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[langdon]

Hi, Me again.


I've been busily hacking the interface to allow me to import FSX runways... see the image...
It all functions ok except the runways hug the terrain.
This happens even if I manually create them.

I set the elevation and then pitch to zero but it's very rare that a runway comes out with the same altitude at both ends. Am I missing something?
Is it me or a bug, or was it just designed this way.?

Anyone?

Thanks,
L

[cameni]

It samples the terrain at both ends and interpolates between those altitudes. It was designed this way to fit runways to arbitrary terrain when people were placing them, otherwise you'd end up with runways carving into the terrain most of the time.

[HiFlyer]

There's also the problem that FSX runways, due to FSX mesh/terrain smoothing, are not necessarily at accurate elevations in the first place.

[langdon]

Any chance of including a flag on the $view.make_runway(w2, wb2, wt2, l2) function to honour the input elevation and not interpolate?




The images are KLAX and KSFO. (Los Angeles and San Francisco)
With KLAX Rwy 7R is actually below 7L by about 10 meters at one end and level with it at the other.

I agree that many airports ARE actually sloped and poorly represented in FSX but with a 'flag' on the function at least the importer could decide whether to choose flat or follow the terrain.

Runways like JFK, Hong Kong, San Francisco are all submerged in Outerra and definitely need to be elevated above the OT terrain level.

I had a go at leveling terrain before placing the runway but the terrain leveller works on too small an area to be practical. I haven't tried just elevating the start and end, I'll give it a go but at this point I have no  idea if I can automate that.

Anyway... a flag on that function would be REALLY handy.
(should I be putting this request in XTRAC ?)
Thanks,
L

[HiFlyer]

As for the submerged runways, I understand that the new elevation set will correct (hopefully) many of those issues, and go a lot towards correcting coastlines as well.

[langdon]

So....

By levelling a block at each end of each runway I kinda/sorta managed to get flat runways.

But now the big one. Munich Airport is about 16 square km.
Try doing that in 500 x 200 m blocks ! Added to that.. for the life of me, I can't seem to get them at the same elevation, even though I type the same exact elevation in the box each time and it's just impractical to manually elevatte and align 2560 slabs.

I of course had to try creating a 16 sq km object and level the terrain under that...FAIL..but i had to try.  The object worked, just not the leveling.


Oh and I did try hacking the sandbox interface code and adjusting the min/max numbers but that just made it nuts.. Gympie Australia is a total write-off now

I put this in this thread basically because it pertains to what I'm trying to achieve but if there's a better place, just let me know.

Any one have any ideas?

Thanks.
L

[HiFlyer]

I have been waiting for a wide area flattening tool (amongst other things!) for quite a while. Eventually it will be absolutely necessary for Outerra.

Otherwise, as I said in another thread "Outerra no does the flat!"

[langdon]

It's probably a long shot, but is it possible to directly edit the .wad file?

[cameni]

No sane way. Even if it was possible, it won't get you rid of the procedurally refined terrain below 90m grid.

The only way at the moment is via the roads (leveling is just a piece of road).

[bomber]

No sane way is a YES then....

OK,  can you explain this insane way,  I'd appreciate it...

PS. I have done this before in other sims, and yes it was insane there too.

[cameni]

Here WAD stands for Wavelet Data. These files contain structured layers of wavelet-compressed data, which are organized in a way that's suitable for on-the-fly decompression in engine and its terrain LOD system. They are produced by our map tool that chews a large amount of data and arranges it in this way.

I just didn't want to tell that direct editing of wad files was impossible

[bomber]

Don't you feel better for getting that off your chest

[langdon]

I pulled down a demo of Global Mapper in hopes of directly accessing the WAD data but I suspect I won't live long enough to figure out how all that works.

I've been creating 'leveled blocks' and then laying runways between them in an attempt to keep them at the same elevation from start to finish. It mostly works but sometimes fails. It's a bit 'hit or miss' and fairly frustrating. I then tried laying very wide runways ( found I could manipulate the .bix files to change the asphalt to conccrete etc..) but then I found that the 'level' blocks weren't level either. It seems you are interpolating them the same way you do with a runway?

A 500 x 200 block (road section actually) will start at one altitude and end up at something different. So that's just not going to work either.

So after all my mucking about, the bottom line is, we'll just have to wait till OT gives us a proper FLAT

[bomber]

Well where is the terrain height data kept then ?