active Duplicate afcads question

[Jon Clarke]

I have many duplicated afcads and want to know if they make any difference at all as long as the scenery library insertions are correctly layered.

Example: I have FTX ENG with ENG airport afcads,  I have UK2000 with afcads and I have MT6 with afcads.

As a preference I tend to use UK2000 VFR airfields 1,2 & 3 rather than the one's included in FTX ENG so my UK2000 airfields are higher in the scenery library than FTX, MT6 is way down just above Propellers.

Do I assume correctly that the sim will read and "activate" the first afcad it comes across and ignore the other 2? I know that sometimes there may be a clash but would rather deal with the clashes as and if they occur.

I have in the past removed the FTX ENG afcads and associated airport cvx. 

I would like to keep the installations of each of  these addons as pristine.

Do I need to remove the duplicates from the other 2 (ENG & MT60) addons or not?

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi there,

 

generally speaking, duplicate airports from different add-ons can be left in place as they are coded in such a way that they exclude all features of an airport with the same ICAO (default or third-party) at lower display priority.

 

The only potential issue is that of elevation mismatches as the airport reference altitude is (unfortunately!) the only component that cannot be excluded or overwritten; the sim will always display runways and taxiways at the first reference altitude it reads for a given ICAO, meaning the one with the lowest display priority. That's why we and other developers, at airports we need to change the reference altitude for, place elevation adjustment files into \Scenery\World\scenery because that folder has lower display priority than the default numbered folders (0001, 0002, etc.) that contain the default versions of all airports. (Global Vector has its adjustment files in a separate "FTX_VECTOR_AEC" folder but that is also placed in the scenery library menu below the numbered default folders).

 

In short, you can leave the different airport files in place but if you encounter elevation issues at a specific airport you need to make sure that the active airport file (highest priority) has the correct/matching elevation adjustment file and not a third-party file with a different reference altitude.

 

Cheers, Holger