What happened to Greenland?

[mdavis 10]

X-Plane 10.35r1 64-bit on a very fast Win 8.1 machine with most settings at max setting.

 

Many years ago I became enamoured with the huge list of dangerous airports assembled by Michael Doherty for FS2004.  There are some 790 of these dangerous approaches (counting a very few duplicates in which he has varied conditions or changed runways).  Rather than fly these in FS2004 with its default aircraft from his in-the-air approach setups, I create flight plans from airfields an hour or two away and fly into these airstrips as a complete flight.  It has kept me busy for years.

 

I gave up on my project temporarily when FSX came out and I installed all the FS Genesis terrain mesh which plunged many of these airstrips into deep canyon-like holes or placed them on top of huge plateaus due to elevation errors (many many of them).  So when I installed XP9 and now XP10, I've been revisiting those flights using my collected stable of like aircraft and for the most part I've had great success because runways overlay terrain in XP.

 

But some of these airstrips are not included in XP, and on occasion I find some interesting problems.  Just this evening I flew my Carenado Cessna Caravan 208B into Qaanaaq, Greenland (BGQQ) from Thule AFB (BGTL).  I have scenery installed that is supposed to represent BGTL, and indeed it does have some nice hangers and several helicopters hovering around.  But the ground is entirely dirt, and the aircraft throws clouds of dust behind the props if you happen to start off a ramp or taxiway.

 

The thing that surprised me even more was the total lack of landmass beneath me between those two points.  BGQQ is a totally isolated gravel landing strip out in the ocean with a VOR and NDB and windsock and a little gravel parking pad.  Greenland, for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist in XP10 even if a couple of its runways have survived.  Take a run up there to BGQQ.  You might want to take a floatplane or amphibian.  :-)

[mrchrsrider 66]

So this might be to simple of an answer but when you installed Xplane did you make sure to install that portion of the world?

So after further investigation I see that you are correct that is weird

[JRBarrett 3,070]

I see that BGQQ airport is at latitude 77N. I believe that the high res worldwide terrain mesh that comes with XP10 does not extend that far north, leaving only water in those regions.

 

As I recall, there are lower-res terrain files available for polar regions in XP10, but not sure sure where to download them from. Might want to Google it.

[Slayer 190]

I'll also confirm this is an error on my system as well.

[Janov 2,383]

This is a known limitation with X-Plane. The scenery only extends to a certain latitude north and south. The reason, iirc, is that publicly available elevation data is not available for those latitudes.

 

This is from the official X-Plane website:

 

"The full X-Plane scenery package covers the Earth in stunning resolution from 74° north to 60° south latitude."

 

http://www.x-plane.com/desktop/meet_x-plane/

 

 

So maybe go to BGSF or BGBW (nicely renditioned as global airports) and hopefully see that not all of Greenland vanished ;-)

 

Cheers, Jan

[mdavis 10]

Not really a complaint, just an observation.  The only reason I flew into BGQQ is because it was on my list of FS2004 airports that I'm flying.  Interesting that XP would include BGQQ in the default package but not include a generic flat landmass.  I landed safely and left the 208B sitting on the gravel bar.  I guess global warming has melted the icecap up there.  :rolleyes:

[Paraffin 2,197]

This is a known limitation with X-Plane. The scenery only extends to a certain latitude north and south. The reason, iirc, is that publicly available elevation data is not available for those latitudes.

 

I read somewhere that another reason for the latitude limits, is that the terrain is tile-based, and the individual tiles get progressively smaller in area as the longitude lines converge in the extreme North and South. X-Plane would have to load (or cache?) too many tiles to preserve distance views.

 

It might have been a limitation in the engine that was more critical with earlier pre 64-bit versions. You'd think Laminar would have figured out a workaround by now. The polar regions will only get more boring to fly over as the water opens up, but Antarctic flights are interesting. A HD mesh for that area would be great to fly over.

[mdavis 10]

Yes, you would think they could double the tile sizes as it nears the poles.  Greenland is one big iceberg but it does have some elevation differences.  All traffic would be along the coast except for international fly-overs.

[Janov 2,383]

Yes, I think northern Canada/Greenland is a very interesting area for aviation. It always made me shudder when thinking of having to land at some of those airports in an emergency when I passed overhead on my 747. The furthest north I ever went was at 80N, that was even north of Thule.

 

We did some simulator practice for landing at BGSF, a good alternate even for something the size of a 747. The circlinig approach to 10 is interesting... Then there were CYRT, CYZF, CYFB, all possible emergency airfields.

 

Also BGBW (steep NDB!) is challenging, and then there is the weather around that region. Happy to say that I could always stay at FL350+ and never get some firsthand experience at that ice-pilot stuff ;-)

 

Jan

[Franz007 482]

There is an available scenery for this missing part guys, look at simmarket ^_^