Airports on Plateaus

[JustinFSG]

HI Dick,

Yes, that can be done for sure, but you will lose the fidelity of taxiway lights and AI, which will still follow the flat plane attached to the airport.  There is currently no way to make the taxiway lights and AI follow the contour of the ground which, according to my discussions with the FS devs at DevCon, is a complex problem and solution.  Not impossible, but many calculation-intensive (and performance-intensive) things have to happen under the hood when going from the 2D plane to 3D movements.

That said, yes, your solution is a good one for smaller out-of-the-way airports without much AI or taxiway lights.

[macca22au]

This was a pernicious problem with Horizon Simulations Generation X photoscenery for England and Wales.

However new add-on airports such as Bristol, etc created by FS2000 apply a technique to smooth (or as you say fudge) the boundaries of airports to create slopes rather than plateaux and chasms.

A freeware airport maker, Tony Meredith, is putting out continuous releases of smaller airports using a smoothing technique.  Avsim, Flightsim carry his products.

It means now, with the FS2000 major airports - Bristol, Gatwick, London to come, and with Tony's smaller fields it is now possible to plot flights around the country avoiding the ugly airfields created by the inadequacies of MS mesh and elevations.

So, Justin. it might be possible to get from these people this technique to at least make the airports realistic.  Someone has already invented the mousetrap.

Maybe there will be a number of enthusiasts in the US and Canada who might do the sort of thing that Tony Meredith is doing in the UK.

[alexf]

Add one to the list:

Terrain Mesh (FS Genesis)  (FSX)

Funchal (Madeira) airport is on a high plateau.

Regards,

Alex