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Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

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Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby openflight » Sun Jan 26, 2014 1:51 am

Half Moon Bay already has an .stg file with a tower and wind socks listed, so it is easier to experiment with this.

Tile 942049, file 942049.stg

Contains:

Code: Select all
OBJECT_SHARED Models/Airport/beacon.xml -122.500320 37.514381 11.8 0.00
OBJECT_SHARED Models/Airport/tower.xml -122.501091 37.514832 11.8 0.00
OBJECT_SHARED Models/Airport/windsock_lit.xml -122.506081 37.519485 17.5 0.00
OBJECT_SHARED Models/Airport/windsock_lit.xml -122.496094 37.508175 10.3 0.00


Which is somewhat strange: two wind socks and a tower when the real airport has one wind sock half way down. Version 0.98 has it right though.

Some images would help: Here are some:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=21911

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jzawodn/1178587796/


I see about five type of scenery objects here:

    Tree clumps on the left and right of the runway, approaching from the south. BTW right handed circuits...

    Houses just before the runway and on the left of the runway

    Airport buildings

    Boats in the harbor and an extensive breakwater system

    A few aircraft on the runway


Now for the scenery database to download these.
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby openflight » Sun Jan 26, 2014 4:05 am

Although I removed the tower it still shows up in the sim


OBJECT_SHARED Models/Airport/tower.xml -122.501091 37.514832 11.8 0.00

I cannot find any other references to any other towers. Where is the Half Moon Bay .stg file located?
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby statto » Sun Jan 26, 2014 4:38 am

Should be the correct file. Latitude and Longitude are correct.

Are you using terrasync? Do you have custom scenery directories?
Custom Scenery available from http://www.stattosoftware.com/flightgear
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby openflight » Sun Jan 26, 2014 10:00 am

no terrasync. no custom scenery
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby f-ojac » Sun Jan 26, 2014 2:31 pm

It's such an old version, it's possible that the terrain you have is really outdated. Maybe at that time towers positions were derived from apt.dat and an object automagically created. The host hosting mapserver is currently down, you'll have to wait a bit until tomorrow to gather more information.
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby someguy » Sun Jan 26, 2014 4:13 pm

The current version of KHAF is partially submerged, with some bizarre elevation anomalies and two bodies of water cutting across the runway making it unusable for fixed-wing aircraft. The old tower has disappeared.

Of course, with such an antique version of fgfs, you won't see the "benefits" of scenery 2.0.
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby ludomotico » Sun Jan 26, 2014 4:14 pm

openflight wrote in Sun Jan 26, 2014 1:51 am:Which is somewhat strange: two wind socks and a tower when the real airport has one wind sock half way down. Version 0.98 has it right though.


This is related to the data in X-Plane. I'll try to elaborate but I'm afraid I'm suffering from the influenza and this is not my best moment :)

Airports must be created manually. For many airports, specially if they are small, there was not any person to create them and the only available information was the runway position (I guess using some public data). In those cases, Robin created a script that, giving a runway, creates generic taxiways in parallel and two wind socks in each of the extremes. This wasn't going to match the reality, but Robin decided that it was better than an empty airport.

This change took place about v850 of the data. The scenery tools of FlightGear uses X-Plane data to draw the airports, so we can find these "generic airports" with one runway, one taxiway and two wind socks all over the world. This only means that no one has make them yet.

If the data was more correct before v810, i.e. in old FlightGear 0.98, I'm sure it was just good luck. Robin doesn't change an airport automatically if it was already created manually.

BTW: scenery 2.0 won't work with FlightGear 0.98. The format of the scenery files changed and scenery 2.0 is not compatible with any version before FlightGear 2.10
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby openflight » Mon Jan 27, 2014 7:23 am

Thanks for all the info. Meanwhile I have made some progress.

Using the .stg file, I have added a reference to the 737 static model. In fact I have added several lines, and now I have a line of 737s across the field. So I can add scenery. The wind socks and towers is there still. No trees though.

Once I ascertain the distance that is represented by the fourth decimal point on the coordinates ( seems like about 100metres) then I can start adding the objects.

There is a "sailboat.ac" in the models folder, so that will be first. Next the buildings and airplanes. Frame rates are a concern but in an older version it may be OK.

Trees are two -dimensional? Any 3D trees ? Maybe one of the hangars will have these.

Moving land traffic would be nice. And the sailboats can be animated like the wind socks - direction only..
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby ludomotico » Mon Jan 27, 2014 9:06 am

openflight wrote in Mon Jan 27, 2014 7:23 am:The wind socks and towers is there still. No trees though.


