Wanaka Runway is Levitating

[tripecac]

For some reason, the runway at Wanaka is about 10 or 20m off the ground. It's elevating in mid-air. It's not on a plateau. The runway is like a magic carpet and the plane is sitting right on top of it.

Queenstown is fine. Makarora is fine. Dunedin is fine. So far it only looks like Wanaka is messed up.

I've installed the following add-on scenery:

1) ORBZ NZSI
2) Godzone Southern Lakes
3) FSGenesis world mesh, North America
4) UTX North America
5) GEX North America

Even when I disable all of it within FSX, the runway is still off the ground.

So I'm wondering if maybe one of those scenery add-ons overwrote the original FSX coordinates of the airport (or of the terrain right under the airport).

Has anyone had this problem?

Is there a fix?

[toprob]

There is a patch to make Southern Lakes compatible with NZSI -- it includes some useful information on how to get these two to behave properly.
If you purchased Southern Lakes recently (since March 2012), then the installer would have offered you the option of installing the patch. Otherwise just grab the patch from my site.

[tripecac]

I re-downloaded the patch, and re-installed it. The Godzone insertion points are above ORBX NZSI, and NZSI Oceania is active.

Wanaka's runway remains elevated.

Disabling *all* my addon scenery does not help; even with the default FSX scenery only, Wanaka's runway remains suspended in mid-air.

I suspect that one of the add-ons (Godzone, ORBX, FSGenesis, UTX, or GEX) changed the altitude of the runway. I have no idea which one did it, or how to fix the problem.

I could re-install FSX from scratch, but that's a long process (with all those add-ons), and I'm hoping to find an easier fix.

What files are used by FSX for the Wanaka runway coordinates, and the coordinates of the Wanaka area? I'm wondering if I could try swapping default files for my current files to see what fixes the problem. I just don't know what files are involved.

[toprob]

QUOTE (tripecac @ Jul 25 2012,4:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I re-downloaded the patch, and re-installed it. The Godzone insertion points are above ORBX NZSI, and NZSI Oceania is active.

Wanaka's runway remains elevated.

Disabling *all* my addon scenery does not help; even with the default FSX scenery only, Wanaka's runway remains suspended in mid-air.

I suspect that one of the add-ons (Godzone, ORBX, FSGenesis, UTX, or GEX) changed the altitude of the runway. I have no idea which one did it, or how to fix the problem.

I could re-install FSX from scratch, but that's a long process (with all those add-ons), and I'm hoping to find an easier fix.

What files are used by FSX for the Wanaka runway coordinates, and the coordinates of the Wanaka area? I'm wondering if I could try swapping default files for my current files to see what fixes the problem. I just don't know what files are involved.

Unfortunately just swapping files about is not going to fix this -- we'll need to figure out what the problem is. Orbx does change the elevation of Wanaka, but the Real NZ patch is meant to fix this. It sounds like there is something extra affecting your elevation.

Sometimes if things get a bit confused, you can get it back to normal by toggling both FTX Central and the Southern Lakes Switcher. To do this:
Run FTX Central, set it to 'default' then set it back to Oceania.
Run the Southern Lakes Switcher, and toggle it to VLC/default and then toggle it back to Orbx.

If that doesn't help, let me know.

[Sombrero]

QUOTE (tripecac @ Jul 25 2012,4:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I re-downloaded the patch, and re-installed it. The Godzone insertion points are above ORBX NZSI, and NZSI Oceania is active.

Wanaka's runway remains elevated.

Disabling *all* my addon scenery does not help; even with the default FSX scenery only, Wanaka's runway remains suspended in mid-air.

I suspect that one of the add-ons (Godzone, ORBX, FSGenesis, UTX, or GEX) changed the altitude of the runway. I have no idea which one did it, or how to fix the problem.

Google for a program called Airport Scanner. This program has helped me many times for duplicates with AFCADs and altitude adjust bgl files. It can take a while to run but will give you the location on your hard drive where the offending duplicates are.

Troy

[toprob]

QUOTE

Run FTX Central, set it to 'default' then set it back to Oceania.
Run the Southern Lakes Switcher, and toggle it to VLC/default and then toggle it back to Orbx.[/quote]
Okay, I followed these steps exactly. The runway is still elevated.

However, I then made sure Godzone Wanaka is checked (and above the FTX items), and the runway is now on the ground, but is about 20 or 30 meters north of where the plane was positioned without Godzone Wanaka checked. If I then re-select the Wanaka airport, the plane gets correctly positioned on the runway.

