Bizarre runway terrain bug

[MeneMene 1]

I have a problem where I get terrain spikes/walls around the edges of many airports when coming into land. If I load up FS and go directly to the airport, everything is fine; the problem only occurs when I fly in from somewhere else to land. From a distance, it looks normal, but as I get closer and closer the little hills down the runway length begin to pop up, and as I get even closer they morph into straight walls.

 

 

 

As you can see in these images, the runways have hills going down the sides. It's only the runways, not the rest of the scenery.

 

 

 

As I get even closer, the hills morph into straight walls. The above two pictures, you see the straight walls starting to form in the foreground, with the "hills" in the background.

 

 

As you can see, the problem is occuring over at the other runway as well, 25R, and not on any of the taxiways or anywhere else.

 

 

It's possible to fly down and land. Sometimes the terrain is collideable, sometimes not.

 

I'm completely stumped. Relevant add-ons are FS Global 2010, FTX GLobal, FTX Vector. This has occured at multiple airports (EBBR, LHBP, LQSA,) but not all of them (EGLC was fine when I arrived from Dublin). All of these airports have had no fancy addon scenery, just some ADE-based modifications like "fsx_ebbr_rs.zip" from the AVSIM file library. I'm going to try re-installing the above scenery addons, but I wanted to check here first in case anyone has seen this problem before or knows what's happening. I really don't want to do a full re-install of FSX because of the amount of tweaking, modifications, and setup that would require.

 

thanks

[CoolP 283]

Could it be that some files are doubled/colliding? I think FTX Vector installs some corrections and you can check if disabling them for an airport with the morphed walls helps with the issue.

 

Just a guess.

 

I admit that

If I load up FS and go directly to the airport, everything is fine; the problem only occurs when I fly in from somewhere else to land.

 

does not fit this assumption of mine.

[GaryGB 10]

Hi andqui:

 

Which specific airport on your FS computer was used for the screenshots in the OP of this thread ?

 

 

There are a number of possible causes for this scenario, more likely involving mis-matched elevations for overlapping terrain mesh files of differing internal resolutions, and the sizes of their coverage areas.

 

There may be additional complications related to sizes of the ground coverage areas for super-imposed airport flattening "terrain" objects such as runway, taxiway and/or apron polygons which also have assigned / inherited elevations.

 

Use of "airport" add-ons from differing authors whose "flattening" airport polygon object sizes do not match may sometime result in gaps which prevent proper flattening, thus allowing mis-matched FS terrain elevation mesh "spikes" to pop up through the openings between polygons.

 

 

This anomaly normally might not be seen when a larger (usually 1-piece) airport background is used to flatten the entire airport area, or if multiple airport flattening polygons are used, the polygons are mis-matched in size, allowing "gaps" as described above.

 

Furthermore, if the elevations for airport ground objects (Airport Reference Point, Runways, Taxiways / Aprons etc), do not all match between various add-ons when airport excludes are either not present or are otherwise improperly configured (ex: wrong display priority layer for the "top-most" airport add-on in FS Scenery Library GUI), terrain rendering anomalies may appear as well.

 

 

 

Regarding FS' failure to display terrain properly when one has started a flight at airports distant from the one(s) at which the terrain anomaly shows, this is known to occur when FS begins a flight with display of a larger coverage area of lower resolution terrain mesh and fails to update the ground display to allow display of smaller, higher resolution terrain mesh file local coverage areas for ex: airports which overlap the original larger terrain mesh file.

 

Anomalies such as you report above may subsequently become visible upon approach and/or at ground level (but may not be seen when starting a flight directly at the airport itself).

 

Holger Sandmann has reported this issue with FSX terrain mesh rendering behavior in the past.

 

 

Although FTX "region" products to date have provided their own terrain mesh, other products such as FTX individual airport packages and FTX Global may not include their own terrain mesh files, and the end user may find that more consistent terrain display at airports might require use of a terrain mesh such as that from Pilots.

 

 

You may wish to be certain that you have the latest product offerings (and updates) for your FSGlobal terrain mesh installed for the areas which show the anomalies to see if it resolves the issues you are seeing.

 

 

FYI: "Pilots", the authors of the FSGlobal terrain mesh have Aerodrome Flattening Meshes (aka "AFM") airport flattening polygon packages available for download and use by owners of their FS terrain mesh products which might also help remedy the problem:

 

http://www.fly2pilots.com/cms/Ui/Pages/Products/MainPage.aspx?id=d3fca479-6c4c-465b-bd75-97445878ae48

 

 

Hope this helps ! :smile:

 

GaryGB

[doublebubble 20]

 Run the AEC section that comes with FTX-Vector as I had this issue at YMML running the AEC fixed all the elevation problems for all airports.

 

Cheers Rod.

[JSkorna 137]

In one easy to understand sentence, Rod has the correct solution.

[MeneMene 1]

Thanks for the help. It turns out it was nothing more than the wrong elevation in the AFCAD itself.

[GaryGB 10]

Use of the FTX Global Vector product may result in more variables to be considered when troubleshooting airport elevation anomalies, especially when using non-FTX 3rd party add-ons (and/or custom add-ons / modifications made to airport scenery files by end users) ...with FTX products installed. :wink:

 

 

Results using the FTX Global Vector AEC Tool when troubleshooting airport elevation anomalies reportedly may vary at some airports.

 

 

Additionally, opinions vary on just how to configure airports with that AEC tool ...depending on what (non-FTX) add-ons are installed:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/436577-ftx-vector-11-released/

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/431386-mesh-landclass-vectors-need-help-on-final-decision/

 

 

An approach suggested for use with FTX Global Vector AEC Tool v1.15 (also depending on what "FTX Central mode" FS is being used in):

 

http://msflights.net/forum/showthread.php?2100-A-few-notes-on-FTX-Global-Vector-and-Mesh

 

 

 

Reportedly, use of the latest (version v1.2 or later) of FTX Global Vector AEC Tool may further assist some users with troubleshooting airport elevation anomalies not resolved via use of earlier versions of that AEC tool.

 

"VERSION 1.20: The configurator will now allow you to disable / enable AEC by airport or globally. This means you can disable AEC completely. You will not lose airport boundary polygons for airports with disabled AEC; with the new version, disabled AEC will just leave you with the default airport without VECTOR affecting it at all. This will allow you to turn off AEC completely and to turn it on for specific airports if you encounter issues."

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/436628-vector-11-with-default-mesh/

 

 

Hope this info helps users individualize their FS scenery configurations to their own satisfaction !  :smile:

 

GaryGB