I need some help with helipads in fs2k2

[Guest]

Hi,I have been writing my own macros for a while now, using EOD.I have a slight problem with ships and oilrigs (elevated helipads) when I place the ships/rigs in areas where the water is at main sea level it all works fine, but when I try to place them in places where the water level is above Main Sea Level, such as off the Meigs airport for instance, the helipads become "soft" and the chopper just fall through. any ideas what I am doing wrong?for scenery I use Airport for Windows, and the latest build I can get.ThanksDanny Levin

[Guest JR Morgan]

*** Hi Danny...My experience has been that elevated helipads in FS2002 require use of the elevated (small, invisible) runway instead of simply using only the Area16 height, sense border and Set Elevation code as was used sucessfully for elevated helipads in the earlier versions of FS.'Recommend you try:1) Place a Flatten Area at Scenery Surface MSL altitude (ground, local water, etc) at least as large as the object your pad is located-on (building, oil rig, ship, etc). This is required to "Anchor" the local surface else local ground or water will be "Sucked-Up" to the altitude of your elevated helipad. 2) Use an Elevated Invisible small Runway as the hardened surface instead of only the Area16 height, SenseBorder and SetElevation code as was used in earlier sims.3) Since departing and then Re-Entering the scenery area will often result in losing the flatten area characteristics causing a mountain or plateau effect where the local elevated surface literally "Sucks" the ground or water up to it's altitude, to correct that situation, David Morgan has found that placing another helipad at Scenery Ground MSL altitude directly underneath your (main) elevated helipad using no texture bitmap on this one usually corrects the situation. Otherwise, to prevent the "Sucking Anamoly" the local scenery area must be refreshed by re-selecting the scenery area in the scenery library and hitting the key.Hopefully, if MS could release an appropriate SDK and/or the FS2002 scenery engine could be better understood, a simpler fix for this rather cumbersome 3 step process could be used. Meanwhile, it seems to work without noticable loss of frame rate.The "Create Helipad" routine of Apt26 allows quick, easy use of the process described in 2) above. The older SetElevation code remains in the Apt26 routine and works for FS2000 and prior versions of MSFS.Regards;J.R.