Hey,

 

Bit of a rookie question here, but I need a bit of help understanding whats going on.

 

For scenery in the relevant area, I'm currently running:

Orbx Global

Orbx Global Vector

FS Pilots 2010 Global Mesh

 

On the whole, these have been great products and I've been very happy with them.

 

However, I've had the occasion to do some flying in the Caribbean lately and I've encountered a lot of the default FSX airports that are simply a landing strip in the middle of the ocean with a half submerged building and no land where there is supposed to be an island. One of the notable ones was the Duncan Town airport on Ragged Island. Put simply there was no Ragged Island, just a landing strip in the middle of ocean a few feet above see level and a half submerged building.

 

I also did a flight from Negril, Jamaica recently and the airport was "underground" as in I spawned my aircraft the runway and could see the runway and was able to take off and basically flew out of a pit in the ground that had a "roof" on it. From above it looked like a default green grass square type texture where the airport should have been, but the texture was at a higher elevation than the "underground" runway was.

 

My questions

 

1) Is this just due to technical limitations with the data for Pilot's mesh or does vector also play a role in this?

2) Does it sound like there is any operator error involved on my part? I've tried to follow the installation instructions correctly.

3) Is there a fix for these issues? As I said, I'm aware that there are some limitations with the data used for Pilot's mesh, I'm open to purchasing a more detailed/accurate mesh for the area if there is one.

I would be interested in the answer to this as well. My installation of Monument Valley places an "Area 51" asphalt landing strip under the desert landing strip. On the strip, all the airport objects are in the sky, about 40 feet up. If I land, I sink through the desert strip into the asphalt strip below.

 

I am using FSGenesis terrain, FWIW.

i don't think it's operator error.. i loaded up there and i'm also not seeing anything at duncan island other than the strip in the middle of the ocean...  i'm not 100% sure but i'd guess it's an error with vector rather than the pilots mesh, like the coastline for the island that defines the area as land is just missing...  i suppose you could verify it by uninstalling one or the other and having a look if you're feeling adventurous.

 

my suggestion would be to report it on the orbx forums that is probably your best chance at getting it solved! i believe they are fairly responsive to fixing issues like this eventually. i checked MYEH (north eluthera) and it's a little funky there too, harbour island looks like it might be a bit too small and there is an office building sitting in the middle of the water between eluthera and harbour island heh

 

cheers

-andy crosby

Did you run the FTX vector configurator and use the airport elevation correction feature? If the auto -configuration scan doesn't detect your airport needing the  correction you can always  move it to the disabled or enabled side by yourself. Don't forget to hit apply or the changes will not take. This should take care of the runways being at the wrong height,

 

The missing island is something that you'd probably need to take up with PILOTS though. Pretty sure I saw a thread about that island before on ORBX forums.

Did you run the FTX vector configurator and use the airport elevation correction feature? If the auto -configuration scan doesn't detect your airport needing the  correction you can always  move it to the disabled or enabled side by yourself. Don't forget to hit apply or the changes will not take. This should take care of the runways being at the wrong height,

 

The missing island is something that you'd probably need to take up with PILOTS though. Pretty sure I saw a thread about that island before on ORBX forums.

 

Thanks to everyone who's contributed, I wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something boneheaded before I ran off to the support forums to report the problem.

 

Thanks for the tip of vector Slayer, I have run the autoconfig and applied it but haven't tried to add anything manually. I noticed that MKNG (Negril) is not listed in either the include or exclude list on my installation last night [not in front of my FS machine right now] does it work properly for any airport if I just type in the ICAO code and move it to one side or the other?

I had the exact same issue with SABA and a user "electricman" on the FTX forum posted this fix:

 

"For those having elevation issues with Vector 1.15 and on and if the airport you're having issues with isn't in the list for manually dissabling it; Go to your FSX folder and then to the ORBX folder and then to the VECTOR folder; go to the folder VECTOR_APT and open the "scenery" folder, you will see a list of all airports in FSX, go to the airport wich you want to change and copy that file ( for example; ABP_LSZH.bgl ), then go to the folder VECTOR_AEC and open the "scenery" folder and paste the ABP_ file there, now change the name from ABP_ into AEC_ and close everything.

