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Aerosoft Airports and PMDG EFB


B777ER

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So many Aerosoft airports taxiways do not show up correctly in the new EFB on the PMDG 747-8. The reason being is that the AFCAD file only uses "PATH" for taxiways, thus they will not show up as taxiways on the EFB display. For it to show correctly, changing "PATH" to "TAXI" will fix this issue. I don't have Airport Design Editor and thus I cannot do it. This also is a problem with Aerosoft Barcelona Airport and likely any others published using the same AFCAD method. Scenery from Flightbeam, Fly Tampa and FSDT show up correctly. Anyway this can be fixed so the taxiways display correctly?

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  • Deputy Sheriffs
3 hours ago, B777ER said:

So many Aerosoft airports taxiways do not show up correctly in the new EFB on the PMDG 747-8. The reason being is that the AFCAD file only uses "PATH" for taxiways, thus they will not show up as taxiways on the EFB display. For it to show correctly, changing "PATH" to "TAXI" will fix this issue. I don't have Airport Design Editor and thus I cannot do it. This also is a problem with Aerosoft Barcelona Airport and likely any others published using the same AFCAD method. Scenery from Flightbeam, Fly Tampa and FSDT show up correctly. Anyway this can be fixed so the taxiways display correctly?

While you're waiting for a response from Aerosoft on behalf of their developers, I believe ADE 1.75 is the current version compatible with P3Dv4.x. AFAIK, it's free and available here. The Pro version is payware and if you find the non-Pro version useful, I urge you to support Scruffy Duck and buy the Pro version.

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  • Deputy Sheriffs

The reason is simple. These AFCAD contain a lot tweaks to force the AI to move correct like IRL on the airport. Currently I‘m not aware that there is any intention to create additional AFCAD. Maybe @OPabst has more insight.

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  • Developer

Hi Eric,

the Airport facility Data (short Afcad) is design by Microsoft (LM has changed nothing in this direction) to provide any Default airports for the Sim, not only data, also the visible parts of the grounddesign, like Runway, Taxiway, Aprons and Parkingposition, inclusive Taxiwaylines and Lights and so on.

Here you need the different Types of Taxiways (PATH, TAXI) to define the surface of this areas.

A Addon Airport will display the Airport ground with all visiable parts via custom designed and detailed Groundlayers, which can be much more realistic show the Airports ground.

The AFCAD is only needed to give the ATC and AI-Traffic the layout to find and advice the Taxipathes the AI Traffic and the User has to go from and to the runway. The visable ground surfaces are not need and not wanted to be display, as they cover often the custom ground.

And, the sim will calulate all, even when this polies are not visable or needed to design the ground.

The only way to make a Taxipath invisible is the use the Apronpath instead of Taxipath, as this type will not draw any surface and the lines can be disabled in the source. The Taxipath will minimum display (often complex) the poly for the taxiway surface. Even when in the SDK xtd a swith exists to set drawsurface="FALSE", the sim, regardless if FSX or P3D will ignore this switch.

So, that Addon AFCADs needs to use Apron Pathes to be visable clean and this will also optimize the performance, as the Sim don't need to calc and draw things, which are not needed to display (or even anyway invisable)

 

When now a aircraft use the Afcad to build up the airport in one of the systems, there is a conflic in the needs of the aircraft addon and the need of the Airport design.

 

When LM will activate the switch for DrawSurface and Drawdetails existing in the definition but ignore yet, then the Afcads can use the Taxi Path as in this case they are not dispayed anymore. Until that point, the conflict.

But maybe some of the tweaks we need to optimize the AI Handling will still be in place and I don't know if the PMDG tool will have problems with them too.

 

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We are planning to release a document regarding the EFB draw map and and share it with the scenery developers so that If they wish can makes their airports more compatable with the airport map for the 748.

 

Chris Makris

PMDG Tech support

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  • Developer

Hi Chris,

 

the document will be good, but I don't think it will be a solution. As long as the the issues generated by using types of pathes, which will generate graphical code, even when overlayed by the ground of the addon,  will popup, we keep the scenery performance in mind.

The solution can then only come from LM by enhance the afcad definition for example by a parameter to disable any Generation of visable gound details (or implement the existing once to work correct), so that the engine don't calc and draw things not needed.

Special in case of using complex aircrafts like PMDG, which give the scenery developer only a rest of frames to handle the scenery, should not generate additional needs of code reducing the performance. 

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  • Deputy Sheriffs

@Olympic260 and @OPabst

Hi, how about a combined proposal/bug report of aircraft and scenery developers in the P3D Beta forum? If both parties request the existing feature to get fixed it might be possible that LM is implementing it maybe in the next release.

Maybe you did it already... just an idea.

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I have tried to convert the PATH to TAXI in my own Frankfurt, Barcelona and Anchorage installs.

The taxiways are now displayed correctly on the PMDG 747-8 ND Airport map.

There are no visiual impact on the scenery, and performance seems not to be affected by more than 1-2 FPS, if affected at all.

 

This might not work for other airports, but the mentioned airports that I have converted, everything seems fine.

 

I´m not blaming any part of the developers. PMDG has chosen the best solution to get their airport map as accurate as the underlaying AFCAD, so that even inaccuracies in the scenery is accounted for.

Also the scenery developers could not know thta their AFCADS where to be used this way.

 

A solution could be (as mentioned by another guy in the PMDG forum) would be to have a seperated AFCAD for the PMDG ND Airport maps. This means that a special formated file maybe called: PMDG_AFX_XXX.pam (*.pam = PMDG Airport Map could be put into the scenery directory.

This file would then be the converted AFCAD from the original scenery renamed to *.pam inorder not to actual loading it int to the scenery, but can be read by the PMDG ND Aiport map.

If such a file is present tin the scenery folder, then it will be used by the PMDG ND Airport map. If it´s not present, then the original AFCAD *.bgl file would be read instead.

This way we can have proper Aiport maps on the PMDG ND, without intruding the scenery.

 

I have made this suggestion over in the PMDG support forum.

 

FinnJ

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