I have noticed that many (most?) MSFS2020 default airports have runways that follow real world terrain contours. I am wondering if developers have to do anything specific to ensure that their runways follow the terrain contours. I am wondering this because a few of the addon airports that I have installed seem to have perfectly flat runways, but do not remember what they were in the default airports. (I could of course uninstall them and check.) One airport I have flown in real life (EGSU) and am pretty sure that the runway had significant contours, but the addon does not seem to have this feature.  I think that the runway terrain contouring is one of the really good features of MSFS2020 and would like to be able to know before I purchase that the feature has been retained.

yeah addon airport makers have to do it manually.

I have now uninstalled the addon EGSU and can confirm that the default airfield runway does in fact have a high point towards the eastern 1/3 of the runway. That being said, apart from the runway contouring the freeware addon version is a superb rendition of Duxford Airfield, whereas the default does not resemble it at all. So I will continue to use the excellent addon.

The development mode has an infuriating habit of destroying the terrain, sometimes ludicrously, when you open an airport up to edit it. 

You can easily spend 10-20 hours trying to get it back to how it was and it'll still be worse than before. 

I wouldn't be surprised if the creator had the same problem and thought 'sod it' and flattened the whole place. Some places don't have this problem, many do. 

Edited November 2, 20214 yr by superspud

 

Thanks for the info concerning the difficulty for developers. A bit sad as MSFS2020 opens up so many places with realistic sceneries not available before, and it seems leaving behind the independent developers who want to contribute airports superior to default airports, except for runway terrain contour following. We are all missing out, including Microsoft and Asobo.

I believe some add on airports have achieved it. I have Orbx Leeds Bradford and I'm fairly sure they have covered the terrain changes very accurately. 

18 minutes ago, wainwj said:

I believe some add on airports have achieved it. I have Orbx Leeds Bradford and I'm fairly sure they have covered the terrain changes very accurately. 

It is possible anywhere but to get it perfect takes a grotesque amount of time if the site decides to commit hara kiri when you open it to edit. 

It's possible Leeds retained its elevations. Some do. 

If you can find and use DEM data it's usually still so inaccurate where it counts that you have to go all over the site inch by inch correcting and flattening.

You'd think Asobo would be nice enough to let you work on the original accurate enough site but making life easy seems to be against their remit. 

Edited November 3, 20214 yr by superspud

1 hour ago, superspud said:

It is possible anywhere but to get it perfect takes a grotesque amount of time if the site decides to commit hara kiri when you open it to edit. 

It's possible Leeds retained its elevations. Some do. 

If you can find and use DEM data it's usually still so inaccurate where it counts that you have to go all over the site inch by inch correcting and flattening.

You'd think Asobo would be nice enough to let you work on the original accurate enough site but making life easy seems to be against their remit. 

Yes I think you must be on the money with that assessment, the development side of the sim may take some time to hit peak capability.