Go to your FTX config tool and open AEC tool, now your airport will be in the list where you can manually disable it and it works."

 

In my case I already had installed the Princess juliana scenery from Flytampa and the install had somehow become corrupt and a reinstal fixed it.

 

This fix will not help if the airport isn't in FSX (or the ICAO code changed) of course since we are dealing with old airport data...

 

EDIT: I checked MKNG in my vector config tool and it is there in the enabled side so you might have had a glitch, the fix above should work

Thanks for this solution, however this is not always a working solution. For example, default TIST has water bleeding issues if and only if Vector is installed. Uninstall Vector and it fixes the problem completely. Disabling AEC through your method simply tosses land and trees all over the runway and airport scenery is gone, and doesn't even fix the water bleeding issue at the foot of runway 10.  This is something that I have noticed with so many other airports as well. I'm pretty well fed up with Vector after over a year, and really considering doing away with it. Most of the issues I have seen can't be rectified with the config tool and AEC, but has more to do with how vectors, water bodies, and whatever else conflict with default scenery and wreaking havoc, particularly at default airports. In fact if you disable VECTOR_CVX, TIST water bleeding issues go away, but then this causes a host of other unbelievable and laughable problems. Never had issues like this with the old UTX.

.... For example, default TIST has water bleeding issues if and only if Vector is installed. Uninstall Vector and it fixes the problem completely. ..... Never had issues like this with the old UTX.

 

 

well considering that UTX doesn't cover the Caribbean that kind of makes sense doesn't it?  you'd just be looking at default scenery at that airport.. EDIT: i forgot they released a tropical caribbean area lol!!! so you're correct in this regard..

 

utx had buggy areas in it's early days too. saginaw michigan had a giant mysterious lake on top of it for a while..

 

personally i generally prefer UTX as the quality and detail seems higher but i switched to vector recently, mainly to see the added stuff in other areas of the world outside usa and europe..   i've been having a blast flying around eastern europe which with the vector/LC combo has really come to life. with time i'm sure many of these anomalies will be addressed, after all the data is the entire globe and not just two continents so there are a lot more potential bugs also hehehe... i think it might be possible to combine them and use utx on top of vector for it's coverage areas, in fact, although i haven't experimented with that yet, and it wouldn't address the type of issues mentioned in this thread.. EDIT: well maybe it would at least for the bahamas.. i may have a look at trying to combine them this weekend and see what happens..

 

cheers

-andy crosby

Thanks for this solution, however this is not always a working solution. For example, default TIST has water bleeding issues if and only if Vector is installed...

I had posted a thread about this at the ORBX official forums and initially got no response. Also note that there is a known problem with the Vector 1.2 full installer which impacts the ability of the Vector configurator utility to work properly with regard to AEC.

Just wanted to report in since I had a chance to sit and experiment tonight.

 

1) I can confirm that disabling vector restored the land to MYXY (Duncan Town)...very nice and large low lying island surrounding the strip now.

 

2) Disabling also (as expected) fixes the problems with MKNG (Negril). The AEC fix (with vector active) with MKNG gave me a usable ramp area that was visible from the sky and a small part of the runway, but the vast majority was still "underground".

 

3) Also fixes a problem I was having with PX02 where the runway and the airport texture weren't even in the same place.

 

There is also a gentleman who was having the same problem with the vector layer erasing an island off of Scotland, he's posted in this thread on the official forums: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/92036-lost-one-island/#entry837285

 

I have to say, although vector has a great coverage area for the price and for the most part looks pretty good, the errors mentioned above are just a few of the significant ones I've encountered while doing FSeconomy missions in the Caribbean and S. America. Showing up to a nonexistent island or airstrip is a worse immersion breaker for me than having a highway/river in the wrong place or missing.

 

Given the number of errors I've seen so far and the only recourse being to ask Pilots/OrbX to fix them in a future patch, I'm considering either getting UTX or foregoing a vector layer entirely.

 

Maybe if anyone has or know's someone with UTX Central America and Islands they could ask them to check those locations and see how they look?