matter what I do AI fail to use the new airfield.I also failed to locate information on how to insert things like the airport designator and tower designator. Is it possible with ADE?Thanks in advance for any help you may provide.

[scruffyduck 4]

You do not say whether these airport are stock airports in FSX or some addon airport from a third party.If you are using ADEX then you can add Airport Background Polys that can change the altitude of the ground. If the altitude of the airport is wrong then you can use the function in ADE to adjust the reference altitude. Just changing the altitude in the airport properties will not work.If it is a stock airport then installing your revised bgl file into Addon Scenery\scenery will effectively replace the stock airport with your new one. It gets a bit more complicated if you are trying to replace an addon airport. In that case the scenery area priority is important - you new airport bgl must be in a folder at higher priority than the one you are trying to replace.I don't understand what you mean by moving the airport designator. Also what do you mean by tower designator? If for airport designator you mean the ICAO code then you can't just change this. The one thing we cannot get rid of is the designator for an airport in FSX (well not without hacking the stock files and that is definitely not recommended!)For tower designator if you mean tower freqencies then these can be added in ADE - they are Comms.As for AI not seeing your airport that is more complex and depends on things like whether you have appropriate flight plans and that the taxi network in the revised airport is complete.

[scott967 62]

I think the issue is that they built a whole new airport 30 km away from the old one but kept the same ICAO. I'm not sure if FSX likes moving the airport reference point that far from the default? Maybe also the AI traffic file needs to be decompiled and the airport location changed?scott s..

[A36 Apache 0]

Hey, thanks guys for the replies. You have already helped a lot.Yes, I know how to edit the AI airports in use and their location and altitude, as far as the AI is concerned). The problem I am having is specific to airfields that have "officially" been moved, while leaving the original airfield in place but unused. This is the Philippines I am working on right now and I will focus on one airfield as an example.At Iloilo on Panay Island the original airfield (RPVI) was no longer adequate, so there was a new International airport planned. The new airfield and the original can be seen in this image from google earth. The old field is on the SE and the new one to the NW.The new airfield location is at an altitude of 168 feet, which does not agree with the best terrain mesh I have (I believe it's SceneryTech). ScruffyDuck's information will help there. I didn't know you could use Polys like that (still learning).As far as the designators go I think a new airport drawing will automatically invoke the airport designator, although I haven't tried it yet. Probably, FSX will not like it being moved as far as I need. The following is a screenshot of what I am calling the airport and tower designators.The problem I have is that should I attempt to setup ATC at a new airfield that does not have the tower designator (in other words use the ATC multiplayer trick to create a tower view), that the tower is not created at the proper position. I thought the airfield designator was the problem with getting FSX to utilize the new field location properly, but it could be beyond our control I guess.

[scruffyduck 4]

Moving the airport reference point (and/or the tower viewpoint) won't move the airport. To move an airport every element needs to be moved. Or are you planning to create a new airport at the revised location? Does the new airport use the same ICAO ident as the old one or something different?

[A36 Apache 0]

Basically, what I have done is moved everything and left nothing but a graphical representation (polys) at the old location. The new airport is using the same Ident as the old, so I thought that was the only way to do it. Of course, I could start over and use a New Airport, altogether.What I did was set placemarks in Google Earth, take some screenshot overheads and then insert the images as a background to build upon by the placemark Northings/Eastings. The old airport location doesn't actually have any true airport construction like taxi pathways, runways or aprons, anymore. I couldn't see that it was possible to use them and get the airport to compile without errors. Then I downloaded a Ray Smith airport for Australia this weekend that had the same errors, so now I don't know if the errors are acceptable, or not.ADE really makes it fast and easy to do all these operations, so I could start over yet again. It's not like what I have is some masterpiece, or anything.

[mgh 89]

Moving the airport reference point (and/or the tower viewpoint) won't move the airport. To move an airport every element needs to be moved. Or are you planning to create a new airport at the revised location? Does the new airport use the same ICAO ident as the old one or something different?

Can ADE create a new airport with the same ICAO code aas an old one? I tried this some time ago with AFCAD for FS9 (pre ADE) and concluded it couldn't be done because of the way FS9 uses ICAO codes as IDs.

[meshman 109]

Jon will need to address his program, but I would believe the concept of first read elevation being what is set in FSX and the resulting "stub" file concept can also apply to other aspects of an airport. I have one airport that I worked on where all the FSX and online data said it was in one state, but in reality it was across the river about a mile in another state. A "stub" file with the only change being the state designator changed things within FSX. I would see if a stub file positioning the location of the airport to it's new locale and placed so it is read before the default APX file would enact the changes you are looking for.

[scruffyduck 4]

Can ADE create a new airport with the same ICAO code aas an old one? I tried this some time ago with AFCAD for FS9 (pre ADE) and concluded it couldn't be done because of the way FS9 uses ICAO codes as IDs.

You cannot create a new airport with the same ICAO as the existing one. However any airport created with the same ICAO as a stock airport will replace that airport in FS (provided that the addon is at a higher scenery priority than the stock airport) As I recall ADE stops a user creating a new airport with a stock ICAO. The way to deal with that is to load the stock airport into the program and go from there.

[A36 Apache 0]

Yes, exactly what I did. Either I did something else wrong, or FSX cannot handle moving the reference point (what I call a designator) as far as I must for the Iloilo (RPVI) airport. What ever is wrong is causing the AI to ignore the airfield. Over Christmas I will start over and try again.

[scruffyduck 4]

Yes, exactly what I did. Either I did something else wrong, or FSX cannot handle moving the reference point (what I call a designator) as far as I must for the Iloilo (RPVI) airport. What ever is wrong is causing the AI to ignore the airfield. Over Christmas I will start over and try again.

I may have asked this - but when you moved the reference point did you also move the rest of the airport with it?Otherwise it does seem to be an AI traffic problem rather than an airport design problem.