Not only lukla. If you enjoyed Lukla, you may want to look at the wasserkuppe airport in Scenery Germany 4. Very well done sloped runway.and yes.. these sloped uneven runways do make a difference. A big difference. I think most people are asking for a technical way to create these sloped runways in Flight sim and not necessarily create all the default airports into sloped runways.http://www.avsim.com/pages/0706/G4/G4.htmManny

>Well, technically speaking, that is absolutely correct. Since>FSX now has a "round earth," any runway, taxiway or apron>actually does "slope," although the amount is not discernable>visually.>>For example, if you created a 10 mile long runway, the>'middle' would be several inches higher than the ends... ;)It is an approximation of a sphere. Have you read the technical article about it? The world's surface is being tesselated. so actually you might assume most runways are on a flat polygon, on one of many to make up the earth's spherical shape. :)Etienne

"Have you read the technical article about it? Etienne"Knowing Bill I am quite sure he has not only already read it but understands it better than most readers on this forum!

>>Well, technically speaking, that is absolutely correct.>Since>>FSX now has a "round earth," any runway, taxiway or apron>>actually does "slope," although the amount is not>discernable>>visually.>>>>For example, if you created a 10 mile long runway, the>>'middle' would be several inches higher than the ends... ;)>>It is an approximation of a sphere. Have you read the>technical article about it? The world's surface is being>tesselated. so actually you might assume most runways are on a>flat polygon, on one of many to make up the earth's spherical>shape. :)As a matter of fact I have. What you've quoted from me above is nearly verbatim of what Adam (the author of the white paper) wrote in reply to the question of "sloped runways"... ;)One of the hardest things Adam (and others on the team) had to accomplish was getting "long" objects to conform properly to the curved mesh.If you want to have some "fun," set up a camera view from a fixed location and watch one of the AI "ships" as it sails away from your position. If you watch long enough, you'll see the ship slowly drop below the horizon... :-sun1

To be technically accurate, it's an ellipsoid.Ian.

>To be technically accurate, it's an ellipsoid.>>Ian.Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are camping. after a nice supper and a bottle of good wine, they crawled into the tent and fell asleep.After couple of hours, Holmes wakes up and shakes his companion: Sherlock Holmes: "Watson, look at the sky and tell me what you see". Watson: "I can see millions and millions of stars" Sherlock Holmes: "And what do you conclude out of it?" Watson: "Astronomically - it tells me there are millions of galaxies, probably billions of planets. Astrologically - I can see Saturn is in Leo. Meteorologically - I conclude it's approximately 3AM. Theologically - I realize God is omnipotent and we are comparatively small and insignificant. And as far as weather is concerned, I can see tomorrow will be a nice day. And you Holmes, what do you conclude?"?" Sherlock Holmes doesn't answer for a long time nad than says: "Watsone, you're a dope - they stole our tent". http://www.americanpatrol.com/_icons/BS_No.gif

Over at the Vista Australis site, we have a small airfield scenery that was created called "Tony's place" It certainly has sloped runways - that's if you could call the landing area a runway. If you dont hit the "sweet spot" at just the right place, you will bounce and then go down a ski-slope. It has proved to be quite a popular gathering spot because of the difficulty of landing there. :)Barry

While not offered in default scenery, there is quite a few sloping and bumpy runways available for free in FS9 addon scenery, courtesy of James Belk. In fact, he's made at least three packages of mountain strips, most of which have slopes and/or bumpy and challenging surfaces...some of which demand that you do a "flare" upwards, and a horizontal approach!Anyway, I consider his scenery addons for the Cascades to be a MUST download... try aircraft like Beavers and Twin Otters on them, just as an example.Here's what I wrote about his addons previously:Yesterday I was cleaning out my folders, and noticed a scenery file I'd forgotten to install. Turns out it was a nice collection of fictional airstrips located in the Cascade mountains of northern Washington state (near Seattle and Vancouver Canada). So naturally I wanted to install it...Whoa! The first one I was on, I found mountain walls so close I wasn't sure I could climb out of there, until I saw that the valley continues onward. While I was in the takeoff roll, I discovered another stunning thing (well for Flightsim anyway): this runway sloped increasingly downward...and wasn't smooth either! Did I mention that it curved off to the left too?!?!?I proceeded to do the circuit of included runways in Don Moser's freeware Pilatus Porter, a true mountain/STOL plane if there ever was one, and later switched over to the heavier and more difficult to stop Twin Otter by Eric Dantes. Remember the movie

