This came up multiple times in the comment section, and is probably important enough for its own post: how are conflicts resolved between user-submitted airport buildings (via the lego bricks and Robin’s database) and custom scenery?

The answer is two-fold:

  1. Scenery pack prioritization
  2. Exclusion zones

The user submitted airports are in a single pack; the intention here is that they be given the lowest priority of all custom scenery.*  If you install a custom scenery pack after getting 10.21, this will happen automatically (because X-Plane installs newly discovered stuff at the highest priority).  If you already have custom scenery installed, you can change its priority in the .ini file or simply remove and re-add your packs if you prefer to sort them alphabetically.

Airport layouts for custom packs will automatically replace the default ones – we only load apt.dat from one pack – this is just like before.

For the actual buildings, custom scenery packs should include exclusion zones to remove anything below it.

This is not new.  Custom scenery always should exclude what is below it.  I’ve been meaning to mention that in a separate post: custom scenery should exclude anything that would “screw it up”, not just things that have already caused problems!  If you make custom scenery and you do not “defensively” exclude, you’re likely to get broken by other scenery packs, as well as the default scenery (either via a user submitted airport or a recut).

If you squint and look at this situation, it isn’t really new — we’ve had a scenery pack with all of Robin’s submitted apt.dat layouts for several years now, and it has never been possible to add/remove individual airports.  Instead custom scenery goes on top and replaces.  We are doing more of the same for buildings.

* We would have liked to have put it in “Global Scenery”, but it is important that the airports be higher priority than any custom base meshes that might be installed.

About Ben Supnik

Ben is a software engineer who works on X-Plane; he spends most of his days drinking coffee and swearing at the computer -- sometimes at the same time.

8 comments on “Conflict Resolution and User-Submitted Airport Buildings”

  1. I swear, the God smites a kitten every time I use the exclusion zone tool …. I could wish upon Ben’s 12 o’clock shadow. I would wish this …

    Please make X-Plane could accept polygon shaped exclusion zones, cause the current one is a real b1tch to use.

    1. I agree with carrotroot. Ben commented in the previous blog post that its not a WED thing but an X-Plane thing… But why wasn’t XP programmed for poly exclusions to begin with? If it was overhead to determine >4 non-right angle areas, wouldn’t dozens of thin exclusion zone “slices” to make finer exclusion areas be just as bad if not worse? Very few areas are neat NESW rectangular areas…

  2. Yes… I’d have to review all my airports and add exclusion zones in case. It’s very important that all scenery developers do the same 🙂

  4. I totally loath the Lan – Lat boxes as well,
    But here is an idea, why can’t you draw your shape with polygon tool and then when you select the exclusion zone the computer fills it in with Lan – Lat boxes…
    It could start with small boxes right around the perimeter and then just fill in the centre with other sizes…. Computers are very good at doing things like that.

    1. Yes, yes they are. 🙂

      Also, I figured when I did it that if we needed polygons later, loading lat-lon boxes into a polygonal system is trivial. But if we did full polygons and later found it was too slow, the translated lat-lon boxes would be inaccurate and numerous, resulting in performance issues with older scenery.

      Lat-lon boxes were originally chosen for speed.

  5. Any idea about announcing the “state” of an airport (custom/lego/blank) within the airport selection menu and maps?
    With growing numbers of submitted airports and custom airports it will be hard to keep track, and looking up the scenery folder(s) isn’t very straightforward.

    Flo

    1. I agree with this. I’d love to see some kind of moderation or gateway for keeping track of airport status and quality for inclusion into the base sim. There is such a variation of quality when it comes to the Lego Brick airports. Also, it would be nice to have some way of keeping track of airport versions so when new 3D airport assets are released, then airports could be updated in a timely manner.

      Just my $0.02 worth… 🙂

      Cheers

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