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How do I make a flat slope?

D

dcmiller58

Messages
349
Hello all.

Over the weekend I attempted to make a dirt ramp from the shore of a lake to an airfield several meters away. The difference in elevation from the shore to the airfield is approximately 2 meters.

I created a polygon using four points; two with the airfield elevation and two with the shoreline elevation. The poly is a simple rectangle. I ordered the points NW, NE, SE, SW. (Does the order matter?)

I added a dirt landclass tag and that worked fine. But I wanted to accomplish a slope with a flat surface (such as a taxiway on an incline might look).

I tried to use the flatten tag but that gave odd results.

To be clear, the landclass tag only changed the texture and not the terrain.

Can this be done or am I trying something impossible in FSX?

Thank you,

Derrick
 
dcmiller58 said:
...

I tried to use the flatten tag but that gave odd results.

...

Can this be done or am I trying something impossible in FSX?
Click to expand...

Assuming that you're on 1.07...

Did you try, in fsx-kml, to specify the heights (elevation) of your 4 points individually ?

Click on the vertices tab...

eg

pt 1: 10 m
pt 2: 10 m
pt 3: 0 m
pt 4: 0 m

Good luck...


As for the order - if you created the rectangle in Google Earth, you automatically get ALL points listed 'clockwise'. Good idea to set the flag to automatically reverse the order for any polygon holes you 'might' need to create.

Course, if you 'hand-write' your kml file from scratch - using notepad, then you might manually already make the holes go anti-clockwise.

I stick to Google Earth, myself...
 
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dcmiller58 said:
Can this be done or am I trying something impossible in FSX?
Click to expand...

Are you asking if you can make your ramp "hard" so that the aircraft doesn't sink through it?

I do believe that some designers have achieved this--sort of; look in the Showroom for the airport KNIP, which features ramps leading up from the water.

In that case, I think the designer had to use a stair-step approach with flattens. It makes for a bumpy ride up or down the ramp, but since we can't specify sloped flattens in FS (pretty sure we can't), that's what we have.
 
Hi all.

Of course you can have a sloped flatten. Assign whatever altitude you wish to the vertices. They are as "hard" as any other terrain.

In order to change the landclass, you'll need to make another landclass texture poly to go along with the sloped flatten.

I'm not that familiar with FSX KML, but I'm sure it is possible... it is with the SDK, and with SBuilderX.

Dick
 
Yes, I was actually trying to make a "slopped flatten". There is a concrete ramp scenery object that I tried to make work but you have to set the elevation below ground level and that gave inconsistent results.

As silly as it sounds, all I was trying to do was create a way to drive my amphibian into the lake that had a little more elegance than simply dropping off the edge of the of the shoreline.

I assume in WWII the Goose was driven into the water but I am not sure that is true. I also don't know you any other amphibian or float plane is placed in the water.

A ramp just sounded like a good idea
 
Hi, Dick.

I was using FSX_KML 1.06. I did give the correct elevations to each vertex; two at the top of the slope at the same elevation and two at the bottom with lower elevations.

When I ran the compile using airport background flatten tag on that poly I got one of those unusual towers shooting up into the sky. That is why I thought the order of the points might matter. From NW to SW they were High, Low, Low, High.

Of course, the landclass poly just changed the texture on the terrain so I don't think that was my problem.

I don't have the files here at work or I would post them. But it was a hand edited KML file I used.

What flatten tag should I be using? The airport background flatten was the only one I saw.

Derrick
 
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All the ramps at KNIP are is a platform( attached to a GMAX plane) sloped from the Seawall to the water. As the angle of the ramp decreases, the bumpy ride goes away.

I used the "Airport_Backgrounds_Flatten" tag to lower the land below the seawall. Just made the polygon and edited the water side vertices to the correct height.

JimD
 
rhumbaflappy said:
Hi all.

Of course you can have a sloped flatten. Assign whatever altitude you wish to the vertices. They are as "hard" as any other terrain.

In order to change the landclass, you'll need to make another landclass texture poly to go along with the sloped flatten.

I'm not that familiar with FSX KML, but I'm sure it is possible... it is with the SDK, and with SBuilderX.

Dick
Click to expand...

Yes... just copy the flatten and assign it the appropriate landclass poly tag.

If you find your landclass poly is not showing its probably because the render order for the landclass poly (in terrain.cfg) is too low and some other landclass poly is overwriting it. So you would need to create a hole first, eg

Flatten poly
Hole poly
Landclass poly
 
Thanks, gentlemen.

The sloped flatten worked after I discovered a missing decimal point or two in the KML file. Hand editing corrected it.

MatthewS, I am grabbing 1.07 as we speak. I am grateful for your help.

Derrick
 
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