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Guest 3cffts

extending a runway into rising terrain

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Guest 3cffts

I need to extend a runway by 3600' and I have Terrascene installed which I want to keep. I have no problem extending the runway using VolEdit and DexImport. It all looks great, but when taxiing and taking off, the aircraft is on the runway for the original portion of the runway, but when I transit over the new extension, the plane climbs, because the Terrascene terrain is rising in the area now occupied by the runway extension. According to FAA charts I have the correct field/runway elevations.Any suggestions as to how to flatten the airfield without running into a Terrascene wall at the end of the runway? Brian.

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Guest 3cffts

Sorry to trouble you guys. I seems to be doing things backwards these days! I have just read past forums and found Flattenator DeLuxe. I will try this and if still no improvement will re-render TerraScene for this tile. Hope I am on the right track! If anyone thinks I am falling off it, would appreciate a push back on to it!Brian.

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Hi Brian,I once wrote a short Tutorial about flattening. You find it at AVSIM, DownloadID=13809cheersHarald

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Guest 3cffts

Harald, Your tutorial is just great! I do have a question; I plan to change the colour saturation and colour of the entire globe-tile and re-render using Terrascene2. Will this undo the flattening? Or, does Terrascene2 have a feature that will flatten the runway that I have extended and make it unecessary to use FlattenatorDeLuxe?Many thanks for you help.Brian.

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Guest Colins2

Brian,TS2 only produces a very large image based on geographical data that it is given.It will produce a RAS file also but only if it is given DEM info.The Flyslice program does the donkey work of getting the image into Fly! format and also getting the DEM (RAS) data into FLY!.TS2 will not Flatten anything; it is the Flyslice program that attempts to do that.Colin

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Guest 3cffts

Many thanks Colin:I will Re-render with Terrascene and Flyslice to see how it flattens the airfield. I tried using the FlyII Scenery editor but it crashes FlyII; maybe because I am using 8x8 globetiles and 7.5 DEMs?I also have a question on colour saturation. I have used the Texture Enhancer to enhance GENTEX.POD. Does this affect the colours produced by Terrascene2? My colours are a bit too vivid. If I reduce the enhancement in the Gentex.pod will the colours in the Terrascene be muted?Your forum help is really appreciated. Thanks again.Brian

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Guest Colins2

Brian,If you let TS2 create generic textures from an enhanced gentex.pod then the colours may be doubly enhanced (I think).I'm a bit rusty on that side of things just now - spent far too much time on elevations etc.Flyslice should, in theory, flatten the terrain according to the database entries. So if you have a modified entry then it should have the surrounding terrain adjusted accordingly. I wasn't always that good though, hence the need for Flattenator etc.I only used Flyslice to do one globe tile at a time. It worked fine for me like that.Colin

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Hi all,I do all my flattening manually by editing the TRN-File because it's the most accurate way.cheersHarald

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Guest 3cffts

Hi All:I have made some progress ... the runway no longer is under rising terrain! I did this by re-slicing the Terrascene output with an amended RUNWAY.POD. However, I still have very high terrain at the immediate end of the runway such that it obstructs the normal glidepath on late final. I have tried using "Flattenator_Deluxe" but it does not bring up any elevations for me to change.I followed the procedure for obtaining the lat & long of the end of the runway, together with the globetile and ground tile co-ordinates. I enter these in the "scenery editor" "import scenery" screen and get 4 .TRN files o.k. I used a density of 8x8.The "Flattenator" starts just fine and shows the globe tile and the airport and ground tiles that I believe need changing.I enter the globe tile and ground tile co-ordinates in the "advanced editor" , press load .... and all I get is a blank screen with no elevations. (globetile 176,160 and ground tile 29,39 or 29,40)Can someone please point me in the right direction so that I can flatten a bit more terrain of the end of the runway?Many thanks, Brian.

