Easter Island SCIP

[Sabretooth78 13]

I ran into an issue landing at SCIP last night; wondering if anybody else has experienced this:

On final approach (Captain Sim 757), all is fine and stable, until crossing the fence/runway threshold.  Then, just as I'm preparing to flare and cut the throttles, the aircraft suddenly drops 50-100' onto the runway (well short of the TDZ) for a 600-700 fpm landing.  Needless to say, quite a frustrating way to end a 5 hour flight!

The initial attempt was made flying into Carlyle Sharpe's otherwise excellent "SCIP - Isla de Pascua & Mataveri Intl - Easter Island" scenery (https://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=185106)

This is completely repeatable loading from a FSUIPC autosave file.  It also seems to occur with the FSoftware Easter Island scenery.  I did a little searching through my scenery folders and didn't find any obvious conflicts (particularly ORBX) nor was I able to pin down the culprit file(s).  It was already well past when I should have been in bed, so my testing wasn't exhaustive (file isolation, different plane, etc.) but I intend to try to dig a bit more this afternoon.  Using ORBX Vector and Pilot's FS Global 2010 mesh.  It doesn't occur when attempting a landing at the default airport.

Anybody else see/seen this and any suggested leads?

Edited August 9, 2019 by Sabretooth78

[Nuno Pinto 1,394]

Remove SCIP from the ORBX Vector "fixes" which normally breaks airports instead of fixing them and retry. That's an issue with the ground being lower than the actual altitude reported, thus the high VS upon landing. I do have that come up from time to time and in some airports i could never fix it 😞

[Sabretooth78 13]

14 minutes ago, Nuno Pinto said:

Remove SCIP from the ORBX Vector "fixes" which normally breaks airports instead of fixing them and retry. That's an issue with the ground being lower than the actual altitude reported, thus the high VS upon landing. I do have that come up from time to time and in some airports i could never fix it 😞

I hear you! 😣

Unfortunately it's not that - all ORBX files (including AEC) were already disabled - and the airport otherwise "appears" normal at all times, unlike as is usually the case where those Vector AEC issues are quite apparent.  (I tried turning the ORBX fix "on" and it quite visibly broke things - floating runway, etc.)

I believe I may have found the culprit through a little research:

https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/161013-from-the-inca-shores-to-rapa-nui-bonus/

It seems to be that the terrain mesh complexity can't be set higher than 10 meters or else you hit "invisible" terrain.  What I experienced does seem consistent with a crash (with detection turned off) where the plane just bounces off in some completely improbable manner...and I usually set mesh complexity to 5 for the sake of some add-on airports that require it.  I guess I should be happy that I hard landed and didn't instead get flung to 1000 feet up at 300 kts as is usual when you faceplant.

I'm curious if creating a slightly longer airport polygon would correct this.  I hate having to remember to change a sim setting just to use a particular item of scenery.

I'll have to wait until later to confirm this - I'll report back.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Sabretooth78

[officercrockey 196]

Do you use fsaerodata? With that activated I had similar issues at several airports.

[downscc 1,327]

I've seen this happen while landing a multiple locations where the runway end is near the water.  It is a P3D bug that is reliably a nuisance in the PMDG QOTSII.  I've had it happen at CYVR, KSFO, VHHH and a few others I've already forgotten.  Increasing the mesh resolution to 5 m or even 19 m seems to help but at 5 m I still see it in the Queen.

[Sabretooth78 13]

8 hours ago, officercrockey said:

Do you use fsaerodata? With that activated I had similar issues at several airports.

Yes, as have I, although nothing like this yet.  Turned it off and it still happens...

 

3 hours ago, downscc said:

I've seen this happen while landing a multiple locations where the runway end is near the water.  It is a P3D bug that is reliably a nuisance in the PMDG QOTSII.  I've had it happen at CYVR, KSFO, VHHH and a few others I've already forgotten.  Increasing the mesh resolution to 5 m or even 19 m seems to help but at 5 m I still see it in the Queen.

As I was beginning to suspect from the ORBX thread, this was indeed the case.  I actually had the mesh resolution set to 2 m!

Changed it to 5 m - still happened.

Changed it to 10 m - no longer happened.

There was also a problem with FlyTampa KBOS in this regard I believe as well.  I hit it once on a RWY 9 takeoff.  Turned out there was a fix for it in their support forum.

Creating a flatten to extend the airport polygon didn't help, either.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Sabretooth78

[Nuno Pinto 1,394]

Glad you found the issue. Are there any addons that actually make use of such high resolutions such as 2m?

[Dreamflight767 310]

Not to go too far off topic but sometimes I see terrain "spikes" while flying around.  I'm using both Vector and Pilots Global.

Does lowering the mesh fix those spikes too?

Thanks.

[Sabretooth78 13]

4 hours ago, Nuno Pinto said:

Glad you found the issue. Are there any addons that actually make use of such high resolutions such as 2m?

I know I saw it in the documentation for something I added recently.  Can't recall which; thought it was a little ridiculous, but also didn't think the setting would hurt much either so I went with it.  I know there are some airports that require 5 m, mostly due to taxiway bridges and such.  Probably more of an appearance issue than functionality I would imagine.

A relief in the sense that it's a known bug, a pain-in-the-xxx considering that it's something that can't really be fixed, even if on an individual basis.

 

2 hours ago, Dreamflight767 said:

Not to go too far off topic but sometimes I see terrain "spikes" while flying around.  I'm using both Vector and Pilots Global.

Does lowering the mesh fix those spikes too?

Thanks.

I've seen some occasionally (most recently some smallish ones just southwest of SLVR) but I'd have to defer to someone who is more of a "settings expert" to answer that.  Having a basic knowledge of how it in other applications, I think it's possible that pushing that slider to the left might actually cause more of them, or at least cause those that do occur to perhaps be a little more prominent?

Edited August 10, 2019 by Sabretooth78

[downscc 1,327]

19 hours ago, Dreamflight767 said:

Not to go too far off topic but sometimes I see terrain "spikes" while flying around.  I'm using both Vector and Pilots Global.

Does lowering the mesh fix those spikes too?

Thanks.

Possible, yes.  My FSDT KIAH will grow those spikes with terrain mesh settings to the right of 5 m.