I told you you have to use the directory Objects/w00n40/... for the scenery objects, not the directories under Terrain. Well, this is not exactly true :)

The scenery tools create some objects automatically: currently, runway signs and wind socks. Maybe in the past, towers. These automatic objects are defined in files under Terrain. You may check these files to delete the automatic tower or wind socks.

Keep in mind all files under Terrain are automatically generated by the scenery tools. You can modify these files locally, but they will revert to their old status if you use terragear or terrasync. In order to have these file removed once and for all for you and for all of us, you have to modify the airport layout and submit it to Robin: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:Make_an_airport
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby ludomotico » Mon Jan 27, 2014 10:12 am

openflight wrote in Mon Jan 27, 2014 7:23 am:Once I ascertain the distance that is represented by the fourth decimal point on the coordinates ( seems like about 100metres) then I can start adding the objects.


This is "easy":

1 latitude degree=60 nautical miles=60*1852m
0.0001 latitude degrees=0.0001*60 nautical miles=0.0001*60*1852m=11.11m
1 longitude degree=60*cos(latitude) nautical miles = 60*1852*cos(latitude) meters

(The Earth is not a sphere and real distances are slightly different, but you can use these formulas as a rough estimation with an error of about 10-50m)

It is easy, but it is also crazy doing things like this. There are lots of ways of knowing the latitude and longitude of a specific geographic point just using the mouse cursor: there is some plugin for google maps and I believe this information was shown in FlightGear multiplayer map (I can't find it any more)

Finally, maybe you noticed osgviewer. It is a external viewer for .ac models. I don't know if it was available in old versions of openscenegraph
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby openflight » Mon Jan 27, 2014 3:17 pm

Of course i can refer to the actual coordinates but. I remember an instance where airport coords put me in the middle of the sea or at least outside the airport.

I want to keep adding scenery until it looks like Microsoft FSX.

Would be nice to color over the fuzzy squares. Rivers and roads look like flat blue and grey ribbons even in newer versions.
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby ludomotico » Mon Jan 27, 2014 3:51 pm

openflight wrote in Mon Jan 27, 2014 3:17 pm:Of course i can refer to the actual coordinates but. I remember an instance where airport coords put me in the middle of the sea or at least outside the airport.


Again, this depends on the quality of the data available from X-Plane. Scenery 2.0 and next FlightGear 3.0 use much more accurate data and this shouldn't happen any more. Current FlightGear 2.12 (and some older versions) can update their data to a much more recent version, but this is a not-advertised-enough feature. If the airport is still displaced in the last versions of FlightGear, again, the fix is moving manually the airport and submitting the update to Robin.

If you are editing manually your .stg files, check the fgopt tool that was referred in your other thread. It is very useful to fine tune objects manually defined in .stg files.

openflight wrote in Mon Jan 27, 2014 3:17 pm:Rivers and roads look like flat blue and grey ribbons even in newer versions.


No, they don't. It depends largely on the quality of the source data and the configuration of the shaders and materials. We have wonderful data for Europe, and really under-the-standard for the rest of the world. If the river is already a water surface (as it is the case of most rivers in Europe), you can use the water shader that looks spectacular.

Regarding textured lines, this is an example of textured lines: http://www.subirimagenes.com/imagen-fgf ... 36718.html You can also use this technique in rivers defined as lines. Texture lines were not included in scenery 2.0, probably because of fear they may affect performance, but any user can add them in their custom sceneries and I'm sure they will be included in the next scenery release.
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby openflight » Tue Jan 28, 2014 6:00 am

Just saw this :

http://www.flightgear.org/info/a-previe ... tgear-3-0/

Scenery 2.0 is out, which, I must say, addresses many if not all the problems I mentioned:

http://www.flightgear.org/wp-content/up ... ures06.jpg

( I did not include the image in case it gives the wrong impression)
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby f-ojac » Tue Jan 28, 2014 7:21 am

Hi,
The screenshot you are showing is not strictly showing a 2.0 feature, but the OSGEarth implementation tests into FG. But 2.0 adds a lot of detail and precision in scenery, yes, that's why I was talking before about updating your FG version, it would really ease the stuff if you could be in sync with the current scenery efforts.
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Re: Improving Half Moon Bay (KHAF)

Postby openflight » Tue Jan 28, 2014 10:28 am

Nice photo here from Airliners Net

http://www.airliners.net/photo/0663521/L/

Edit: see gallery of Half Moon Bay Yacht Club

http://gallery.hmbyc.org/Club-History - From The Air: 1946-2010

Added the sailboat.xml to the scenery - actually added three. Will post pix

There is also a "Rembrant Testing" featuring KHAF on You Tube - anyone seen it? The trees look good.
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