Had a pretty serious GSX update this morning...

[Ray Proudfoot 8,961]

@Sesquashtoo, a lot of flight sim stuff seems daunting on first look. The instructions aren’t too complicated. Just take your time. Your analogy is good.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,961]

Just one important point I’ve only discovered today. Most, perhaps all, of those Cartayna files were designed for v4. For those than include an exclude file be aware those will not work in v5.

Another strategy is required to suppress any default airport objects that could interfere with v5. @virtuali may have some thoughts on this.

[virtuali 4,421]

28 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Most, perhaps all, of those Cartayna files were designed for v4. For those than include an exclude file be aware those will not work in v5.

Exclude files in GSX are used only to exclude jetways and only on 3rd party airports ( default airports have their jetways always automatically replaced because GSX disables the default jetway model *itself* so, it doesn't need to exclude anything ).

This means, as far GSX and jetways are concerned, there's no need to have a different Exclude "just" because a 3rd party scenery is running in P3D V5, the only issue are profiles that were made for P3D 4 and included custom textures, which GSX handles in the way I explained before.

However, there's another issue, and it's that Exclude files (or Exclude areas in the AFCAD itself ) made by 3rd party developers to Exclude default scenery objects, might not work in P3D V5, because the default sceneries have changed quite significantly. But that's completely unrelated to GSX! GSX doesn't handle or tries to replace or exclude anything other than jetways, and this only through a custom profile to exclude JUST jetways.

If you had a scenery that worked well in P3D V4, but shows default (not jetways) objects mixed with the ones from the add-on, like double buildings or double control towers, the problem doesn't have anything to do with GSX and it would appear just the same even without it. It's the developer that MUST update its AFCAD to make an Exclude made taking into account the different default scenery in P3D V5.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,961]

@virtuali, thanks for coming back so quickly. The airport I was having trouble with today was Aerosoft Milan Malpensa Pro. It’s compatible with v5.

I don’t see any duplicated buildings. The only issue was the first time I loaded P3Dv5 at LIMC the Cartayna jetways were a couple of hundred feet in the air.

I found a discussion on your forum about this problem and used the GSX Airport Configuration utility inside P3D to select all airport gates and press the airport altitude button top right to equalise their altitude in relation to the airport. I then selected Apply and they appeared at ground level.

I thought that was it but on panning upwards noticed there we’re still a few remaining. It’s those I’m not sure how to solve.

I don’t think they’re default ones as there are so few. They could be in the Aerosoft Milan AFCAD so I’ll look at that tomorrow. It’s easy enough to delete them if required.

I don’t think Cartayna used any custom textures.

[virtuali 4,421]

11 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I found a discussion on your forum about this problem and used the GSX Airport Configuration utility inside P3D to select all airport gates and press the airport altitude button top right to equalise their altitude in relation to the airport. I then selected Apply and they appeared at ground level.

That's an entire different problem in fact, and it's caused by another .BGL setting a different ground altitude than the scenery own file.

If that file didn't include any gates/taxiway and it was just an "altitude correction", GSX wouldn't take it into consideration, and would only use the one that comes with the scenery, which might have its own altitude changed by the other one so, that function in GSX will read the current ground altitude from Simconnect and use that instead of the one in the scenery .BGL.

Since you said a different strategy is required to suppress default scenery object, because they are changed in P3D V5, I clarified the issues of old Exclude files made for V4 not working in V5 is unrelated to GSX:

Many scenery authors used "micro-excludes" ( many very small exclude areas centered on each object ), which are required because of an years-old bug coming from FSX which seems to be still there in P3D, resulting in sceneries using few large excludes ending up to "exclude themselves" namely their jetways and effects would disappear, instead of only the ones from other scenery lower in priority. If this method is used, the Exclude will only work with a specific version of the default scenery and, since these never changed for years, it didn't used to be much of a problem but, P3D V5 DID change the default scenery after all, so new Excludes should be made.

But this is really completely irrelevant to GSX, it should be done by the scenery author nevertheless, because even with no GSX, there will be bleeding of default objects when a scenery with micro-excludes made for for FSX or P3D V4 will be used in P3D V5.

In fact, I'd say GSX can even help FIXING this problem because, the main reason why micro-excludes were used, was to prevent the scenery to Exclude its own Jetways but, that would only be a problem if the scenery used default jetways.

If they are replaced by GSX, instead of creating a new micro-exclude tailored for P3D V5 ( and having to do another one tailored for FSX/P3D4 ), one can just create few large normal Excludes that are way better, since they don't suffer from changes in the original .BGL and are very unlikely to show double objects even with conflicting BGLs (as long the right one is on top), they are faster to process for the sim ( few rectangles instead of hundreds ) and, creating a few Excludes for an airport and replacing jetways with GSX, is something that can be reasonably easy to do for an end user, allowing to fix sceneries to run in P3D V5 even if the original developer never cared to fix them.

Edited November 30, 2021 by virtuali

[Ray Proudfoot 8,961]

Morning' Umberto,

I'm old enough to remember the days when we could create an exclude file by entering the lat/lon of the top left and bottom right coordinates into a DOS-style program resulting in a BGL that could be placed in a suitable location. It seems things are now more complicated.

But enough of that. I looked at the manual for Milan and it has the option for default jetways (Ctrl+J) or SODE ones. You make the choice when installing but that was some time ago so I can't be sure which I opted for but it's likely it was SODE. The Milan Configurator program has no option to switch between them.

I opened the supplied AFCAD with ADE and many default jetways were listed. I selected them all and hit delete. I saved and compiled the BGL creating my own which has replaced the original (now renamed so as not to be loaded).

I also renamed the exclude BGL extension as it's no longer relevant. The outcome is I have no floating jetways. Problem solved. I can't see any other anomalies around the airport either.

I'm sure that had I not used the Cartayna files the default jetways would have been fine.