Runway conforming to terrain - SwissAirfields/SwissAirfieldsFS2020 GitHub Wiki

As of august '21 there seems to be no simple way to make a runway conform to the underlying mesh (something like a checkbox in the runway object).

1. By default a runway is flat and level and alters the surrounding mesh according to the fall off-value. Set the fall off value to 1 to see how badly the runway sits.
2. The "most official" way seems to be to use a runway profile. This approach has a few problems:
   • It's not accurate. When using real world values (sometimes published in the airfield charts, sometimes from GIS-browser) and checking afterwards the elevations are off quite a bit.
   • Sloped runways cause the mesh past the ends to be horizontal for a bit
   • No sideways slopes possible
3. Terraforming primitives intersecting the runway can override its default terraforming behaviour - if their priority is set to >10.
   • A heightmap generated from DEM data can be used. So in effect this forces the runway back into shape by reapplying roughly the same data that would have been underneath already.
   • A misbehaving heightmap can be carefully edited with the brush tools (smoothing if there are bumps in the source data etc.). But it's probably even better to add additional heightmaps on top (priority) where necessary and edit these.