XST-86
Taxiway shoulder '.lin' assets
New Feature
Reported by:
Julian Lockwood
on November 16, 2023 10:50 PM
Most taxiways at regional and international airports have shoulders which are not for aircraft movements. Currently we draw these shoulders manually using draped polygons, and snap them to the edges of the taxiway polygons. This method is VERY time consuming and in many cases massively increases the time and effort required to draw the taxiways, especially if pavement_FX assets are snapped to the shoulders subsequently.
Requesting a pavement_FX/taxiway_shoulder.lin asset of variable widths (supporting same surfaces and textures as existing pavement polys) that can be snapped to taxiway polygon edges. This asset would need to render asymmetrically - ie only only on one side of the node, and with a perpendicular projection from the node . Asset would be similar to the existing dark_5m.lin, with a textured / soft edge so there is no need for the artist to manually snap additional pavement_FX assets after use. Attached screen capture from WED features a taxiway with adjacent shoulder. Yellow arrow indicates where new asset would be populated - snapped to the nodes present, and projecting north of them (in this example).
An unknown user November 17, 2023 8:28 AM
I don’t understand why the asset should be rendered asymmetrical. It can have a natural soft edge on both sides and a lower draw order layer than taxiways. You don’t need to snap that super precisely to the taxiway or runway polygon. Just place it with one side slightly overlapping the taxiway edge and it will go under twy/rwy
Julian Lockwood November 17, 2023 4:22 PM
Thanks for considering this.
Jan and I are making a big effort currently to educate the community to raise their standards when building Gateway airports. One focus is to get them to snap nodes to avoid unwanted gaps between assets, and also unwanted overlaps (we’re seeing a lot of both). We’re also educating them to use the match bezier-handles feature to get uniform asset joins. This of course only works when nodes are snapped, and not when they are in close proximity.
We have found that when assets are placed close to each other, but not snapped (or bezier matched), the sim can render different results to the viewer in WED. I think this is due to a precision difference between the two platforms? I’m therefore very keen that a ‘taxiway-shoulder’ asset be designed with node-snapping (and bezier handle matching) in mind as the desired method.
That said, a natural soft-edge on both sides of the asset would be fine for sure. I think we already have something similar for some of the pavement FX edge effects (elevated.lin etc).
I guess what I’m seeking here is actually very similar to our existing pavement FX assets for natural looking taxiway edges, except in this case much wider, and with a few more options - for different widths and textures.