overwriting default airports?

[Guest]

Hi all,a quick question....is it possible to change the elevation of the default airports in fs2002 by using mesh scenery or will you always end up with a basin or a plateau if the surrounding mesh isnt the same as the airport poly?thanks in advance,Professa

[Justin Toposim 16]

Hi Professa,Surprisingly, you can't change an airport's elevation by using mesh.The airport's elevation is determined by a flatten polygon. And FLATten is the key word. FS can't depict anything but a perfectly FLAT airport. This becomes a problem since there are probably NO perfectly flat airports in the real world.When the threshold of one end of a runway is, say, 20m lower than the other end of the runway, and all runways in FS200x MUST be flat, you end up with the plateau phenomenon.The more detailed terrain mesh you use, the more apparent the phenomenon becomes.There really is no workaround for it because something has to get fudged. Eliminating the plateau on one end, creates a basin on the other. It's simply a limitation of FS2002 and we have to live with it, for the most part.Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.com

[Guest]

Thanks Justin!!!ok so tell me, is it possible to change the size of the airport polygon maybe to like 100m*100m so then it will fit in with the rest of my mesh.see what im trying to do is create a runway that has its highest point in the centre, and trying not to have to move my entire island so that there are no conflicts with the default airport....but thanks for at least letting me know that i at least can change the elevation of the airport!!!but one more question, which progrmam should i use to do this?Thanks alot,Porfessa

[Justin Toposim 16]

Hi Professa,Since you cannot simply exclude a flatten poly with an exclude file, you have to decompile the default BGL, edit it, and recompile it to make the adjustment.There is utility DpCle11.exe made for FS2000 by a clever Japanese fellow, Masakazu Irie. The URL I have for him ishttp://www.apk.ne.jp/~dpc/index.htmlThe email address I ahve for him isdpc@apk.ne.jpBut both these are a couple of years old, so not sure if they're still good.This utility will import BGLs containing the flatten polys, let you edit them, the recompile the file for you.You might search AVSIM, Flightsim.com, and Google if you don't have any luck with the URL above.If that doesn't prove fruitful, either, I think I ahve the .zip file around here somewhere. I could email it to you.Hope this helpsJustinhttp://www.fsgenesis.com

[Guest]

http://www.fs-2000.org.uk/utils/scenery/dpcle11.txthttp://www.fs-2000.org.uk/utils/utilsscen.htmWhere's the kiss button? :*Is BGLC the "compressor"?

[Guest]

PRAISE BE TO IHOR AND JUSTIN!!!!!!!!:-)THANKS ALOT GUYS!!!!!now to try it and see if it worksprofessa

[Guest]

Bad news :-(the file works, but only on fs2000 files as i cant seem to find any files that have only just the flatten polys or the airport polys only so they cant be read.....bummer.....ill have to find something elsesob...sob...sob... :-(professa

[Guest]

>Since you cannot simply exclude a flatten poly with an >exclude file, you have to decompile the default BGL, edit >it, and recompile it to make the adjustment. So this means that every accurate mesh available where the airport is well merged with surrounding area was manually adjusted one by one?Looks like it takes a lot of work!

[Justin Toposim 16]

Hi Bakunine,Nope. It means that the airport is relatively flat in real life. And located correctly in the Jeppensen database.Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.com

[Guest]

Hi,thanks again justin for your answer :-) so then tell me is it possible to have a 3d object with a hardened surface that is sloped to kinda mimic mesh terrain?or are we limited to only horizontal surfaces?think of it like a helipad at an incline....is that possible?regards,professa

[Guest christian]

No,I can give you a bit more of a technical expanation why it works the way it works.Nearly all scenery in FS2K2 is done with polygons, so the runway is just drawn as a long rectangle. Imagine you put a flat rectangle on terrain that has slopes. Part of the runway would just hang in the air. That would be very annoying, to say the least. Think back to FS2K where the roads and rivers would dive in and out of the terrain. It just wouldn't work with runways.Now, in FS2K2 we have some new scenery where roads and rivers get drawn onto the mesh as decal bitmaps. This approach is quite calculation intensive though and I think M$ decided to not do it with runways for that reason. Maybe in the next version runways will also be treated as decals. Then sloping runways are possible. However, it still won't work well. Mesh scenery can have quite abrupt elevation changes, so you get a high chance of crashing your plane on a runway which has elavation changes.Cheers, Christian

[Guest]

hmmmm........interesting....ok so answer me this, has anyone been able to delete the default airport polys from fs2k2 like that tool DpCle11.exe could do for fs2k?if so how did you do it?regards,Xavier

[Guest christian]

You can get rid of them if you delete all fltxxxx.bgl files in the scenery directories. (Not really recommended though, you'll see why when you try it).Cheers, Christian

[Guest]

> so then tell me is it possible to have a 3d object with a >hardened surface that is sloped to kinda mimic mesh terrain? >or are we limited to only horizontal surfaces? There was someone who put out an FS2000 scenery for Courcheval in France, which is something akin to a ski jump off the side of a mountain (seriously!). I'm not sure how they did it, but from the screenshots if I recall correctly it appeared to be made up of a number of separate segments rather than a continuous strip.Apart from this example, and many other examples of sloped runways throughout the world. I still think the best approach with mesh scenery is to use the airport elevation as a reference point to improve the accuracy of the mesh because in all the cases I'm aware of, the FS2002 airport elevations *are* accurate.JohnVisual Flighthttp://www.visualflight.co.uk

[Guest]

Well Hi all,i have tried some of the suggestions and have made some progress,ill post some shots so you all can see what ive been doing...but ive got 1 problem now...now ive got the slope, is there any way to make it smoothe to taxi on?thanks,professa