I realise MS will not make them as they are in real life but will the option be there at least for 3rd party developers?

I think ACES have said no.Hope this helps,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Development Team Active Sky V6 Proud SupporterHiFi Beta TeamRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/AirSource Member: http://www.air-source.us/FSEconomy Member:http://dot.kelder.net:8080/fseconomy/

Yeah...thats a shame.I just got a taste of sloped runways with Aerosfot's Lukla and German scenery 4 (1 airport).WOW... What an experience.. it added a new dimension to flight simming.The current solution is not perfect by using regular textures for runway.. but Its still doable I hope. And I hope vendors like Aerorost would contine their work on sloped runways.Manny

The problem is while you can do sloped runways, you cannot make them work with AI. AI always requires flat surfaces unfortunately.I can only reiterate - it's going to be very embarrising if FSX doesn't support sloped runways, as X-Plane offers this feature for over a year already.Christian

>>I can only reiterate - it's going to be very embarrassing if>FSX doesn't support sloped runways, as X-Plane offers this>feature for over a year already.>Except it's usually disabled. Too many problems with floating runways, and exaggerated slopes.

>The problem is while you can do sloped runways, you cannot>make them work with AI. AI always requires flat surfaces>unfortunately.>>I can only reiterate - it's going to be very embarrising if>FSX doesn't support sloped runways, as X-Plane offers this>feature for over a year already.Prepare to be disappointed then. ACES has said unequivocally "NO", and even took the time to explain why not.There's little point in continuing to flog a dead horse...

If I remember right... they said.. the number of Polygons required to have a non flat runway is too much?But I was thinking... they don't have to provide for uneaven runway in the default fsim. But rather... a provision for third party vendors.Oh well.. Maybe they do have a genuine issue. The fact that they thought about it and didn't do it means.. they must have had an issue.But even if no AIs can use uneven, I still liked the one in Lucka and german scenery 4.Manny

Ok, I have to admit I don't actually know how well it works in X-Plane. If there indeed are issues that can't be resolved in X-Plane I take my statement back.Christian

I've only seen screenshots of Lukla scenery, but do you think its possible to land a lightly loaded LDS 767 there with max autobrake? :) Would be a fun challenge... the new Kai Tak :)On reflection why did i ask such a stupid question...its just way too short. :(

>If I remember right... they said.. the number of Polygons>required to have a non flat runway is too much?>What I find interesting is that with DX10 coming down the road a bit, most everyone has seen the screenshots of the "anticipated" FSX with DX10 graphics. And if rendering that water and sky, etc doesn't hog poly's, then I don't know what would?I'm not too sure about what I am talking about, but even if this new "graphics engine" could (help) simulate real looking water, why couldn't it (help) simulate sloped runways?Actually from what I remember without digging out the topic was the sheer amount of data needed, and the lack therof (i.e. some airport facilities report wrong or no information about the slope of runways at that airport, etc.)But yah, why not make it so 3rd party people can get down and party with their sloped runaways?

I'm sure that the ACES team is working on a solution for sloped runways. It obviously won't happen with FSX but perhaps it will be in the next version after FSX. At least we can only hope. The software developers at the ACES studio are always working to improve upon their Flight Simulator software.

I wish there was a simple tool for Runway scenery, where I could redisgn it. The slope and texture particulalry. The idea that all the runways have the same two texture is hmmm.... Well! Since Runways are the one we stare so much while trying to land, that aspect of the scenery sticks in my head so much.Sometimes, All I can remember the airports I have landed is the impression of the runways. Take a look at the Airlines.net pictures. Runways are the prominant fixtures.I downloaded a custom runway texture from the library here. But now, all my runways are of this texture its not appealing anymore. It was for a few days.Does anyone know how hard/how difficult it is to be able to redo textures for a specific runway? with the current tools available?I think, this is a good freeware addon idea. "Here are the two runways of this airport' redone. Real photo graphs for the runways are not that hard to come by. IMO, Its almost as important as airplane textures.http://www.airstripamerica.com/ This is also a good idea for an Addon vendor to build a tool for this purpose. Redesign runways for your pleasure! :)OrHere are all the runway textures for all the 30 runways in the Dallas Ft.Worth area. for $20. :)Sorry.. I have this runway fetish!Manny

>>If I remember right... they said.. the number of Polygons>>required to have a non flat runway is too much?>>>>What I find interesting is that with DX10 coming down the road>a bit, most everyone has seen the screenshots of the>"anticipated" FSX with DX10 graphics. And if rendering that>water and sky, etc doesn't hog poly's, then I don't know what>would?The water and clouds in those pics aren't actually polygons. They're shader effects. Animated textures and/or particles. Basically, fancier versions of FS9's wave effect. That's how games like Far Cry and Half Life 2 do their water. I've yet to see any other game simulate the gentle lapping of flotsam and jetsam like Far Cry.

Different textures for runways at different airports - even different textures for two concrete or two asphalt runways at the same airport is a very easy thing to accomplish in FS2004, and I assume FSX.But it's scenery design with an additional scenery .BGL file - not a function of AFCAD.You can use SceneGenX to create just a runway with a custom texture for an airport and FS will do a great job of displaying only that runway and leave the rest of the airport to AFCAD.You just need the textures. FS gives us a default world.Now I would like to see some additional default variation:Asphalt_oldAsphalt_newAsphalt_tropicalAsphalt_temperateAsphalt_desertand the same with concrete - that would give some variation.Maybe just use the standard _new and allow the other textures to be used as options ?Sloping runways is a two fold issue - the biggest part of the issue is data.Even the FAA and various country ICAO diagrams of airports which show different elevations at different parts of the airport are not completely accurate. The slope is almost never a consistent angle from elevation A to elevation B - there is a transition. You would need both airport charts and topographic maps. For many of the most famous airports - the only way to get the data is local knowledge.The vast majority of the airports in FS are obviously created by an automated batch process reading an airport database and converting it to scenery data which FS can read and display. There is no way that the team can check every airport in FS, or even just the airports which have parking spots.I believe them when they talk about the extra polygons necessary to create sloping runways and don't believe it's something which could be turned on for one airport and off for another.Right now addon scenery designers have the ability to create sloping runways for UI aircraft usage.That meets the need.

>If I remember right... they said.. the number of Polygons>required to have a non flat runway is too much?>Manny, if I remember right, Microsoft also said that to put sloped runways in would require a ton of custom work at each airport--even more than is done already.I think they weighed the pros and cons and decided to do a "not in this release" thing on it.Rhett