[X-Plane] Adding airport layouts and signage

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Keith Smith
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Location: Pompton Plains, NJ
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[X-Plane] Adding airport layouts and signage

Post by Keith Smith »

If anyone is interested in taking on a project to add the correct taxiway layouts and signage to the towered norcal/socal airports, please let me know. It is in PilotEdge's best interest to do everything we can to ensure that X-Plane has the correct layouts for the airports in our service area.

SBA is a good example of a stock airport that has an accurate layout and signage that has been rolled into the stock apt.dat file that is maintained for X-Plane by Robin Peel.

Edit: Here's a centralized list of the towered, non-military fields and their corresponding status.

Norcal
Buchanan (CCR) (Eugene,done)
Castle (Eugene, done)
Charles M Schulz (STS) (Eugene,done)
Chico (Adam working on it)
Fresno
Hayward
Livermore
Oakland (stock, DONE)
San Jose (stock, DONE)
Modesto (Adam, DONE)
Montetery
Napa Co (stock, DONE)
Palto Alto
Redding
Reid-Hillview
Reno/Tahoe (stock, DONE)
Sacramento Exec
Sacramento Intl
Sacramento Mather
Salinas (Ben is working on it)
San Carlos
SFO (stock, DONE)
Stockton

Socal
Bakersfield Meadows (stock, DONE)
Burbank (stock, DONE)
Brackett (Christian, working on it)
Brown (stock, DONE)
Camarillo (stock, DONE)
Chino (Eugene DONE)
El Monte (stock, DONE)
Fullerton (Eugene, DONE)
General Fox
Gillespie
Grand Canyon Natl Park (stock, DONE)
Henderson (Eugene, DONE)
John Wayne (stock, DONE)
Laughlin/Bullhead
Long Beach (Eugene, DONE)
LAX (stock, DONE)
Mc Carran (stock, DONE)
Mc Clellan-Palomar (stock, DONE)
Mojave (Eugene, DONE)
Montegomery (stock, DONE)
North Las Vegas (stock, DONE)
Hawthorne (stock, DONE)
Ontario (stock, DONE)
Oxnard (stock, DONE)
Palm Springs (Eugene, done)
Ramona (stock, DONE)
Riverside (stock, DONE)
San Bernadino (stock, DONE)
San Diego Intl (stock, DONE)
San Luis Co Rgnl (stock, DONE)
Santa Barbara (stock, DONE)
Santa Maria (stock, DONE)
Santa Monica (stock, DONE)
Victorville (Eugene, DONE)
Van Nuys (Eugene, DONE)
Whiteman (stock, DONE)
Zamperini (Edit: NEEDS attention based on a local pilot)
Tim Krajcar
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Re: Adding airport layouts and signage

Post by Tim Krajcar »

I'd love to help if I had more time. I'm also curious if there's an easy way to add buildings to the stock data, as well. Flying into 'pancake airports' just is weird - and it makes them harder to spot visually, at least for me.
Tim Krajcar
Live streams at http://twitch.tv/Tim_PE
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Keith Smith
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Re: Adding airport layouts and signage

Post by Keith Smith »

Adding scenery to the airports is a different process than adding signage and taxiways. They live in different repositories.

Buildings/hangars and static aircraft are great...but they're not the low hanging fruit. If I had to choose between having 20% of the airports fully modeled or 100% of airports having correct taxiways, ramps and signage, with no additional buildings....it would be the latter.
Tim Krajcar
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Re: Adding airport layouts and signage

Post by Tim Krajcar »

Oh, no question - I was just curious if it could be included while somebody was "touching" each airport anyway.
Tim Krajcar
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Keith Smith
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Re: Adding airport layouts and signage

Post by Keith Smith »

Gotcha. The answer is unfortunately 'no' on that one since the signage/taxiways for all the airports live in a single file (maintained and distributed by Robin Peel at data.x-plane.com), whereas the addition of buildings would require modification and distribution of the custom scenery packages.

