NZFF

Well I always felt there was something amiss in the default FS runway markings but could never put my finger on it. Today I reckon I've found what it is. The default FS runway markings are a pretty poor resemblance of anything compliant with ICAO Annex 14 (Aerodromes). This standard is very picky and even defines dimensions for numbers and letters, as well as lengths of runway markings and rules for when they should and should not be included.


To illustrate, I've been working on an AFCAD for Ohakea. Let's have a look first at what FS9 gives us:

Something just doesn't 'feel' right about this does it?


How about this: ?

Look more like New Zealand to you?

There are about 9 or 10 differences between the FS9 default one and this Annex 14 compliant one.


Just for fun, I went away and modified the Annex 14 one to look like Ohakea in real life:

Annex 14 doesn't actually stipulate whether edge markings should continue onto a displaced threshold or not.

So then I took this concept and tried applying it to GMAX, playing blissful ignorance and pretending I'd never heard Robin talking about using the FS2002 gamepack. The idea was that I could build up a library of static objects where we could make custom AFCADs with no runway markings, and instead lay these custom objects over the top of the blank runways. The idea, of course, came crashing down after I got caught in the 'flickering ground polygons' trap that is the FS2004 GMAX SDK.

Robin... can you enlighten me. What is SCASM and how does it fit into scenery design? I know I use it with SBuilder, but does it use something other than the fs2004 XML scenery format? If it does, do you know whether it can compile a .mdl file that won't flicker when placed on the ground? I'm thinking that this, in combination with blank runways, could be an answer to custom runway markings as it would negate the need to use the FS2002 gamepack... Of course, I could be cutting off my nose despite my face (eg doing something that's harder than just buying FS2002 including the gamepack).

I havent really looked into this (its in the too hard basket for me) but from my general reading, i believe it is only possible using the Fs2002 gamepack.

I think with all the hu-hah from the community about the current situation that FS11 will give us better ability to do this sort of thing without 'hacking'.

I might have found a workaround for this. If not, Mike has given me some pointers so hopefully I should be able to manage something. The advantage to painting new lines on the runway (rather than re-texturing the entire surface) is it means you don't have issues over lighting getting covered over. Apart from Auckland, none of our airports use centreline lights so the dashed centre-line is only going to be a problem there.

This is still very much in the 'proof-of-concept' stage though, so i won't go raising anyone's hopes yet.

Yeah there's always the temptation to say 'just wait for FS11' but I think let it do what it does when it arrives. In the meantime this could be a reasonably straightforward way to tidy up a lot of runways out there.

I'm not much help, I've never used SCASM, as it was pretty much obsolete by the time I got into scenery design. It was originally designed for FS5, and lost a lot of functionality with every new FS version through to FS2002. There is a SCASM website, though.
By the way, FSX now at least allows leading zeros, but it still doesn't scale down some of the over-sized elements. The SDK includes some new features to to overcome the US-centric runways markings from previous versions:
alternateThreshold Set to TRUE to indicate international rather than US Threshold markings. TRUE, FALSE
alternateTouchdown Set to TRUE to indicate international rather than US Touchdown markings. TRUE, FALSE
alternateFixedDistance Set to TRUE to indicate international rather than US Fixed Distance markings. TRUE, FALSE
alternatePrecision Set to TRUE to indicate international rather than US Precision markings. TRUE, FALSE
leadingZeroIdent Set to TRUE to indicate runway numbers have a leading zero (for runway numbers 0 to 9). TRUE, FALSE
noThresholdEndArrows Set to TRUE to ignore Threshold End Arrows. TRUE, FALSE