Poly-poly-poly

[falcon409]

I'm glad I've got two wide screen monitors, lol. . .with all this work in SbuilderX/FSX/AFX, I'm keeping three programs open at the same time to get everything corrected and reloaded and it's still giving me problems.

Two Falls is the airport I'm working on and from the air it looks fine, but get down on the ground and the rwy disappears. If I slew along the ground from the airport background to the rwy., the rwy is about 5 feet lower. I have a poly in place via SBX at a specific altitude. I set the rwy alt the same, but no matter what I set the rwy altitude at it remains 5 feet below. Driving me nuts here.

[jdhaenens]

In AFX, make sure the Airport Reference Altitusde is the same as the runway altiutude.

[falcon409]

In AFX, make sure the Airport Reference Altitude is the same as the runway altitude.

Yea, been doin' that but it seems that no matter how many times I check the altitude of the Airport background, then set the rwy and airport altitudes the same, when I get back into FSX the rwy is 5 feet lower, lol.

[Meshman]

If you've changed the airport's elevation, AFX can't handle the necessary steps to generate a preload file to override the default setting. Once an airport's elevation is read, ie from an APX file, it stays at that elevation.

[falcon409]

I just looked at the airport and rwy elevations in AFX and they are set at 115.672m. . .the AB_Flatten_MaskClassMap_Exclude AutoGen poly from SBX is set at 113.050. Given that, shouldn't the rwy actually be sitting higher (not lower) than the ground?

[falcon409]

If you've changed the airport's elevation, AFX can't handle the necessary steps to generate a preload file to override the default setting. Once an airport's elevation is read, ie from an APX file, it stays at that elevation.

Meaning what?

[jdhaenens]

FSX reads the first .bgl it finds when referencing the altitude of the airport. That .bgl is normally in the world scenery folder, so if your AFX file says a lower altitude than the world scenery .bgl file involved...tough stuff...underground runways result. A higher altitude will generally work. I check the default altitude with TCalcX then make sure all the cvx's and AFX files match. If you insist on a lower elevation, you need to make a "dummy" stub file to put in the world scenery folder.

[falcon409]

FSX reads the first .bgl it finds when referencing the altitude of the airport. That .bgl is normally in the world scenery folder, so if your AFX file says a lower altitude than the world scenery .bgl file involved...tough stuff...underground runways result. A higher altitude will generally work. I check the default altitude with TCalcX then make sure all the cvx's and AFX files match. If you insist on a lower elevation, you need to make a "dummy" stub file to put in the world scenery folder.

ok, but the altitude of the rwy isn't lower, it's the same height and shouldn't the flatten then dictate the rwy height? So if the flatten is at 113.00m and I set the rwy height and airport elevation as 113.00, shouldn't everything match?

That's not the case though, according to the AFX file, the rwy should actually be about 5 feet above the ground based on the current altitude setting of the ground outside the rwy surface. By the way I'm running Windows7 and apparently TCalcX doesn't like that, it says it is unable to find simconnect which I know is installed and functioning fine, so I have to use the elevations as read from FSX to set my altitudes.

[falcon409]

Ok, ignoring the fact that the rwy continues to sit 5 feet lower than the terrain, I went into AFX and added taxiways and roads. Take a look at the screen. Soooooo, does the rwy need to come up, or does the poly/flatten need to come down?

[jdhaenens]

The Airport file will always determine the height of the runway. This is the combined Reference Altitude/Runway Altitude number. The reason: The altitude is not sampled accurately enough with terrain, but can be sampled very accurately in relatively small areas like airports... even finer in buildings and aircraft.

Increase the airport reference altitude and the runway altitude until it is even with the flatten. It's easier to control.

Jim

[falcon409]

. . . . .Increase the airport reference altitude and the runway altitude until it is even with the flatten. It's easier to control.
Jim

The rwy altitude was already higher, I went into SBX and adjusted the flatten up 5ft and everything looks fine now.