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Taxiways

jvile

jvile

Messages
8,893
Jon

I would like to make a request concerning the Color table George has submitted and being used on the current ADE build.

The closed taxiways I feel should be changed to something other then red. One reason is that FS does not honor a closed taxiway unless a taxiway linkline is seperated which is normally done in FS by overlapping 2 blue nodes.

Red is also one of the most visible colors on a Grid and should be used for linklines that show something different from other type link lines.

In one of the future builds of ADE you are going to start showing the taxiway linkline by the taxiway letter number assigned. This is important so we can make sure a taxiway has the correct Letter/Number (example A1, B2, C4) designated and Red color does a good job for this.

It is also important that when a parallel taxiway runs the full length of a runway with many turn offs that we can easily identify any missing linklines that are not lettered correctly.

Even with all that we also need to discuss segmented taxiway link lines. This is an area not known by many airport designers and AFCAD has the ability to destroy segmentation which once that is done it can not be reconstructed without hand writting the XML.

FS designed many large airports with taxiway segmentation for reasons that need to be discussed in the near future and to see if ADE will have the capability to add segmentation rather then destroy it like AFCAD.

My proposal is to set the color RED aside for now and use when ADE can show a Taxiway link line from a dropdown menu that selects the taxiway Letter and or Number.
 
Thanks Jim

I will change CLOSED to Salmon Pink for the time being :)

I see that I have set off on another whole new adventure!
 
A good example of segmentation is 0302/28170 (KJFK)

Think of segmentation as a real world controller eyes. FS needs a way to know that a plane on one side of KJFK is not going to have any interference with a Plane on the other side of JFK even though they are on the same Letter taxiway (A).

There are 9 A's and 11 B's in a circle around JFK (JFK has many segments). Each segment of the same letter becomes a individual taxiway so ATC sees the letter A in 9 different places around the airport.

Many continue to think that MS made some kind of a mistake so with AFCAD they combine all the A's as one continous Taxiway leaving just one A and the other 8 they delete. This causes chaous for taxi purposes because ATC now no longer knows that one plane is a mile away from the other plane and tells one to hold when there is no conflict.
 
Hi Jim

OK that is something that I did not know. I realized that there were a lot of taxiway links with the same letter but it did not occur to me that they might not all be related. Something to think about for ADE going forward. I guess coloring a whole linked taxiway with the Red color is what you referred to earlier. So clicking on one link could show the whole taxiway with that name?
 
Very interesting Jim. Lee seemed to think that multiple designators was a mistake:

Many of the stock airports have duplicate entries in the designator list, for example there may be three entries for taxiway "B" representing three different sections of taxiway B. This is a byproduct of the tool MS used to design the stock airports and does not appear to cause a problem. AFCAD won't allow you to enter more than one copy of the same designator.

George
 
At the time Lee or anyone else was not aware of the purpose of segmentation.

Both Reggie and I did test over 4 years ago and posted our results on the old PAI forum.

We also noted to the AFCAD designers at PAI not to delete segments but I don't think it reached out to the entire community.

You will also see segments on long parallel taxiways such as KATL and on one taxiways leading out to a single end runway. This helps eliminated head to heads in FS9 and FSX.

The problem with AFCAD is once the segments are deleted and combined into one continuos taxiway there is no way of correcting it short of starting a new AFCAD from the default AP or correct with hand writting XML.

I am seeing people post that FSX has a better taxi scheme then FS9. I don't see any difference other then many are still using a virgin default taxiway system rather then a AFCAD that someone destroyed the segmentation.
 
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So clicking on one link could show the whole taxiway with that name?
Click to expand...

No, I mean to say keep them seperate. If I select the first "A" in the AFCAD dropdown taxiway list it just shows that individual segment. I need to know where each segment is located because some have a different taxiway letter between 2 same segments (example A, A, A D2, A, A) and some segments are made up of more then one taxiline. The segment has has a taxiline count associated with it.

A 3 <----- Count is 3 taxilines
A 1 <------- Count 1
A 12 <------ Count is 12 taxilines
A 4 <-------- Count 4

C4 has no space so that is a taxiway letter/number and not a count
 
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Jim
Are you saying, have something along the lines of Afcad2,
where you have a "Taxiway Designators List" with a dropdown menu, then when you highlight each Taxiway segment in it, it changed to Yellow, regardless of the Letter?
Yes! many of us made that mistake, of, what we thought was tidying up
all those Taxiways, till you found that it caused problems with head to head bottlenecks,
One thing i've found at many FSX airports, MS have not connected some Taxiways at the nodes but fall a fraction short, so it appears visually, it is connected, making it a closed Taxiway, these are showing up in ADE as Red, which tells me its not connected, i have no problem it being pink as it needs a colour to let us know its not connected
Ray
 
Ray

AFCAD uses yellow for the most part as a property setting. If you click on any one item on the GRID it turns yellow or you can use the rubber band method and turn everything yellow.

