fixing stuff like this would be a good start

 

 

New terrain! Time to wipe out those old FS9/FSX textures and start over.

Realistically sloped runways,and AI that can use them.

Truesky in P3D, that not hurt fps. .

1 hour ago, BIGSKY said:

Realistically sloped runways,and AI that can use them.

Forgive my innocence; what's the reason for building a slopped runway? In what way does it helps?

 

I've always wondered how does XP-11 and other sims have such a realistic lightning ?  Why can't P3D have that natural looking lighting?  No matter what re-shade tools ywe use or how many adjustment we make , it will not look realistic.

We would also like for P3D take full advantage of all cores of a CPU. 

24 minutes ago, joemiller said:

Forgive my innocence; what's the reason for building a slopped runway? In what way does it helps?

 

Several things come to mind - A pilot in a small aircraft in ground effect and gradual dip in the runway might have you prematurely lift off the runway. Landings might visually trick you on flare when the threshold of the runway is curved  downward. Tulsa - KTUL RWY 18R sticks in my head for some reason. One night when I was training in T-37s my IP had me do about 6 back to back ILS approaches to Rwy 18R  at KTUL. Every time he yanked off my hood my first view of the runway clearly let me know the threshold was lower than the touchdown zone of the runway. 

I'd say don't just slope the runways as an improvement, but give all natural terrain modeling to the entire airport, taxiways too. 

2 hours ago, joemiller said:

Forgive my innocence; what's the reason for building a sloped runway? In what way does it help?

It's not so much that runways are intentionally built with a slope, it's that the terrain they are built on is a massive area and the chances are it won't be perfectly level in terms of its height above sea level, but that can on occasion be turned to one's advantage.

That said, there are some general guidelines which airport designers are supposed to follow when it comes to how much a runway can slope up or down (or indeed up and down over its entire length), for example, for every 0.5 of a percent of increase in gradient, the runway is generally made five percent longer than it would otherwise have been under ideal conditions for the typical aircraft which is expected to be operating off it on a regular basis and it's fairly obvious why this would be the case. Another such guidleline is, if there is a dip in the runway, the change in angle should not exceed 1.5 degrees. This is because it can be tricky to judge a landing on a section of runway with a large change in angle, especially if this occurs near where the aircraft would either rotate or flare for landing. One of the runways at Manchester is slightly notorious for having a bit of a section which can catch pilots out in this regard.

Since one should be rotating an airliner to a deck angle of about 10-12 degrees, and this at a rate of about 3 degrees per second when taking off, you could imagine what a change in the ground angle of more than 1.5 degrees might do if you overcooked your rotation a little bit, since the tail of some longer airliners such as the 757 and the A321 only clears the ground at rotation by less than two feet.

To understand the subject a bit better, it's worth knowing what the figure you see on the description of a runway's slope (typically in the FMC) actually means. I'll use EGCC as an example. If you were to stop on Shadow Moss Road, which is the road that runs past the end of Runway 23R at Manchester EGCC, and you took a look down that runway, you would see that it actually undulates up and down along its length, rather than just sloping either up or down. So if it isn't a simple up or down slope, then how do we measure what the slope actually is? What criteria should we use?

The slope figure given for 23R at Manchester Airport is -0.4. But as we've noted, that runway is up and down all over the place along its length, so the number could be somewhat misleading. This is because there are a number of ways one could measure the slope of a runway to get a figure: You could measure the average slope angle, or the difference in height above sea level between one end and the other, or the effective average slope angle for the direction of take off by dividing the runway into four sections and individually determining an average slope from the height differences of those four sections. All of these methods are on occasion used, but the calculation which the ICAO most often use to describe slope for a runway, is the difference in elevation between the two end points of the runway divided by the runway's length.  Which in the case of Manchester Airports runway 23R, is a difference of about 40 feet. the runway itself is approximately 10,000 feet long, so that explains where they get that 0.4 value from. Needless to say, when you're on that same runway at the other end - i.e. runway 05L - the slope value becomes -0.4.

Anyway, to answer your original question concerning the point of a deliberate slope on a runway. As you'd expect, an aeroplane will have a harder time accelerating along a runway uphill than it will when going slightly downhill, but by the same token it will actually have an easier time slowing down and coming to a halt if it rolls out going slightly uphill. This is why it's not a bad idea to make a forced landing up a slight hill if you can manage it, should you ever have to.

