Ever since terrain mesh was introduced in FS2000 the application of add-on high-resolution terrain has resulted in airport plateaus. This has often intruded upon the willing suspension of disbelief and caused many simmers to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. It has forced those who adopted high-resolution terrain mesh into a trade-off. We could either have detailed, accurate, high-resolution terrain, or we could have a flightsim experience without plateaus, but not both.

Well, now we can have both with the introduction of FSGenesis Airport Terrain Adjustment Packs!

What Causes Airport Plateaus?

In nearly all instances plateaus are not caused by the terrain itself, but by any combination of the following:

• mislocated default airports
• erroenous airport elevation data
• FS flat-airport limitation

Even if the airport is properly placed with the correct elevation, the flat-airport limitation will often create a plateau on one or both ends of the runway, since in real life it is rare to have a perfectly-flat airport. Most airports follow the contours of the terrain on which they are located, so when FS artificially makes them perfectly-flat, a plateau is often seen on one, or both ends of a runway, in varying degrees of severity. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that many FS default airports have unrealistically large airport background polygons, which tends to make any plateaus even worse.

The Solution?

Unfortunately, since each airport presents a unique situation, no one has devised an adequate automated, global method of fixing this problem, and I have my doubts that it is even possible to fix them automatically. Thus, the only fix involves manually editing the terrain around each airport, which can be a slow, tedious process. With ~24,000 airports in the FS world, and an estimated 40-50% of them with some sort of plateau with varying degrees of severity, it can immediately be seen what a gargantuan job it is to try to fix them all.

I have put much thought into the best way to handle this problem and have settled on a new product line called ATAPs, or Airport Terrain Adjustment Packs. These will be distributed and organized by state, province, or country, depending on the scope of the coverage area. Each airport in the coverage area will be checked and verified by using georeferenced aerial photographs. Where required, the airports will be moved to their proper location, elevation, and orientation based on georeferenced aerial imagery, as well as adjustments to the airport grounds, and where necessary the terrain surrounding those airports will be adjusted to eliminate any plateaus using proprietary methods. Other cosmetic enhancements to the airports will be left to other third-party developers.

Who can use Airport Terrain Adjustment Packs?

These ATAPs will be able to be utilized by anyone who has any third-party terrain mesh products installed, regardless of vendor. They will be relatively small downloads, compared to the Base Terrain products, will be download-only, and reasonably-priced from ~$10-20, depending on the scope and coverage area.

Stay tuned to this space for further developments and announcements as we begin the rollout in the near future . . .

See free sample here . . .