Lee used yellow as a caution color to say you are in a selection that can change something.

View mode is entirely a different issue and that is what I am refering to. There is a view mode drop down menu that toggles many different parts of the GRID. Reggie has already eluted to this being a possible option with ADE also. I don't see any reason to show everything on a Grid just because a Scenery Design program can show it. Example would be to keep taxiway signs off the GRID until I toggle them on simular to how AFCAD toggles.

Taxiway colors when seen on the GRID as per the default are Green (Apron Linklines) and Blue (Taxiway Lines) but I know you already know all of this.

If you use the LIST dropdown menu and choose Taxi Designators that is were the count is located when link lines is displayed and also turns the Taxiway link line yellow if you select one. This again is not the area of concern.

Now go all the way over to the right and open the blank window with the dropdown arrow. If you select one of these taxiway Letters or select the "BLANK" everything associated with that link turns the color RED.

This is what is important. If you select "BLANK" every link line that does not have a Letter/Number turns red including both apron and taxiway link lines. It becomes very easy to see if the default airport or a designed airport has problems.

This is the list that also will show the segmentations as a RED color. Only the segmented letter selected turns RED and not the entire combined Taxiway Link Lines.

If you use the AFCAD program and open KJFK, the method of using RED when selecting "BLANK" very quickly shows you that JFK taxiways are missing parts of the "A" segmentations and needs to be fixed.
 
Thank you Jim, now I understand where your coming from.......
and i see your concern, and Red is the colour you wish this to remain as, and rather not to be used elsewhere........
thats why i have no problem with closed staying (like Jon has already done) as pink
So this is another part that we need to be included in ADE, the dropdown menu for Taxi Designators...........
I guess it's all so easy to load Jon up with more work :)
Ray
 
I'm not sure I understand all the foregoing discussion but I will cretainly follow Jims' guide in AFCAD. As far a filtering is concerned that is already implementable in ADE as shown by the test View Filters for parking spaces and Starts. The next build will turn taxi signs on and off as well


So this is another part that we need to be included in ADE, the dropdown menu for Taxi Designators...........
Click to expand...

I plan on using the List Arrangements in AFCAD as the basis for ADE - we can then update/change them to suit user needs


I guess it's all so easy to load Jon up with more work
Click to expand...
Amen to that :) However, if you guys are a little patient with me then I will do my best (I have a full time day job - two actually).
 
Jon, in the attached picture, could you tell me if the arrows on the taxilinks (circled 3 of them) have any meaning?

taxiarrow.jpg
 
Yes they should show the direction between the start and end nodes as defined in the Bgl File so that the arrow points to the End Node of the pair. Whether that has any meaning in terms of beharior in FS I don't know.
 
scruffyduck said:
Yes they should show the direction between the start and end nodes as defined in the Bgl File so that the arrow points to the End Node of the pair. Whether that has any meaning in terms of beharior in FS I don't know.
Click to expand...

Taxiway vertex order does not matter in FSX.

-Doug
 
There was (at least) one situation in FS9 where taxiway link orientation made a difference that I believe still applies in FSX. That is, in "plumbing" applications, one could suppress the display of a hold-short node by making the width of one of the links connecting to the HS node =0 - I believe the one leading away from the node (I'm not at my home machine so I can't check.) Both links had to be of similar orientation (i.e., one pointing into the node, the other pointing out.) Further, I recall the direction of the connecting links determined the orientation of the HS node (which could be reversed if necessary). I suspect this latter characteristic no longer applies in FSX, since I had to reverse a number of HS nodes when I converted my FS9 AFCAD for use in FSX.

Of course, one can now directly suppress display of hold-short nodes so, perhaps I'm just fortunate the old (FS9) logic still works.

Don
 
gadgets said:
There was (at least) one situation in FS9 where taxiway link orientation made a difference that I believe still applies in FSX. That is, in "plumbing" applications, one could suppress the display of a hold-short node by making the width of one of the links connecting to the HS node =0 - I believe the one leading away from the node (I'm not at my home machine so I can't check.) Both links had to be of similar orientation (i.e., one pointing into the node, the other pointing out.) Further, I recall the direction of the connecting links determined the orientation of the HS node (which could be reversed if necessary). I suspect this latter characteristic no longer applies in FSX, since I had to reverse a number of HS nodes when I converted my FS9 AFCAD for use in FSX.

Of course, one can now directly suppress display of hold-short nodes so, perhaps I'm just fortunate the old (FS9) logic still works.

Don
Click to expand...

That does remind me: The exception that proves the rule is that of holdshorts. The vertex order of holdshorts (which use the taxiway mechanism) DOES matter, as they only stop traffic from one side (can't remember which side).

-Doug
 
I thought the vertex order determined (at least for AFCAD) which was left and right to do the striping on the proper side...the first time.

Must be just me.

Jim
 
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