And the comments on this thread show plainly why MS will probably never include sloped runways in FS.It's just too danged difficult for the average Flight Sim purchaser. They (and me at times) have enought trouble with flat runways!!!Even such a simple runway as my home KADS would probably result in crashes from hitting the slope at the wrong point.A popular airport like KLAS with it's 100 foot slope would be beyond many people.There are "acceptable" workarounds for those who want that capability.

Too difficult? Well...maybe for the REALLY new beginer... but it's a challenge that's not that difficult to overcome if you have even half a year's worth of FS experience. The addon I mention above is more difficult simply because it's also very treacherous mountain flying, with trees and rock walls in very close proximity, and especially bumpy runways, far more extreme than you'd normally see on a typical larger sloped runway.PS: you guys REALLY have to check out James Belks' sceneries!My own view is that MS provided default airports won't ever include slopes (except perhaps at a handful of famous ones like Lukla and that French one), is because of the shear number of airports that are default: doesn't FS9 have something like 26,000 airports?! Even if the dev team could find sloping runway data that's accurate, and feed it into a subprogram to put it into each runway... ...how on earth are they going to beta test 26,000 airports? Not to mention the new airports they'll surely include in future? at least if it's flat, they can just see if AI can land there.I think it's lack of inclusion has to do more with testing limits, available polys for data on the install and discs, lack of information about such slopes, and the realisation that surely 3rd party scenery designers will surely make the sloped runways with plenty of testing, good decent data, and for a modicum of bandwidth.

Yep... A field in Vineland NJ, begins flat, then drops downhill at least 10ft lower, then goes uphill, and finishes off flat.... Its also a grass strip, used by GA and the Forest Service. Its a trip to watch them taking off or landing on this strip, especially in a taildragger.

Hi!The best solution would be the possibility to override the default flattens at airports so that 3rd party developers can do the sloping runways if they want to. The thing is just that they are very difficult to do, all the taxi lines and lines on the runway, lights, signs...for example... it would be a pain to get them done so that they don't float or sink in to the ground.I have thought a lot about this... the Finnish scenery I did of EFRO (Rovaniemi) should have a sloped runway, but no matter what I come up with it would just be a lot of work, too much work actually. To get the downslope done for approach lights was difficult enough. In the real life you can not see the other end of the runway when standing on the other.Tatu

Hi All.We've been able to take off and land on the mesh for quite some time. Platforms, both FS9 and the upcoming FSX, can be quite complex, allowing sloped takoffs and landings.The problem is that AI aircraft can't make sense of it at all... and to keep them in the game, "flat" runways are needed. "flat" in the sense that they now conform to the earth's curvature as Bill explained above.Dick

Ever land on KMHT 35?... there's a roller coaster of a runway, at least it was when I last landed on it a few years ago. :)Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)

Thanks for the kind words RotorRick! Turn off crash detection to get around the crashes at Box Canyon - I always recommend doing it with my airstrips as they can sometimes cause crashes. Yes we can land on the mesh (my 'runways' are just mesh (often modified) with runway-like textures painted on) but it isn't perfect all of the time. Nearly all of my airstrips point due North/South or East/West to minimise this difficulty.Let's not forget the French input to the sloping runway community:Guy Nemoz (freeware):www.vf-air.com (run it through a translator like Google's)LLH (commercial):www.llhinfo.com/hom_en.htmlI've just had a big Hard Drive crash. Tried installing Ubuntu Linux, and it totally screwed up my Windows partition. The only darn thing I didn't have backed up was all my flightsim design stuff - custom macros, textures etc. I think you'll all have to make do with my old North Cascades trilogy for a little while yet!