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Modifying Default FSX airports: causing Jetways not to appear?

S

skyguy414

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66
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unitedstates
Hi all,

I have been researching the forums trying to find a solution to my problem I am having with an airport I am trying to 'fix up' by moving parking positions and jetways and adding aprons that aren't in the default version.

I thought it would be most simple to just modify the existing default FSX airport. So I made my changes and compiled with no errors.

The problem: In FSX, the new/modified aprons and parking spots are correctly placed, but the new jetways do not appear.

I have flagged the "delete all jetways" in the prepare options and that does delete all the default jetways.

Any suggestions?

UPDATE:

Since posting (yes just a few minutes ago), I decided to start from scratch and load the default airport once again (with no modifications) and try placing just one new jetway to the airport and it worked. So it seems the problem was more something with the other xml I was editing that was causing the jetways not to show up. Another issue I failed to mention in the previous post is the previous xml I was editing also caused all the other scenery objects to disappear. While editing xml (I tried using the newest version 20 this morning), I noticed the file had an exclusion rectangle associated with it. It just so happened the objects which were being excluded fit pretty much exactly within this newly discovered rectangle. Using FSX Planner, I deleted that exclusion rectangle, thinking that was the cause of the other objects disappearing. I compiled the airport w/o the exclusion rectangle but the result didn't change, the objects are still missing. I tried opening the xml file in notepad and couldn't find anything regarding an exclude rectangle in it.

So my new questions are:
Is it more likely the missing jetways I was trying to add is a result of some exclusion within the xml?
What else should I be looking at as a root of the missing objects if deleting the exclusion rectangle within FSX Planner didn't seem to work?

Thanks for your patience and help! I really appreciate it!
 
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I think you have encountered the infamous "jetways don't disappear" issue.

It is not fully understood why jetways sometimes don't disappear with the flag set, and then the next time they do. Knowledgeable people here seem to think it has something to do with caching and so forth.

Sometimes a full restart of the sim is needed to clear up old jetways.
 
Can you post the xml file you are using? That may help is determining the cause of the problem.

-Russell
 
Hello,

I encounter the same problem with my scenery, I find that the cause is a exclusion area but it was not on the xml file that I was workin in fsplanner, it was on anhoter bgl I was compiled for other part of the scenery, nothing to do with the airport, it was a part of the city next to the airport, I found in other forums that the jetways in FSX did not appear if thte is any exclusion that cover the location of the jetway, even in anhoter bgl, if it is in the same scenery folder, or in a scenery folder with more priority, I resolve the problem sending my scenery to the top of the list on the scenery configuration and taking out all the others bgls I have in the same scenery folder, then I will add one by one these bgls and checking if the jetways was displaying, when I notice that they dissapear I check the file added and found the exclusion so I eliminate an recompile.

Hope this help you :)
 
An exclusion rectangle has nothing to do with a airport, city, region or country.

All Exclusions are placed above any airport header meaning you can have one master bgl file with every exclusion for the entire world and that will work.

mrriveras as explained the problem and it still exsit in FSX SP1.

If an exclusion exsit for the Lat/Lon box then your new Jetway will not show up. Most do not understand that only the reference of a object needs excluding but instead they make one big rectangle to decrease their work load.

The Jetway problem was discovered back in Oct of last year and has to do with that particular mdl that cannot nest its reference spot inside an exclusion.

Any other type GIUD or Model mdl will showup inside the exclusion rectangle except a new Jetway Animated default model mdl.

If you have a 3rd party scenery that used an exclusion for something then you need to contact the designer and explain that his exclusion is too big for what is being excluded. It is better to have multiple small exclusion rather then one big one.

It is also best if the designer places all the small exclusions into the default master xml so others can find them when needed.
 
Thanks for the explaination. But how is it another AFCAD bgl I downloaded off AVSIM for the same airport works just fine and shows all the modified jetways of that particular AFCAD but mine does not work? There is no difference in what scenery is activated or not when I have mine installed versus the one that does work.
 
skyguy414

Inside the XML that you posted you are telling FSX to block out all the default Jetways by using the deleteAllJetways="TRUE" statement.

