REALNZ WELLINGTON

[Ian Warren]

John Travolta today Landed in his private QANTAS Jet, at the New WELLINGTON International Airport . The new runway texture .

safety and securitiy,and truly amazing crash service,The textures and models are Superb!



Big STARS hoggin the gates put this 76 on 17

lucky gate still works on 76 , the airport detail is amazing ,



Robin has really pulled finger here , textures and animation are brilliant !

[ardypilot]

Wow, I am so glad that I made my pre-order today, this package looks fantastic!

Thank you ever so much for sharing Ian, I am assuming you are part of the REAL NZ beta testing team are ya? Can you tell us if your getting good FPS around the airport?

How are the jetways controlled? Is this some FSX technology we are seeing here?

[Alex]

Great pictures, this looks like its going to be a great scenery.

Alex

[kismet]

Excuse me while I just pick my jaw up off the carpet!

Are all these jetways movable or just one?

[Ian Warren]

Hi ya Trolly 'yeah' , Frame Rates at mo ar or a non issue , smooth as silk or least this old pc , A/bridges/jetways .. are'nt they Fanstatic ! also lookin at the ground textures created by Rob , LOOK at THEM - the oil/grass/dirt/vechicle and constant repair texture as if he worked at the airport , Next screenies .

Alex , U wil not be disappointed !

Kismet , I'm still to find that out , lotta addons , maybe extra's

[toprob]

Some pros and cons of airbridge animation:)

All the bridges extend to meet the user aircraft, but not AI. Because Wellington doesn't normally receive anything too big, the gates are set to the height of a 737, which at least looks ok when AI are sitting at an unextended bridge.

The animation is triggered by the parking brake. (also proximity, otherwise they all move when the parking brake is set.)

Gates 26 and 27 will also rise up for a 767, provided the aircraft is labelled correctly.

One thing I'll need to mention in the readme -- the the bridges retract when the parking brake is unset (simply by reversing the animation). This means that it is important to unset the brake before pushing back! Otherwise the aircraft will leave the proximity and the dock will 'pop' back, rather than smoothly retract.

[Charl]

Can't wait.
See some airport sceneries use NAV2 to trigger and identify animations for individual aircraft e.g.
B737 NAV2 112
B767 NAV2 114 etc

[Ian Warren]

WELLINGTON RELEASE - superb !

[Court Line flyer]

toprob - how does the B767 have to be labelled to ensure the Actigate system works correctly? '767' in the title line of the aircraft.cgf file? Other designers use this but it isn't working for me!

Thanks

Karl
UK

BTW, any problems with the scenery crashing? When I'm in any aircraft other than the FS default ones, FS crashes when I reach the edges of the scenery area. HELP!

[toprob]

toprob - how does the B767 have to be labelled to ensure the Actigate system works correctly? '767' in the title line of the aircraft.cgf file? Other designers use this but it isn't working for me!

Thanks

Karl
UK

BTW, any problems with the scenery crashing? When I'm in any aircraft other than the FS default ones, FS crashes when I reach the edges of the scenery area. HELP!

First, I'd check to see if the crash is actually related to the Actigate module. It appears that in some cases the scenery variables which it uses are used in some aircraft panels, which can certainly cause a conflict.
Rather than deactivate the module via the menu, it may pay to disable it by renaming it with a .bak extension. The filename is actigate.dll in the Modules folder.

I assume that you are at gates 26 or 27, which are the only gates which check the aircraft type. Does the animation work at the other gates? If no, then it is probably an Actigate conflict, and you are better off just disabling the module.
If the other gates work then I'll need to do some research on how the module recognises the aircraft type. This isn't my module, and I admit my programming skills are non-existant. I can check with the author though.

[ardypilot]

When I load up at Gate 26/27, from the 'create a flight' screen, in my POSKY 767 this happens:

I have to slew it to the right a little to make both bars in front of me green:

Is this the same with everyone else? Do real airliner pilots do this in real life at NZWN and other airports...?

[toprob]

When the position is set in AFCAD, it's been based on a 737. Here's an AI aircraft in the default location at gate 26.

(The airbridge isn't extended here because it's AI.)
The sim just plonks the 'centre' point of the aircraft on the AFCAD position, so a fatter AI aircraft, or a bigger user aircraft starting at the default gate location, will encroach on the airbridge a little.
For a more realistic starting position for a 767 you'd probably want to slew into position then save the flight.
In reality the gates are more flexible, being controlled by the ground crew.

