Taxiways and polygons with AFCAD2.21

[herbie49]

Hi,
I made taxiways and polygons with AFCAD2 when I go to my airport I can see the taxiways and the polygons but if I switch to top view the are gone, same if I look out to any side I can see them but only if I zoom to 0.50
also if I taxi they are running in front of me.
If I approach the airport I can see them also.
By the way it is not a stock airport. Anyone can help me please.
Thanks herbie49

[RollerBall]

You have a height/altitude problem.

Personally I think it's much too premature to be trying to create airports with AFCAD2. There are far too many problems that we are exploring and trying to solve elsewhere.

Oh - and BTW - AFCAD can't do anything about height right now.

[HolgerS]

Hi Herbie:

well, let's try being constructive here... (frankly, I'm getting a bit tired about the "can't be done" attitude re AFCAD2 that seems to pop up lately. If nobody experiments, how are we going to find out what works and what doesn't?).


If you're adding features or an overlay to an existing airport I found that setting the elevation 0.1m lower than the existing one removed the texture bleeding.

If you're starting from scratch you'll probably need a flat surface. The best tool for making flatten switches is Steve Greenwood's FSTflatten, available here: http://www.fs-traveler.com/flatten.shtml Not sure whether the exact same elevation will do the trick or whether you need a tiny difference between the AFCAD2 settings and the flatten switch. Let us know what works.

BTW, FS9 does allow for sloping flattened areas but you'd have to code them yourself (and I'm not sure how AI would behave on a sloped surface, even if it's hardened). There are a couple of threads about the FS9 LWM file structure in the avsim scenery design forum and Jim Keir's LWMViewer would be the utility to help you with the task: http://www.jimkeir.co.uk/LWMViewer.html

Good luck!

Cheers, Holger

P.S.: if you want to add AFCAD2 overlays or are interested in AI choppers, floatplanes, and boats, here's a recent post of mine: http://www.flightsimmer.com/forums/show ... eadid=7939

[RollerBall]

Sorry Holger

wanting something to happen doesn't make it....

[HolgerS]

Me again:

"Sorry Holger

wanting something to happen doesn't make it...."

You're right - there are things that won't work no matter how hard we try but I don't think Herbie's issue is one of them. My point was to not give up without pulling all the stops we can think of.

I just made a small AFCAD2 airfield from scratch, a re-build of my fictitious Central Park "heliport" of FS2002.

Sure enough, with apron and runway set up as described in the AFCAD2 docs the view problems are there, i.e., disappearing RW and markings.

So I used Steve's FSTflatten to make a flatten switch .bgl for the airport. That made the airfield area nice and flat but didn't help with the texture bleeding (I didn't try different elevations but now don't think that would work the way I suggested in my previous post). Nevertheless, a flatten is a good way to start with when making airports from scratch.

Then I tried a variation of what I did with my AFCAD2 overlays, namely setting the RW elevation to 0.1ft higher than the airports base elevation. Bingo! No more disappearing RW or texture bleeding. And even with squinting I couldn't spot the 1.5-inch difference in elevation :-)

I half expected that the taxiway markings would now disappear in the RW area but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe someone else can test this but I don't see any negative side effects of this tweak. I'd call this a band-aid or patch until we (or Lee) get better control over the layering system of airport facilities but it seems to fix the problem Herbie describes.

I can't believe that no one else would have thought of this before though RollerBall's firm answer seems to indicate this.

On to the next issue...

Cheers, Holger

[herbie49]

Hi Holger
Thanks for your info.
I tried myself to fix it and I have done it before I read the forum. In FSSC I had an elevation of 273 ft. in AFCAD I put the same elevation and there I had the problem, I could not see the taxiways, I changed the elevation in AFCAD now to 273.5 ft. now I can see everything in any view.
Herbie

[RollerBall]

That's interesting. The height parameter in AFCAD2 has been shown not to be effective at present. It doesn't work the same way as in AFCAD1 where you could easily adjust the level of the airport up or down.

Even on 2nd Jan there was a post over on the Avsim MS Scenery Design problem  about height problems called 'sinking AI in custom sceneries - any solution found yet' which refers to these problems

Be interesting to see how AI works on your airport but at present it looks as though the most effective solution is direct XML coding based on the new scenery SDK.

[bm]

I think you can adjust the height in AFCAD roller, I had a problem with sinking AI even though I had an Area16n in FSSC. I remember changing it in afcad and it working after that.

[bm]

I must have remembered incorrectly, no matter what I try now it just won't work!!!!!!! :o >:(