You have now only added back to your XML 13 Gate_C Jetways so that is all that is going to show up if there are no exclusions.

Make sure you copy over ALL default Jetways from the APX.bgl if you want ALL Jetways to show up in your scenery.
 
Jim & Everyone,

Progress is being made. I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out why the jetways weren't showing up and just by chance during one of my test runs with FSX, I started slewing around the airport and happened to find my jetways 1288 Meters above the ground, floating. 1288 Meters is also the field altitude of the airport I am working on. I am not sure if they were there this whole time or not, but changing the properties of each jetway and changing the altitude to 0 fixes the issue and they all show up where they belong, on the ground.

So is FSX Planner auto populating the "altitude" box within the jetway settings to field elevation, or is it just on my computer? Or it could be that the box "Altitude is bgl". I tested it with other airports to see if adding a jetway would auto populate it's altitude to field elevation and altitude is agl set as true and it did. Anyone else experience this?

So 1 of 2 of my proplems are solved! Great news!

I have my jetways now, but I am still having problems with the library objects disappearing with my new bgl. To make sure, I de-activated all add on scenery in my scenery library and put the new bgl in the addon scenery/scenery folder, and even with default scenery only, the objects are gone.

The airport I am working on, KSLC, was custom built by Microsoft for FSX and has custom objects and buildings in the vicinity. It appears only the custom objects are disappearing. Generic buildings seem to stay in place. So this problem I have yet to solve.

Again, thanks to you all for your help thus far.

-James
 
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skyguy414 said:
So is FSX Planner auto populating the "altitude" box within the jetway settings to field elevation, or is it just on my computer? Or it could be that the box "Altitude is bgl". I tested it with other airports to see if adding a jetway would auto populate it's altitude to field elevation and altitude is agl set as true and it did. Anyone else experience this?
Click to expand...

FSX Planner does have an option to automatically set the altitude of objects to that of the airport. This can be turned on or off in the preferences dialog. I will have to check to see if there is a bug when it comes to settings the altitude of jetways.

-Russell
 
Rusell,

I may have misspoke in my earlier post. Now when I open the jetway settings, all the settings make sense. The ones with altitude set at 0 and "Altitude is agl" set to True show up on the ground. Which I assume is the way it should.

Going back to the xml I uploaded, it appears the altitude was set to field elevation with the agl set to true.

So I guess it was a problem with that particular xml I created, not FSX planner itself. But yet I don't remember tinkering with either of those boxes before I uploaded it to this thread. Hmm...

Just to clarify if anyone else is having similar issues, make sure to pay attention to these two boxes in your jetway settings.

Anyways, sorry for the confusion.

Thanks again everyone for your help! :)
 
The element tag for

altitudeIsAgl=

can be set to "TRUE" or "FALSE" and it does not matter. However what does matter is what happens to

alt="0.000F"

If altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" then alt="0.000F" must always be present because the XML compiled to bgl is going to tell the dll to set the scenery object at the ARP Airport altitude and not at the MSL (Mean Sea Level) altitude.

The MS default in most cases is always "TRUE" and "0.00Meter or Feet (F) optional.

There may be many times we would want the altitudeIsAgl="FALSE" and then set the alt="n.nnnF" which then has to be MSL.

Example:
I want a 5 story parking garage to only show 2 visible story's. I then can bury the first 3 storys into the ground so they don't show. If you have my KATL for FSX you will see this technique used for both the parking garage and the Control Tower which I set the base of the Tower on top of a building. The KATL Control Tower is the tallest in the world so using a agl "FALSE" and then raising a default FSX Tower (MSL) to sit on top a building gives me the correct Tower window height.

I also use this same technique for how high I want an antenna to show above ground.

The curved approach leadin lights for my FS9 KAI TAK 98 airport uses many antenna's at different alt="n.nnF" so the leadin lights for the curved runway IGS approach RWY 13 slope downward at a 3 degree decline toward the runway.

When a Utility decompiler like bgl2xml.exe exposes all the XML element tags then it is up to the airport designer to understand what each tag changes. The SDK does not explain what happens if you use an option but only explains what the options are.
 
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