Yeah, I'm wondering what this method does when we're talking about underlying mesh that specifies terrain variations inside the airport too. (I'm thinking specifically of KDEN here where there's a lot of little hills and ravines on the airport ground) Won't this basically just be shifting where the plateau things are?  Seems to me like you would have to flatten the underlying mesh and then adjust the airport altitude.

@Tabs and @flyinion, I'm sorry, I gave you the wrong method, my apologies, I haven't done this for ages either!

 

The best way to do this is to make a flatten polygon around the airport in ADE and set it to the required altitude. I just tested this on a couple of airports and it worked.

 

I also went to the HAAB airport with the default scenery and had no hole/plateau??

 

Ryan, I'm not sure it's possible to raise the whole mesh data by a certain amount(ie. keeping the hills & ravines intact), unless you want to start editing the terrain data.

Yeah, I'm wondering what this method does when we're talking about underlying mesh that specifies terrain variations inside the airport too. (I'm thinking specifically of KDEN here where there's a lot of little hills and ravines on the airport ground) Won't this basically just be shifting where the plateau things are?  Seems to me like you would have to flatten the underlying mesh and then adjust the airport altitude.

 

 

So I just spent the last 2 hours playing with ADE when I should have been in bed but oh well lol.  Yeah you have to draw a big poly around the airport and tell it to "flatten exclude autogen" (or you will end up with buildings/trees in between the runway, then a random poly doesn't matter how big, and tell it to exclude airport backgrounds (this fixes the holes in between things but also gets rid of the green grass that "defines" the airport), then add a poly around the airport and set it to landclass airfield 1 to put the grass back. So, yeah it's doable for free, but a bit more work, and it definitely will not "seamlessly blend in" to the surrounding terrain. 

 

I also went to the HAAB airport with the default scenery and had no hole/plateau??

 

 

 

Pretty sure it's caused by my FSGenesis mesh.  I have both the world and Ethiopia mesh installed.  It was still there with Ethiopia removed but I forgot I have a generic world mesh too and that must be the cause.  Let's just say you can't follow the ILS glideslope without crashing into the ground lol.  Anyway as I mentioned above it looks like there's really 3 steps to fix airports in ADE?

Yeah, if it were so easy to fix airports, to align with updated meshes, then I'm sure somebody would've come up with an automated way already, and fixed all the ones that don't align anymore.

But the fact that even PILOT'S (the FS Global creators) were only able to come up with some very generic solution (that I find rather unsatisfying) let me to believe fixing airports is not an easy or straightforward procedure. (And definitely not something you want to do if you're only visiting some far-off airport once in a while.)

If I may ask are these airport elevation anomalies more common at remote default FSX airports only? Can anyone advise if this is happening with more detailed payware addon airports?

 

I'd love to fix some of the more obvious ones in my own terrain setup.

Ryan care to share which airports need fixing?

If I may ask are these airport elevation anomalies more common at remote default FSX airports only? Can anyone advise if this is happening with more detailed payware addon airports?

 

 

In general yes, other than in Addis ababa I haven't noticed any major anomalies with any major international airport, just few small ones. 

 

I have tens of payware addon airports installed in Europe without any problems with big majority of them. In general if the default airport has no problems with mesh elevation then any addon version of it shouldn't have problems either. 

Kronzky,

those pics you posted definitely swayed me to using a global mesh. I have scenery tech worldwide, waiting on FTX global, but I will definitely be getting fs global. Even with the unnatural flattening, the surroundings look fantastic and real life compared with default.

 

The problem with the airports of course, is an FSX issue which cannot be fixed globally but individually. Half my flight time is spent in Suth America so I will definitely have this on my wish list! Thanks for the great comparaison!

If you do fly a lot in these areas, and you don't mind putting some work in, to make the airports usable, then I would suggest to rather go the manual route, instead of using the generic flattening meshes, as with those a lot of the airports will lose their "character".

 

You may also want to look into the free meshes by Taburet (e.g. here). I tried them as well, and they looked just as good as the commercial ones from FS Global, but, unfortunately, also had the same issues.

 

I guess everybody will be using the same base public-domain data for meshes anyway (after all, nobody's gonna send up their own satellite to take "exclusive" elevation pictures), so unless some commercial outfit can offer good fixes for the airports, I don't really see the point in paying for meshes that have to be fixed anyway.