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LFJF Courchevel / wrong runway slope


Dario

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Hello, 

 

The runway slope of Courchevel, which is its most important feature, does not reflect the real altiport.

 

The real runway has basically 3 sections, 1 horizontal in the upper end, 1 very steep in the middle section, and one less steep towards the lower end of the runway. 

https://www.naukrinama.com/stressbuster/most-extreme-airports-which-are-most-difficult-to-land-a-plane/courchevel-airport-france-2/

 

The Orbx XP11 version basically is composed of 2 sections, 1 horizontal and 1 steep, with a wrongly placed “bump” in the lower end of the runway, which can destroy the plane if the virtual pilot makes a long takeoff. 


Also, the transition between sections needs to be smoothed (more gradual). This abrupt change in angle is far from the real thing. 

 

This is a very important issue and must be corrected, since this is THE reason why people buy this addon. 
 

Lukla has a similar pattern, and there is a competitor scenery which nicely reproduces the real airport. I know Courchevel is not originally ORBX. It needs some adjustments to be up to the very high Orbx standards (I own almost everything ORBX and love all your products). 

 

Other than that, I think that the surrounding mountains are pretty basic, nothing that compares, for example, with the ultra high quality of ORBX LOWI. 

 

Regards, 

 

Dario 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Bassman said:

Maybe the "bump" near the bottom is actually the tunnel roof which will appear as a bump if you have not "enable runways follow terrain contours" setting in X-Plane? Just a thought.

Cheers  Dan

 

Thank you, @Bassman, but this is not the problem.

 

This option is turned on and the sloped runways work perfectly on my sim with all other ORBX sceneries.

 

The problem here seems to be a bad modelling of the runway, which I am sure ORBX developers will be able to correct to bring this scenery up to ORBX standards. 

 

Cheers,


Dario

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I made the drawing below to make it easier for ORBX to understand the problem. Not with the real proportions, but just to show the gradual changes, the 2 curved transition slopes, and the 3 horizontal sections. The 2 most important things: gradual angle changing (not abrupt like it currently is), and a longer section in the lower end of the runway (replacing the current "bump"). Thank you @OuterMarker and @cougar, the latter with experience flying in the real altiport. 

And thank you @Jon Clarke for raising the attention of your colleagues at ORBX to this issue (bearing in mind that the runway slope is the "body and the soul" of Courchevel, everything else being less important than this). 

 

image.png.14e99dc2a0962766098b1ffb3ee5c397.png

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The slope runway is (and was) the main issue of courchevel airport. 

Mad you can see from the scenery itself, we took a lot of time to research and learn the airport (and the area) into the small details. We had (and have) very good and frequent connection with Courchevel airport guys for any tiny thing we had or need. 

The runway- we know all its sections by the measures (width, length and angle), however we live and develop inside limited platform- Xp. More than that, mesh work in Xp- I think the most complicated field inside Xp-11. Unlike one might think, Xp (and also almost any other sim) have limitations. We took Xplane mesh sculpt to the limit and beyond. When you have limitation you must keep a balance. It’s all about the balance. From one hand it should meet the platform limitations, but on the other hand it should be realistic and flyable. 

Matter huge time of search and research we got the formula of the current runway. No- it’s not possible (those days) to make it more curve (technically). We wish to! However, after hundreds of flying hour in and out courchevel I can say with some practice you can have smooth and ultra challenge takeoff and landings.

Its huge fun!

 

We are stand behind Courchevel and think it’s one of the most detailed and accurate sceneries those days.

 

having said that, I can promise you we will continue to try and push the edge to new limits and got that curve of the mesh (now it’s 0.5m, we would be happy to make it 0.01 ;) ).

 

Raz.  

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Hi Raz,

 

Thank you for your explanation. 

 

I confess that I don't know anything about the technical limitations of XP11, however I am seeing many different ORBX airports recently released with lovely sloped runways, none of them comparable to the challenge posed by Courchevel, of course. 

 

On the other hand, I need to say that somehow Everest scenery (see a picture of XP11 Lukla below) was able to reproduce this 3 inclination pattern that I mentioned. Horizontal, then more steep, then a 3rd section (before takeoff) less steep. 

 

The way the runway in ORBX Courchevel is currently implemented makes both takeoffs and landings infinitely more difficult and less realistic than in Lukla. 

 

It's the same platform, but somehow they managed to implement it in a very effective way. 

 

Just my thoughts. And I still firmly believe that this is a central problem that needs to be tackled. 

 

It's a wonderful scenery except for this (huge) issue. 