[ardypilot]

Ah ok, thanks for clearing that up for me Robin

[Court Line flyer]

Hi

I did several hours of investigative work this evening to try to isolate the problem.

First I de-activated the Actigate module by renaming it as you suggested. I downloaded the POSKY NZ 767-300 using the default 777-300 panel but FS still crashed.

Then I tried to re-run with the default aircraft, 737 and 777, but FS crashed, unlike last time.

Assuming it was a gauge problem, perhaps my default gauges had been overwritten when adding new files to the Gauge folder, I loaded a new game of FS9 from the CD to a new folder and copied the virgin gauges to my existing FS gauge folder. FS still crashed!

Finally I installed the Wellington scenery to the newly installed FS9. This was the ONLY scenery in what was a brand new version of FS9. No files had been added, altered or anything, with the exception of the newly loaded Wellington scenery. And guess what? FS crashed. :-( tears!

So, I assume this points to a system incompatibility somewhere along the lines. I'm running Windows XP with Soundblaster Live 24-bit and RADEON X300 Series.0 graphics card.

I'm absolutely no expert from here on....if anyone can shed any light on this I'd be most grateful, otherwise I've wasted Euro 19.00 on a scenery I simply can't use! this is the very first time anything like this has ever happened - I've never had any problems with other scenery packages.

Such a shame - up until the crash its an excellent scenery package!

Cheers,

Karl, UK

[toprob]

Sorry to hear that you haven't managed to come up with a solution, Karl. I am doing some checking myself, but at the moment I'm pretty stumped. I've never had any experience with ATI cards, so I don't really know how to do a basic systems check for them.
Do you have up-to-date graphics drivers?
Have you tried re-downloading the scenery? (the installer is self-verifying, so it shouldn't allow a faulty install, but I'm sure it is possible to get a single scrambled texture or something similar)
What exactly happens when it crashes? Do you get an error message?
At what stage does the crash occur? Is it only at the edges of the scenery? If so you may wish to try disabling just the photoreal textures and see if you still crash. To do this, you'll need to rename the aerial imagery scenery files in the RealNZwgtn\scenery folder. The files are:
aerialcity.bgl
aerialnorth.bgl
aerialeast.bgl

rename them with a .bak extension to disable them, or drag them to your desktop. Don't lose them...

I assume that you don't get any crashes when Wellington is not enabled?

EDIT: my initial reaction is that this is a texture resource issue, there are a lot of textures involved with Wellington, and adding an addon aircraft only adds to the load. Of course this shouldn't happen, but I wonder if there is a bottleneck somewhere which causes the graphics system to hiccup when under heavy load.

[ronindanbo]

I had this problem with an ATI card once, my ultimate solution was to buy an NVidia card

Check the antilaising settings on your card and ensure they are not higher than 4 this should solve the issue if its the same one that I am thinking about.

[ZK-MAT]

Just as a thought what happens when you try a GA plane (default or add-on)? Does it still crash?

My gates worked but I couldn't load up anything bigger than a 1900D. Deleting the ActiGate module completely worked for me. I have an Nvidia card btw.

[toprob]

I had this problem with an ATI card once, my ultimate solution was to buy an NVidia card

That's actually on the list of solutions I have to offer. Right after the thing that says 'find a diplomatic way to say this...'

[Court Line flyer]

Thanks. I will have another play around tonight. I'm not sure it can be a texture bottleneck as I'm using other similarly large inputs, but worth a try!

All my testing is now done with the default aircraft, and yes, it crashes when the aircraft reaches the edge of the scenery area, or the aircraft is placed within the area form the 'map' function. I do not receive an error message, or any apparent warning such as the frame rate slowing - the screen suddenly goes blank.

Will let you know how I get on!

Karl

[Court Line flyer]

Thanks for all the help and advice.

I reloaded the scenery but FS still crashed. So, with the .bgl files removed I had moderate success with the default B737-400 and the POSKY B767-300. It was still a bit hit and miss, though, when it crashed it was always at the edge of the area, but sometimes the plane just kept on flying. FS crashing was almost guaranteed when flying to the south of the airport. Actigate still didn't work however.

I tried a GA (Cessna) and you were right, I could fly anywhere in that...except London or LA with 300+ passengers! (A struggle from Wellington in anything, I'll admit!).

For now I've re-loaded the .bgl files and set up a flight which starts on short finals as I seem to be able to fly anywhere within the boundaries so even if I can't use the scenery as part of a longer filght, I can at least enjoy it.

If anyone has any more bright ideas, either now, or if you're reading this in the future, please reply. I'd love to get those airbridges working!

Happy flying!

Karl