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Guest Colins2

Brian,I've never used Flattenator so I can't help you there.Did you also update / change AIRPORT.POD?Re-slicing won't have any effect on what you are trying to do.TS2 only produces an image nothing more.It does also convert DEM data to a RAS file that flyslice needs.It will use the DEM data for snow coverage etc. but that probably won't have any effect near an airport. Again, this is just a visual thing for the huge image it makes.It really is the flyslice program that does all the donkey work of getting the TS2 image into Fly! and not TerraScene itself.(Flyslice is the scenery editor)This program chops the TS2 image(s) into 64 x 64 grid of small images in lo / med / hi / day / night resolutions depending upon your choices.It also re-calculates (interpolates) the DEM data as presented in the RAS file to it's own mesh coordinate system. This process produces the 4 .trn files.Fly! has a built in default mesh which is very coarse. This is why a lot of airports in areas of default scenery either float or are underground.Using correct DEM data and correct airport data flyslice attempts to interpolate and give you a flat airport area.If you have mountainous terrain then probably the interpolation won't flatten a big enough surrounding area and you will run into these problems. The flattening has to depend on the mesh size; one size does not fit all and I don't think the slicer does it very well.Did you look at Fly!Mesh, that may do what you want.That is one of the functions it was written for.If nothing else, the Fly!Mesh manual should give more insight into the way the terrain worksColin

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Guest 3cffts

Colin:Thanks for your great information and the tutorial on Fly_Mesh! It is a big help in understanding how Fly scenery works. However,from reading the tutorial it appears that I cannot use Fly_Mesh because I am working with USGS 7.5m DEMs, which is too bad.Yes I did update the AIRPORT.POD to extend the runway. I had the problem of floating above the runway after having done this; but after I re-sliced the globetile the floating problem was gone and the airplane now stays on the ground to the end of the runway.My difficulty with the 100'+ hill that that starts about 100-200 feet off the end of the runway is that it rises into the glidepath for that runway. The start of the steep hill appears to relate to a change of ground tile. It is a north-south runway with the north end being a problem. I need to correct the very bottom portion of the ground tile/super-tile that starts just to the north of the runway.If I knew how to decode the g01.trn file to find which super-tile vertex elevations need changing maybe I could manually flatten enough terrain to stop running into the ground on short final. I am still puzzled why Flattenator does not load the elevations. It works fine with basic FlyII elevation data, does not want to accept the USGS 7.5m DEM info that I have podded along with Terrascene scenery ... the scenery is great and I don't want to lose it by reverting to basic FlyII scenery!If you or any other FlyIIer has any more thoughts on this ... your help would be greatly appreciated!Brian

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Guest Colins2

Brian,Fly!Mesh will work on the .trn files too.It was primarily written for non-us data use as I am UK based.I'm not sure how much the 'release' version had in it as I always had other features that I was working on and its a while ago now.Decoding the trn files is tricky because of the way the vertices are written out but it is just a plain text file.If the worse comes to the worst you can send me your 4 trn files and the database modifications and I should be able to do it with my latest version here.You can email me via Avsim if you need to or my address should be in te tutorial I think.Colin

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Guest 3cffts

Hi Colin:I have opened the .trn files with notepad but as you say decoding the text is not easy. I can't figure out which super-tile I need to modify, and if I could, I don't know which of the vertices elevations are located where I need to make an elevation change with notepad. I would sure like to know how to do this.I am interested in that you say Fly_Mesh will work directly with .trn files. How would I load the four .trn files (they are for just one ground tile) into Fly_Mesh, and can I save them as .trn files? If I could do that I would be able to substitute the changed .trn into the original list of files extracted from the .pod. And then re-pod using dragpoder?As I understand Fly_Mesh, the elevation data is not as detailed as the USGS 7.5m DEMs, so I would prefer to use Flattenator, if it will accept them and someone can help me load them into Flattenator.Thanks for your help,Brian.

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Guest Colins2

Hi Brian,Sorry, I was misleading you a bit there (unintentionally).I've written 3 utilities that deal with / manipulate .trn files.None of them actually do exactly what you want unfortunately.It was on my todo list but I never actually finished that bit.I have been more concerned with extracting the dem data and have ignored the texture information.I'll dig out the various bits of source code and see how easy it would be to do what you want.Colin

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