Howto Fixing a Common Pavement Anomaly Using ADE

[allardjd 1,853]

Today, while making an airport diagram for SKPC Puerto Carreno - Puerto Carreno, Colombia, I came across this...

Looking at it in ADE, I saw this...

Note that this is a stock FSX airport, unedited by man or beast. This is the way it came out of the MS box.

Not being quite sure what to do with this mess, I fired off an e-mail to Jon Masterson at Scruffy Duck Software. Jon is the main man for the freeware Airport Design Editor (ADE) airport editor, which is a must-have successor to the late, great AFCAD. ADE picked up where AFCAD left off, including the ability to create or edit airports in FSX and P3D as well as FS9. If you don't have it yet, you can get it here.

http://www.airportdesigneditor.co.uk/

Anyway, after receiving a prompt return e-mail from Jon and answering a few of his questions, he was soon onto the problem. It seems that whoever (or whatever - it may have been an automated process) created this airport specified a runway width of 98 feet, but set the runway links to 197 feet. Jon suggested that I reset the runway link width property to 98 feet.

These are screenshots showing the separate entities, selected in ADE. The runway itself is 98 feet wide but the width parameter for the Runway Links (Taxipath - Runway Type) are set at 197 feet, adversely affecting the intersections between the taxiway links and the runway links.

Note that each of the several runway links should be reset. Multiple selections can be made in ADE by holding down the shift key to select each one. Right clicking one of the selected links will bring up a context menu and choosing Edit Object from that opens the Edit Box, with a red "Multiple Selection" flag at the top left to indicate that the edit will be performed on all the selected objects. This is a very slick feature, by the way.

After making the corrections Jon suggested, a matter of a few minutes, this final shot is how the corrected area looks in ADE.

Note that ADE will not let you overwrite a stock airport in FS. You must save the edited airport to another file name (typically an ad3 file, in the latest version of ADE), compile the saved airport in ADE and put the resulting bgl file in another scenery layer with a higher priority than the default airports. The new bgl typically goes in Addon Scenery/Scenery folder but you might instead wish to use another subfolder under that or another location entirely. In any case, the bgl file must be in a folder named "scenery", and be referenced by an active Scenery Layer in the FSX Scenery Library (FSX Main Menu -> Settings -> Scenery Library).

I find a lot fewer of these kinds of scenery anomalies in FSX than in FS9, but there are still some. Driving them out when you find them is easy with ADE and is really kind of fun. I hope this might be of some help to others down the road.

Sincere thanks to Jon Masterson, who knew immedately what was causing the problem. Without him I'd probably still be looking for the fix.

John

[Christopher Low 63]

ADE is great for sorting out problems like that. I have used it quite extensively over the past couple of years to make modifications to lots of addon airports, so feel free to ask me if you have any other issues.

[needles 1,013]

Hi John,

Just found your post here and thought I'd seen that anomaly somewhere else.

It happens to me on almost every attempt I have at designing airfields.

It is, as you point out, pretty easy to fix, once you know where you've gone astray.

The results are great once you figure it out.

I think I did my finding out by accident mostly and when I am able to use my flight pc again, I will be posting my fictitious Drumnadrochit Airfield.

I love ADE and I'm missing using it.

I think it's time to buy a decent laptop, that way I can design wherever I am.

Cheers

[brett 2,314]

Thanks for a little insight into a program I have on my computer but have yet to wander into yet John.