• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Problems with flattening

M

Michael 2

Messages
10
Country
ca-britishcolumbia
I am re-doing a default airport in FSX and have started with a map of photoscenery for the entire airport and surrounding area. Using sbuilderx I then created an exclude airport boundaries polygon and a flatten polygon applying the altitude of the surrounding terrain. The photoscenery shows up OK, but I cannot get the flatten to show in the compilied bgl in game. The terrain elevation continues to slope up to the original airport boundary as it did before starting the project.

I wonder if anyone has suggestions as to what might be causing this problem. I should mention that I have FS Genesis mesh installed and Cloud9 landclass. My new scenery is showing at priority 1 in the scenery library.

I am new to scenery design so it is possible I am overlooking something fairly obvious.
 
Hi,

What kind of altitude did you use in your new flatten? If the altitude is different from the airport (as defined in the XML code), then the altitude defined in the airport would still have an effect.
 
Thanks for your reply.

I lowered the airport boundary polygon by about 10 meters from the default aiport altitude. It doesn't appear to have made any change at all.

I realized I might end up with elevated runways, but I am taking this one step at a time. I have been trying to find out how to change the aiport reference altitude and runway heights to see if this is what is preventing the flatten from working, but I am having a hard time finding out how to find, create or edit the relevant xml file.
 
Could you run blgcomp.exe on your flatten poly from the command window (Start> Run> cmd) and then report what it says?
 
Thanks for the replies. Meshman, I've seen more or less what you suggest in other posts, but you're dealing with a complete newbie who has been doing this for only three days. How do I create the XML file, i.e. what program do I paste your template into? I think I can figure out how to fill out your template and compile it into a bgl (presumably the SDK will tell me the latter).

Sorry for being so obtuse.

Can I simply paste your text into a text file, fill in the blanks, save and then give the file an xml extension? Does it matter what I name the xml file?
 
Last edited:
Well, I have now lowered everything except the original airport boundary elevation. The airfield buildings, apron, taxiways and runway textures are all lowered, but I have a kind of burm around the original perimeter and my flatten still appears to be doing nothing. Also, while I have sunk the runway textures in fsx planner, the ground above them still is at the original elevation. You can only see the runway textures where taxi ways have lowered the terrain at their intersection.

Incidentally, I installed fsx planner and found it will create the necessary header xml file automatically if you wish to change the airfield elevation.

I am going to delete and redraw my exclude and flatten polygons as they just don't seem to be working.
 
I have been drawing my exclude ab polygon so as to cover entirely the old boundary. Is that a problem?

I don't think sbuilder is compiling my polygons at all. I can't see any when I view my bgl in tmf viewer. Furthermore, I tried selecting only the polygons (without the photoscenery map)before compiling and no bgl is produced when I compile. So the problem must be with sbuilder.
 
Meshman...........following this thread, you made my day!!! Your above "template" is what I have been needing for a long time...:):):)
 
I really appreciate this information Meshman; I think I am getting some insight into the problem.

I had assumed that both the vector scenery and map scenery were all being compiled into a single bgl in the tools/work folder. Am I correct in inferring from your post that the polygons are being compiled into separate bgls in the shape folder? The one tutorial I read mentioned that "files" would be created in the shapes folder, but never said these would form part of the finished scenery to go into the scenery addon folder.

Am I on the right track now? Will multiple scenery bgls be produced from a single sbuilderx project?
 
Okay, now my problem, has an obvious solution, and I've also learned how to alter the elevation of an airport while I've been at it. Thanks again.

I'll see if can get everything working tonight.
 
Well, now it's all working as it should. The root of the problem was that I wasn't putting the bgl from the shapes folder into FSX. However, this thread has also sorted out for me everything I needed to know to properly change the entire airport elevation.

My thanks to everyone who contributed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top