Parking and making changes

[captain.cupacke]

Hi All,

I've been away from flight sim for a while but now making a come back.

In the time away from it I've forgotten a few things one of which is this...

 

I'm wanting to alter the parking and taxi routes for the apron of GCRR (Lanzarote)

I've installed the payware "FWI Canary Islands" which covers this airport but I just cannot find

the file in the scenery folder.

Am I correct in thinking i'm looking for an ADE file?

I've looked in the "scenery - world - scenery" folder as well.

It must have one as most aircraft are correctly positioned on stand and taxi correctly.

I do airport apron editing with "Airport Design Editor 175" by Don Grovestine

 

Thanks for any ideas/ answers!Adrian

[longbreak754]

Hi Adrian,

 

Welcome back to simming.........

 

You are correct in assuming that you can use ADE to make changes. I don't have the product in question but the file you need to locate will depend in part on how the airport has been 'built' by the developer. It may have one big master .bgl file with everything in it or, more likely as it is payware, a series of individual .bgl files covering things like the runway/taxiways/aprons, scenery objects (like buildings etc) and possible airport background files. WRT the runway/taxiway part - it is usual to have them in a single 'main' file but some developers create separate runway, taxiways and apron files. Not sure in this case, but having taken a gander at a number of product info pages posted on a number of webshop sites, you may find that the construction of the airport may have been broken into a number of such files.

 

A few observations........First - based on reading the product info page, a word of caution - any changes you make may affect the way the overall product works if the developer has added any 'hidden' features/processes - rare but still sometimes happens.

 

Second - make copies of the original .bgl files for the airport and use these to load into ADE for editing. They are most probably located within the Scenery subfolder of the main folder that the scenery was installed to - I.E if the scenery was installed into a main folder called FWI Canary Islands you need to look in the subfolder called Scenery that should be present. If the product was not installed into a separate folder then it is likely that the individual .bgl files and texture files (.bmp and .dds for example) were installed into the default FSX Addon Scenery\Scenery and default FSX Addon Scenery\Texture folders respectfully.

 

Third - the 'main' .bgl file will probably have a simple name such as GCRR.bgl or Lanzarote.bgl. Other files associated with it will likely to have 'extended' names that offer clues as to what the file contains. For example GCRR_objects.bgl (this will contain references to objects such as buildings etc) or GCRR_cvx (This would be a background polygon.

 

The beauty of ADE is that when you open a .bgl, if it is not the main .bgl that contains specific objects relating to/required in a airport .bgl it won't open it but will display an error message stating that the .bgl contains no airport data. So, try a file that looks llke it is the 'main' file, if it fails then try each .bgl file in turn that references GCRR or Lanzarote. Once you have ID'd the main .bgl you will get an ideal of what construction technique has been used.

 

Hopefully, the main .bgl will include all of the taxiways and parking spots. If not, you will need to 'import' each individual .bgl file into the main file and 'build' the airport up until you have all the elements you want to edit - MAKE SURE to make a note of the file names so that you can ID the relevant updated files later.

 

When you have made the changes, recompile the airport - I suggest that you:

 

A. Set the ADE options to compile into separate .bgl files.

B. Compile to a temp location OUTSIDE of FSX and the current location of the scenery.

C. Give it different name to the source file - for example I use something like _custom_.bgl

 

Following compiling you can replace ONLY those files that contain changes - keep a copy of the original file being replaced so if any issues occur you can simply place it back into the folder (thus avoiding the need to re-install the complete package again). So, for example, if the airport runway/taxiway/apron structure is contained in one .bgl, replace that file with the updated one. If you had to 'build' the airport using multiple files but only made changes to a file that, say, contained a single apron, then only change that file. Hopefully, by taking this approach you will avoid any issues with any possible 'hidden' features/processes.

 

My final comments are WRT the use of the Scenery\World\Scenery location - normally the only things that get put here by some 3rd party addons are traffic files BUT some may add altitude adjustment files or 'common' background textures (normally .bmp and/or .dds files into the co-located Texture subfolder) that are used across other products by the same developer. In the case of this particular product, as it contains 'animated ground vehicles', it is likely that a traffic file (or multiple files - one for each airport in the package) for the vehicles may have been placed here BUT it may also be just as likely that they are located within the same folders as the rest of the scenery.

[captain.cupacke]

Hi Brian,

 

Thank you for a really helpful reply!

 

I always make a back up of anything I plan on working on -I've been caught out before by not make copies of original documents.

 

Have a good day!

Adrian