About sloped (?) runways

[Dominique_K 10,133]

I wonder whether this thread hasn't run its course 😉 ? It gets a little circular ...

[andyjohnston.net 617]

29 minutes ago, domkle said:

... a little circular ...

Yes!

I've read about how circular (or oval shaped) runways would be beneficial in the future.  Microsoft should give us this option.

[G-RFRY 1,708]

32 minutes ago, domkle said:

I wonder whether this thread hasn't run its course 😉 ? It gets a little circular ...

I think the forum has run out of things to speculate on.

[fs4fun 366]

I doubt that lack of sloped runways is a deal breaker for many, but I'd really like to see it done, if done properly. It's something that should be expected in a new flight simulator.

My understanding is that FSX/P3D runways are not actually perfect flat planes, they actually curve to follow the base round-earth model (the WGS84 ellipsoid), but what they do not do is cling to the terrain mesh, which is understandable since in many places mesh has poor resolution or other anomalies. KMWK airport mentioned earlier in this thread shows this when viewed in Google Maps 3D view, there's a nasty ditch right in the middle of the runway.

I had a discussion here with someone who suggested specifying a curve along with a new kind of flatten polygon just for runways. Maybe a parametric curve that would automatically be smooth. Since the flatten poly pulls the terrain mesh up or down it would be an easy and automatic way to introduce a curvature to airport runways without anomalies or collision problems. Maybe could even be automated if there is airport data giving elevations sampled at different points along the runways.

I wonder too about airports with crossing runways.

[Paraffin 2,197]

11 minutes ago, andyjohnston.net said:

Yes!

I've read about how circular (or oval shaped) runways would be beneficial in the future.  Microsoft should give us this option.

Well, a curve option would allow recreating that one famous bush runway in Africa (I forget exactly where), that has a blind curve in the middle of the road used as an ad-hoc runway. 😉

[Greazer 1,320]

27 minutes ago, rjfry said:

I think the forum has run out of things to speculate on.

It never runs out people posting stupid comments,, sloped runways are "minor details", if only I got a dollar for each of these.

[Dominique_K 10,133]

52 minutes ago, fs4fun said:

 

Making sloped runway is not an unknown technical problem like a Grail quest 😉 ! Making a handmade dirt sloped runway is not so difficult, I made some and I am just an amateur.  You work the mesh under your imagery. Some payware  developers have handmade sloped paved runways and I think you may find tutorials for that. It is much, much less easy. The main automation tool we have (the wonderful ADE) cannot but do flat runway/taxiways due to the SDK constraints, I suppose. 

It is high time that MS and LM do their homework  to automate the adaptation of the runways/taxiways and tarmac to the mesh. That would require first repositioning all the airports to their exact coordinates vis-à-vis the relief (mesh) and vector lines (river, roads etc.). 

I came to land recently in a small airport in Central America.The default airport perimeter was cutting a hill in half. I Of course, it was almost a mile to the North of its actual position. As can we imagine having sloped runways if airports are not where they should be ? 

Edited August 22, 2019 by domkle

[GameSyns 30]

44 minutes ago, Greazer said:

It never runs out people posting stupid comments,, sloped runways are "minor details", if only I got a dollar for each of these.

Honestly dude, you're the one telling people to go to rookie forums because they have differing opinions to you. Not to mention, @HughesMDflyer4 has probably worked on many payware addon's you probably use, so I think he has a valid understanding of what makes or breaks a product in this industry. Acting elitest isn't helping your point of view. Regardless, it's important to remember who this project is going to cater to. I don't think MS would bring FS2020 to Xbox unless they intended for the largest buying group would be casual gamers looking into exploring flight simulation. Funny enough, the people who probably enjoy Airforceproud95 are likely going to be the largest buying group for this sim. Not us, the hardcore enthusiast. We will, however, keep it on life support if MS allows modding and decides to abandon the IP for another 13 years. I'm all for sloped runways, would be cool, but the lack of them isn't going to send this project into oblivion imo. If any of the "revolutionary" features don't convince you to buy it, then I suppose that you can enjoy XP11 and P3D for years to come.

Edited August 22, 2019 by GameSyns

[Dominique_K 10,133]

 <sigh>

[fs4fun 366]

15 minutes ago, domkle said:

Making sloped runway is not an unknown technical problem like a Grail quest 😉 ! Making a handmade dirt sloped runway is not so difficult, I made some and I am just an amateur.  You work the mesh under your imagery. Some payware  developers have handmade sloped paved runways and I think you may find tutorials for that. It is much, much less easy. The main automation tool we have (the wonderful ADE) cannot but do flat runway/taxiways due to the SDK constraints, I suppose.

Thanks, I'm very familiar with the SDK's and all aspects of MSFS scenery design including 3D modeling, ground polys, mesh, terrain, imagery, autogen, SODE, etc etc.

ADE can make sloped flattens which are terrain polys with vertices set to different altitudes. If you just do that underneath imagery it's quite trivial to do and should work well. To make a curved asphalt runway you have to make a model and harden the surface using attach points either in a modeling tool or using MCX. Then the problem is fitting it to terrain. MCX can help with that too by generating sloped flatten polys but there are additional challenges because unlike ground polys the textures will flicker unless you float it above the ground and vary the elevation using LOD's or SODE tools.

The other problem that I mentioned is how good the collider engine works. FSX has quite crude collider logic as compared to modern game engines that can work with detailed mesh colliders.

There are some other options too, I think SCASM can be used to change a ground surface to asphalt or concrete so that can be used with imagery. In theory that would be much simpler. As far as I know you can only put ground polys over flattened terrain though, so the SCASM approach would only work well with really good resolution imagery.

These are the traditional methods and as you say it's very difficult and we really need a better approach that is more automated which is what I was trying to describe in my previous post. Just making runways that cling to terrain mesh is probably not a good enough solution.

[Dominique_K 10,133]

11 minutes ago, fs4fun said:

 

Thank you for this clear and helpful presentation of the problem. 

Edited August 22, 2019 by domkle

[ca_metal 2,015]

5 hours ago, domkle said:

Thank you for this clear and helpful presentation of the problem. 

You have your answer in the last update:

Philosophical Question

If a tree falls on a sloped runway but there is no one there to see it, is the runway still sloped?

Answer:

We hope so, because we’ve got curved/sloped runways in the next iteration of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

[Superdelphinus 718]

This is why the noisy whiny people are good

[rjetster1 38]

On 8/20/2019 at 9:27 PM, rjetster1 said:

This back and forth sloped runway thread is only valid until MS releases news that there is indeed sloped runways… which they will.

Exactly my point!

[ual763 361]

On 8/19/2019 at 5:22 PM, MatthewS said:

There's no sloped runways. If there were MS would have made it obvious in the clips/screenshots...  EPIC fail MS!

Well, this is awkward now...