We CAN do the latter, similar to Adam's efforts thus far at xplanes-scenery.com
Shawn Goldsworthy
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Location: Nova Scotia, Canada

Re: Adding airport layouts and signage

Post by Shawn Goldsworthy »

Keith Smith wrote:
SBA is a good example of a stock airport that has an accurate layout and signage that has been rolled into the stock apt.dat file that is maintained for X-Plane by Robin Peel.
;)

I did that one as well as a few others in SoCal and sent them off to Robin. I haven't played with WED in awhile but I can certainly pick at a few more.

KLAX, KSAN, KONT, KSNA, KBUR, KSBA, KLAS, and KCRQ are all done and in the default data. I'll take a peek and see what others are done.
Shawn Goldsworthy
PilotEdge ATCS
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Alex Stjepanovic
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Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2010 3:48 pm
Location: Novi Sad, Serbia

Re: Adding airport layouts and signage

Post by Alex Stjepanovic »

Shawn Goldsworthy wrote:I'll take a peek and see what others are done.
OKB - By WC!




.....




ML you there? :lol:
Daddy O
Posts: 450
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2010 9:32 am

Re: Adding airport layouts and signage

Post by Daddy O »

Actually I have wanted to add bigger taxiway markers to the airports as I skin them, but I have not located any scenery items for the signs. None in the OpenScenery folder. If I had them I'd add them. All I need is one, and I can photoshop the paint scheme for dozens of taxiways.

As far as scenery goes, I really hope they improve the lighting in XP10. You can set up lights galore in XP9, but they don't actually cast any light on the objects below. Also, XP9 does not do a good job of rendering the difference between asphalt and dirt so taxiing at night is a real PITA. (and I do a lot of night flying.)

Anyone know of any taxiway scenery objects? Maybe I could get my son to build me a few in Maya.
Keith Smith
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Re: Adding airport layouts and signage

Post by Keith Smith »

Adam,

To be clear, I'm not talking about anything other than making updates to the stock apt.dat file. Custom scenery (ie, new DSF files) are fine, but would be a second logical step.

I have had to uninstall most of the 'custom scenery' because heavy use of OpenScenery X brings my machine to its knees (I only have 2GB ram, and my attempt to upgrade to 4GB was a dismal failure).

Step 1 would be to get the airport layouts correct, with stock signage for every towered airport in ZLA/ZOA.
Step 2 would be to build OPTIONAL custom scenery for the airports.

Shawn, thanks for the list of already-done airports. If you guys want to coordinate this effort via the forum, please do. It will not be forgotten. As I said, it is in PE's best interests for Step 1 to happen as it will allow pilots to easily comply with taxi instructions...something that is not happening in many, many instances right now, even at airports with correct layouts, because they have no signage, and pilots aren't interested in comparing the airport diagram to what they're seeing on screen. It's an exercise that's so far removed from taxiing a real airplane at a real airport, I can see why they're not interested in doing the simulated version under such trying circumstances. Signage _should_ bring us closer to compliance using real-world navigation techniques.
Shawn Goldsworthy
Posts: 514
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2010 9:23 pm
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada

Re: Adding airport layouts and signage

Post by Shawn Goldsworthy »

Ok, as promised, here is the list.

The latest X-Plane scenery database does NOT have signage/ proper layouts:

ZLA:

KPSP
KCNO
KFUL
KHND
KIFP
KMHV
KPOC
KSEE
KVCV
KVNY
KWJF



ZOA:

KFAT
KMRY
KCCR
KCIC
KHWD
KLVK
KMER
KMOD
KNUQ
KRDD
KRHV
KSAC
KSCK
KSNS
KSTS


As we pick at these we can just update this thread. No need in starting a new one.

Adam, I know you've done a few of these on the list with buildings, etc but the X-Plane folks just want the apt.dat information. Are yours already set up in that format or did you use image overlays, etc on the ground surface?
Shawn Goldsworthy
PilotEdge ATCS
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