Airport "Flatten" not working

[falcon409]

Here's my dillema as shown in the screen shot. The Airport Boundary as drawn in SBuilderX has an altitude of 11m, the airport AFCAD done in AFX has an elevation set at 11m, the surrounding terrain has an elevation of 11m however try as I may, I still have an elevated airport sitting at about 14m. The area you see marked by the arrows is the outline of a "flatten" I did in AFX trying to get that section to drop down to 11m. It remains at 14m. What is preventing the area from going to 11m?

Before I did the flatten in AFX, the parking ramp area (gray area) was elevated and the gravel rwy was also elevated however the ground underneath it was not. . . .hence the reason for the flatten, trying to get the ramp area to drop.

NOTE: I added a second shot showing the area after deleting the flatten from AFX. Now it goes to only the ramp area elevated and the rwy is floating.

[rdaniell]

I had a similar problem with an airstrip. I made the flatten area a lot bigger. That worked.

RD

[falcon409]

I had a similar problem with an airstrip. I made the flatten area a lot bigger. That worked.

RD
I'll give that a go then RD, thanks.:salute:

[falcon409]

lol, well now that's interesting, lol. No matter how big I make the flatten (a half mile in either direction), it simply raises that area to 14-15m, lol. . . .so much for a "flatten".

[Dave Torkington]

Hi Falcon,

Try this [maybe you have already] - check your FSX\Scenery\World\Scenery folder for a bgl named AFX_ICAO_ALT.bgl [ICAO being your airport ICAO]. I've had AFX save these airport altitude bgl's in the past and they've screwed up the actual airport altitude... If you have this bgl, just move it out of FSX and restart the sim. Worth a try eh. :salute:

Dave.

[falcon409]

Hi Falcon,

Try this [maybe you have already] - check your FSX\Scenery\World\Scenery folder for a bgl named AFX_ICAO_ALT.bgl [ICAO being your airport ICAO]. I've had AFX save these airport altitude bgl's in the past and they've screwed up the actual airport altitude... Worth a try eh. :salute:
Dave.
Yea Dave, I thought of that while I was reading over the posts again. I didn't see one and actually it was my understanding that once an elevation change was made in AFX it automatically wrote an "alt" elevation bgl to the World\Scenery folder. . .I guess not every time though.

[Meshman]

You need to delete the default flatten poly, as FSX will only recognize the first that it encounters unless there is an exclusion for it.

Default Airport_Background will set to 50' or 15.24m and that's where it's going to stay, until you exclude it. FWIW, I do all my terrain work in SBX and leave the airport stuff to the airport editors. I'm just that way!

[falcon409]

You need to delete the default flatten poly, as FSX will only recognize the first that it encounters unless there is an exclusion for it.
Default Airport_Background will set to 50' or 15.24m and that's where it's going to stay, until you exclude it. FWIW, I do all my terrain work in SBX and leave the airport stuff to the airport editors. I'm just that way!
Ok, well backing up here, that's what I do as well. I do the "exclude Airport Boundary" and the "AB_Flatten_MaskClassMap" as well as any landclass or water poly's in SBuilderX. The altitude I set the AB_Flatten to is the same as the airport elevation so everything matches (those were adjusted to 11m using "TCalcX"), but even before I did anything to the default, the airport was elevated. When I replaced it with the new AP and AFCAD, nothing changed. And so that's how I've gotten to this point. My only reason for doing a flatten in AFX was to see if it would have any effect, which it did not.

[Meshman]

I checked the stock airport (cause I don't know where it is?) in AFX and another editor. Both show the airport's elevation as being 50', which works out to 15.24m. Now I'll have to go wherever it is and double check.

Update: Yup, TCalc_003 shows 15.24m. For this area I have no other mesh active, so it's stock mesh and flat around the airport.

If you want to zip the SBuilderX .SBX file and the AFX file and attach it I can probably look at it later or sometime tomorrow. I have 3PD mesh for the area and can toggle it back on to see how it is impacting the airport.

[falcon409]

I checked the stock airport (cause I don't know where it is?) in AFX and another editor. Both show the airport's elevation as being 50', which works out to 15.24m. Now I'll have to go wherever it is and double check.
Update: Yup, TCalc_003 shows 15.24m. For this area I have no other mesh active, so it's stock mesh and flat around the airport.
If you want to zip the SBuilderX .SBX file and the AFX file and attach it I can probably look at it later or sometime tomorrow. I have 3PD mesh for the area and can toggle it back on to see how it is impacting the airport.
Thanks, I don't want you to have to mess with it and I've got "Danville" to finish anyways. I'll come back to this. 15.24 was what the original elevation was but after dropping down to the actual ground level of the rest of the terrain, it was 11m, so that's what I set the AFCAD and new AB to, didn't make a bit of difference. Something is overriding any adjustments I try to make and the funny part is that if I make the flatten a mile wide and mile long, that's how much area becomes elevated, if I take out the flatten, it's just the area covered by the parking ramp and not the Airport boundary. Very weird. Thanks for taking some time out to look at it though!!:salute: