Airport Doesn't Show Edits

In general, I don't mess with larger airports, mainly because I don't fly to them much.

 

But I have two airports where I made some minor changes in Airport Design Editor and it's like the original airport and the one saved by ADE in the addon scenery folder are combined in FS.

 

The two airports in question are Andrews (KADW) and San Francisco (KSFO).

 

What do I need to do to fix this?

At a guess you need to provide "excludes" to "hide" the original details you're trying to replace

Yes,

As Chris mentioned you need to add Exclusion Rectangle. After you alter the airport click the yellow square in ADE (when you hower over it, it sais "Add Exclusion Rectangle). You can streach the square over the whole airport and the default objects will not show. Also after compiling make sure there are no other same airports in the folders.

I thought of exclusions but they won't work. One of the edits I made was to turn a couple of buildings 90°. When it loads in FS, there are two buildings in the same spot, the original and the one I turned.

 

The other problem is that I added some parking spots and they don't show in FS.

 

Another option I considered was removing the bgl the original airport is in. But that would mean going through it to see if there are any other major airports I wouldn't want removed (I couldn't care less about private airfields).

 

I don't understand why I can edit one airport and see the results of my changes but with others, the two airports are combined.

 

Oh well. I'll look into this later because I have sports to watch for the rest of the day.

If you want to leave the original airport file in FS, then you need to put YOUR airport file into a higher scenery layer in the Sceney Library than that of the original file. They cannot be placed into the same folder. You can create a new folder (and scenery subfolder) and add that to the Scenery Library, with the folder layer above the original airports'.

Hi.

 

My initial suspicion is that you have multiple versions of those two airports. If you used the stock airport as the starting point for your mod then, provided you haven't changed the airport ident, it should automatically suppress the stock version.

 

If you started with a third-party addon then, depending on how it was created, it's possible for the stock to show through. I have never looked into the details but I think that's why many 3-p addons have so many tiny excludes.

 

You could either temporarily disable all optional scenery layers and have another look at the modded version from withing a flight, or you could download a bgl scanner. I think Owl Tools' Simple Airport Scanner is bundled with ADE. If not, here's a link here to a version that ought to do FS9 as well as P3d:

 

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/simple-airport-scanner-1-70-beta.440300/

 

Cheers,

Dave

Okay, so I was wrong about exclusions. For some reason I was confused about how they work. Anyway, that fixed the problem with KADW.

 

KSFO is another beast altogether.

 

Here is what I've done/tried and the results:

 

• added 10 parking spots – no effect

• changed the apron where those parking spots are located, from concrete to tarmac (this worked at KADW) – no effect

• put an exclusion where the refueling station is and moved the refueling station – original refueling station loads in its original position in addition to loading in the spot where I moved it

• removed the original airport bgl from the Namw folder and stuck it on my desktop – original airport still loads

• removed the ADE airport from Addon Scenery and stuck it on my desktop, as well – original airport still loads (the 2nd refueling station disappeared, as it should)

• discovered there's a bgl called "SanFran" so I put that on my desktop and put the airport bgl back into its original folder – no luck

• left the SanFran bgl on the desktop and put the airport bgl there, too – airport still loads

 

I double checked the scenery library and as I expected, the "Addon Scenery" folder is #1. "Western North America" (Namw) is #29.

 

I put the bgls back where they belonged and deleted my ADE file because I give up. For the most part, this was all academic, so I'm not going to beat my head against the wall trying to figure it out since it's not that important, anyway. Screw it.

 

Thanks for the pointers, guys.

My initial suspicion is that you have multiple versions of those two airports.

I suspect you're right but for only one: KSFO.

 

If you used the stock airport as the starting point for your mod then, provided you haven't changed the airport ident, it should automatically suppress the stock version.

That's what I did and that's what I expected, too. No luck.

• added 10 parking spots – no effect

• changed the apron where those parking spots are located, from concrete to tarmac (this worked at KADW) – no effect

• put an exclusion where the refueling station is and moved the refueling station – original refueling station loads in its original position in addition to loading in the spot where I moved it

• removed the original airport bgl from the Namw folder and stuck it on my desktop – original airport still loads

• removed the ADE airport from Addon Scenery and stuck it on my desktop, as well – original airport still loads (the 2nd refueling station disappeared, as it should)

• discovered there's a bgl called "SanFran" so I put that on my desktop and put the airport bgl back into its original folder – no luck

• left the SanFran bgl on the desktop and put the airport bgl there, too – airport still loads

 

 

The extra parking spots may have been there but not visible. KSFO has photoscenery, which may have obscured them. If FS9 recognised them then they would have shown up in the start location drop-down list on the 'Create a Flight' tab.

 

I believe either there's a duplicate KSFO somewhere in your installation (most likely) or there's a scenery object bgl somewhere that contains all the original objects but has no AFD file in it so is not suppressed by your mod.

 

It's a pity you've deleted your mod -- disabling all the non-essential layers would have been the best place to start.

 

D

The extra parking spots may have been there but not visible. KSFO has photoscenery, which may have obscured them. If FS9 recognised them then they would have shown up in the start location drop-down list on the 'Create a Flight' tab.

 

I believe either there's a duplicate KSFO somewhere in your installation (most likely) or there's a scenery object bgl somewhere that contains all the original objects but has no AFD file in it so is not suppressed by your mod.

 

It's a pity you've deleted your mod -- disabling all the non-essential layers would have been the best place to start.

 

D

It really isn't a big deal. And I agree with your assessment re: photoscenery. It's why I removed that SanFran bgl, thinking that would solve the problem.

 

But, yeah, I wondered if there's a duplicate airport, too. If so, why?

 

If not, then it's a scenery object bgl you mentioned. I thought it would be that SanFran bgl. I don't know. It's a mystery. Like most things Micro$oft.

 

I understand why M$ compiled airports the way they did but I don't like it. I would love to remove all those damn private fields in the US because when I get close to my destination airport, I have to wade through multiple pages in the ATC window when hunting for my airport. The airport should show up at around 31 nm but when there are dozens of private airfields cluttering things up, I don't get the option to tune to the airport's tower until I'm around 22-25 nm out; sometimes less. I find it pretty irritating.

 

I don't know if there's a faster/easier way to do it but one thing I tried once, years ago, was to save all the public airports in ADE and then remove the original bgl. It worked. But, boy, was it time consuming. And that was just for one bgl. There are 1,049 bgls just in the NAME folder alone! Granted, not all of them are for airports and there isn't an issue in Canada, so I could skip those, but it felt overwhelming so I abandoned that idea.

 

Actually, the fault is with how M$ has you connect with an airport in the first place. If I'm already tuned to the airport's tower frequency, why shouldn't I be able to just contact them when in range? Why go through the process of having to pick the airport in the ATC? If I could, then what I just said about all those private airfields is moot. They really dropped the ball on this aspect. Typical.

 

I've said many times over the years that if it wasn't for simulators and games, I'd have gotten a Mac instead of a PC. The only problem is, I dislike Macs as much as, maybe more than PCs. Quite the dilemma, isn't it? LOL

 

I still miss the DOS days.

 

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I've got an unrelated question regarding parking spots. I read somewhere that when an AI plane lands at an airport, they park at the lowest numbered available parking spot and then move up from there.

 

It appears, however, that what dictates where FS parks them is the index of the parking spot, not the parking spot number. Did that make sense?

 

I discovered this when I tried renumbering the parking spots at one of my modded airports but the planes kept parking in the same spaces. When I looked at the indexes, that's when I figured it out.

 

Am I correct?

I've got an unrelated question regarding parking spots. I read somewhere that when an AI plane lands at an airport, they park at the lowest numbered available parking spot and then move up from there.

 

It appears, however, that what dictates where FS parks them is the index of the parking spot, not the parking spot number. Did that make sense?

 

I discovered this when I tried renumbering the parking spots at one of my modded airports but the planes kept parking in the same spaces. When I looked at the indexes, that's when I figured it out.

 

Am I correct?

AI traffic will park at a parking space nearest their size (if unoccupied), in the order defined in the AFD file. There are other factors too, e.g., whether the aircraft is defined as "RAMP", "GATE" etc and airline codes in the aircraft.cfg.

 

In FS's default airport files, parking positions are often defined in numerical order so the observation you read is often true by pure coincidence.

 

John