So, it looks like the runway touches the ground only if Godzone Wanaka is active. If it's inactive, the runway is too high.

I like Godzone Wanaka for certain things (distant mountains, Southern Lakes missions), but prefer the higher resolution (and greener) FTX ground textures for low-to-the ground flying. Since I'm doing a lot of low-to-the-ground "sight seeing" with my daughter, I prefer having Godzone Wanaka disabled at the moment.

So I'm wondering: how can I get the runway to align with the default/FTX scenery when I have Godzone disabled?

And then how can I get the runway to line up with Godzone when I have it enabled?

Thanks a ton for the prompt replies!

[toprob]

If you use the Southern Lakes Switcher, you can easily turn the aerial image off with the click of a button.

But it sounds like you want to deactivate Real NZ Wanaka, so you will need to take some extra steps to return NZSI to normal.

I do have some instructions somewhere to uninstall Real NZ Wanaka, I'll track them down. Basically, though, it entails renaming all the NZSI files for Wanaka back to a 'bgl' extension, although this can only really work if Oceania is active.

By the way, Real NZ Wanaka can have two different elevations, one for the default FSX and VLC, and another for NZSI. This is required for most NZSI airports, as they nearly all have changed elevations. I guess there's a reason for this, not just to make life difficult for us. If the difference is slight, I over-ride the NZSI elevation and leave the default, but in this case the difference is too great, so there is no way to get both working with the same elevation.

So I've put a lot of work into getting Real NZ Wanaka to work with NZSI, and without, but not so much work into getting NZSI to work without Real NZ Wanaka. It's a tricky process, which I'll post here shortly.

[tripecac]

Turning aerial images off gives me back the green FTX textures... and the runway is still on the ground, which is good!

So what is the difference between:

a) RealNZ Wanaka enabled, with aerial images disabled
b) RealNZ Wanaka disabled
c) RealNZ Wanaka uninstalled with the NZSI files renamed as you suggested above

I compared screen shots of (a) vs (b) and didn't notice any difference other than a couple trees in slightly different locations.

My guess is that (a) and (b) use the same runway coordinates, and (b) and © use the same ground coordinates (or vice-versa). (a) and © have the runway on the ground, but (b) doesn't. Is that correct?

[toprob]

QUOTE (tripecac @ Jul 25 2012,7:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Turning aerial images off gives me back the green FTX textures... and the runway is still on the ground, which is good!

So what is the difference between:

a) RealNZ Wanaka enabled, with aerial images disabled
b) RealNZ Wanaka disabled
c) RealNZ Wanaka uninstalled with the NZSI files renamed as you suggested above

I compared screen shots of (a) vs (b) and didn't notice any difference other than a couple trees in slightly different locations.

My guess is that (a) and (b) use the same runway coordinates, and (b) and © use the same ground coordinates (or vice-versa). (a) and © have the runway on the ground, but (b) doesn't. Is that correct?

If you have Real NZ Wanaka installed, the elevation should always be correct, that is it should match the ground level. With NZSI installed, it shouldn't make any difference, the elevation should still match the ground, it's just that it will be a different elevation in both cases. So problem arise if somehow you end up with a default elevation with NZSI, or a NZSI elevation without NZSI.

Real NZ Wanaka replaces all the airport facilities to match the aerial image, but leaves the elevation alone (This is the AIP elevation, so we try not to change it unless we have to). However with NZSI installed, the Real NZ Wanaka elevation files are swapped to different versions to match the NZSI elevation. The NZSI files are deactivated by renaming, and stay deactivated.

To complicate matters, wherever an airport elevation is changed, there normally needs to be a small elevation-change facilities file in Scenery\World\Scenery. Because Real NZ Wanaka doesn't change the elevation, this isn't normally required for VLC or default FSX, but is if you use NZSI, in which case the Orbx file is disabled, and remains disabled, and the patch installs it's own version.

So unless you return your NZSI install back to normal when you deactivate Real NZ Wanaka, it won't work properly.

The Switcher also allows you to turn the aerial image on and off, in which case you'll only see the Real NZ airport, there's nothing changed outside the airport boundary, so you'll see whatever is installed -- usually default FSX, Vector Land Class or NZSI. However the switcher does some other house-keeping here, including turning on and off a Region and Season file depending on various combinations of Real NZ and NZSI, with and without the aerial image.

So this isn't a simple scenery installation, and you can't just turn things on and off without understanding how they all inter-connect. If you still want the details of disabling Real NZ Wanaka completely, let me know.