But surely a runway can't be great for both take offs and landings. Or can it..?

What you often find with runways is that they undulate up and down to allow various aeroplane types to gain some advantage from hitting various points in their acceleration curve when they are on sections of runway which are slightly off the level, and it is quite common to have runways with a hump in the middle of them, as this is quite a good compromise profile for a runway which works in both directions needless to say.

This is because aircraft do not accelerate evenly throughout their take off profile, as anyone who has ever flown on an airliner will know. When your holiday jet starts its take off roll, you feel quite a bit of acceleration force, but as it continues its take off roll down the runway, you feel less of that acceleration. What this tells you about airliners, is that there is a faster rate of acceleration in the early part of the take off roll than there is in the last part of it; that's just a function of how most aero engines work. Now since an uphill slope tends to affect acceleration, the last thing you'd want with a runway slope, is for it to be affecting an airliner's take-off roll as it is getting near to its rotation speed, because it's going pretty fast at that point and eating up a lot of runway, but it's already struggling a bit with acceleration, so runways tend to be designed to be level or slightly downhill at that point in the take off roll, in order to help the aeroplane to accelerate when it needs the most help in doing so.

Of course it is nearly impossible to design a runway which works like that in both directions for every single type of jet plane and prop plane, but since the prevailing winds are usually in a predictable direction for most of the time in most places, you can also have the wind help you determine which direction is most often going to get used and design the slope accordingly. In the UK the winds are often blowing in off the Atlantic and the Irish Sea and backing slightly onto a Northerly heading by the time they come across Liverpool and into Manchester (and in fact this is true for most of the UK), so it makes sense to align runways in the UK on a roughly East-West magnetic heading, which is why there are loads of runways numbered 09/27 in the UK, or if not then they are most likely within 30-40 degrees of that East/West heading, as is the case with EGCC, which has runways 23R/05L and 23L/05R.

Edited September 28, 20187 yr by Chock

4 minutes ago, Chock said:

It's not so much that runways are intentionally built with a slope, it's that the terrain they are built on is a massive area and the chances are it won't be perfectly level in terms of its height above sea level, but that can on occasion be turned to one's advantage.

(.............)

 Thank you Alan. That helped me understand more about the sloped runways. 

New cloud model, better realism, lighting, shadowing, volume, etc.

12 hours ago, tttocs said:

Surprised I've not seen this from anyone else...  Realistic turbo-prop and piston engine/prop modeling.

 

Scott

Yes this for heavens sake.

I've skipped v4 (still with 3.3 !)  so far as it answers none of my main pet peeves. In order of priorities

1- Terrain

 - No repositioning of default (ie outside OrbX fat regions) airports which are for the vast majority off by 10s if not 100s of meters with the consequence, for instance, of roads, tracks, streams crossing many airport areas

 - No sloping runways which leads to runways partially or entirely in trenches or plateaus when you add a sharper mesh. . 

Tired to do the job myself with ADE (whenever possible).

2- Aircraft

Water physics for floatplanes is arcadish

3- Light rendering engine dated

4- FS2K2 ATC 

I'll go v5 if LM  does something for at least one of them. 
 

 

Edited September 28, 20187 yr by domkle

21 hours ago, LB777 said:

Volumetric clouds.

(I would have said performance but that's not really a 'feature')

I'm with you.... actual clouds, actual in and out of IMC, clouds that look realistic as you fly around them.... not spinning sprites.  Clouds that lightup better with sunlight (and shade).  FSW actually had some decent clouds going.  If you've ever flown a small plane in/out and or around clouds it is an amazing experience.  FS has never really done this for me.

12 hours ago, tttocs said:

Surprised I've not seen this from anyone else...  Realistic turbo-prop and piston engine/prop modeling.

 

Scott

I'm good with this, if the upgraded modelling comes with excellent default aircraft...  Or allow better tools for third parties to work with inside the SDK.  

8 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

P3D V4.x has those rain FX on some of the default aircraft, you don't need payware add-on.  With that said, what PMDG and TFDi TrueGlass currently provide are outstanding ... but the default rain effects does exist in P3D V4.x (if you have been doing V4.x content updates as well as Client updates, then you might not be aware).

Cheers, Rob.

Default have it in the VC?  Not just the 2D?