 

Regards,


Dario

 

image.png.2eb2056fcbcea6c831af88381766464d.png

 

 

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I really don't want to sound rude and I'm sorry if this isn't the case but I find it hard to believe that this is the best possible solution you could come up with...It looks like the runway is modeled one-to-one after the airport cross-section chart which would explain the lack of smooth transitions between the different slope angles and it would coincidentally also guarantee optimal compatibility with a possible P3D version in mind...

The most frustrating part about this is that due to the sharp edge at the 123m mark you loose around 25% of TORA since you have to start the take off run right at this edge in order not to lift off prematurely and hitting the runway prop first afterwards.

This makes operating turboprops like the TBM and PC-12 almost not possible, or at least not enjoyable.

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Dario and Outermarker you are right. it is very very difficult to take  off, the break is too steep, the slope too steep. And for the landing it misses the  smooth transition platform, Curve 
 the schema of Dairio is really very realistic
the rest of the scene is really Beautiful. 
Hope they find a solution.
 otherwise I will leave this scene aside and be disappointed. too bad.
 while waiting for good flight with xplane
 
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Thanks for the info, @cougar and @OuterMarker
 

This “transition platform” that @cougar mentioned is really essential, IMHO. 
 

As it is right now, it is like landing against a wall, because you immediately face the super steep part of the runway, which easily leads you to a stall (landing faster is also not an option). It is a physics problem. When landing, you need this “more horizontal” section to touch the ground, then in the steep part you lose speed. When you take off, you gain speed in the steep part, but you need this less steep part to make the plane look less downwards, otherwise you would be thrown downhill, which is not what we want. 
 

Agreeing with our colleagues, a wonderful scenery except for this issue. 

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Wow, @cougar, look at what you found!!! 

 

This is exactly what we need here! 
 

Now we see that not only it is perfectly possible to make the curved transitions in XP11, it not a sim’s limitation, but also a FREEWARE scenery already includes this feature.

 

ORBX colleagues, I own almost ALL your sceneries, and love them all. As a super loyal customer, I ask you: please correct this runway.... 

 

Regards, 

 

Dario 

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Maybe the lesser steep curved runway from Méribel airport (birds-distance only 2.5 NM from Courchevel bur on the other side of the ridge) will better suit the XP-limitations

about implementing sloped runways. See this as a highly requested next scenery add in XP for the future TE Alps. Maybe already in the scope for release? 

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I tested today another scenery with sloped runways:

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/43367-archipelago-of-the-marquesas-islands/

As you can see in the pictures below, curved slopes are not only possible to do in XP11, but already a reality even in freeware sceneries such as this one (or in the other LFHU scenery identified by @cougar).

I do not want to bother ORBX, but looking at these pictures I am totally convinced that ORBX needs to urgently fix Courchevel.

It's a payware. It's ORBX (which to me means perfection). And it is technically possible.   

 

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2 hours ago, Jon Clarke said:

No. It is being looked into by the devs. No estimate for when it will be done as the resolution is in early stages. 


Thank you for the response, Jon! @Jon Clarke

 

I am sure that eventually ORBX will fix it and bring this scenery up to the high standards the company is known for. 
 

I read that this scenery was not developed “in-house”, but by Gaya Simulations. This could explain the less than ideal quality.
 

Anyway, I was quite surprised to see that ORBX didn’t notice this HUGE runway development error, as this is the single most important feature in the altiport. 
 

Hope the correction comes as soon as possible. 
 

And yes, @rio gerard, the freeware scenery you mention apparently reproduces correctly the real Courchevel runway. 
 

In my opinion, ORBX quality control is to be blamed in this case. It shouldn’t have allowed a release of a product like this. Apparently the developer did not understand how to make curved slopes in XP11 - something many freeware developers already did.... Sad. 

 

Regards, 

 

Dario 
 

 

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45 minutes ago, Jon Clarke said:

I can report that the Devs are heavily into the required modification.


I need to once more congratulate ORBX for its high commitment with its customers, and let me thank you @Jon Clarke and your colleagues for the very professional way you are responding to this question. 
 

I am a super glad ORBX customer, and I am so happy to know that you will bring this scenery up to ORBX standards. 
 

Cheers, 

 

Dario 
 

 

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Xplane is quite tricky when touching the Mesh, I would say it is essentially built not to... which is rather disappointing, in years Laminar was requested to take a different approach but never really bothered, modifying the mesh itself is a very very challenging part even for simple adjustment. Just to shed some light on behind the scene on this particular sim. 

 

They surely can be fixed however it means re-modifying the whole mesh which takes quite some time.

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4 hours ago, Trustdesa said:

Xplane is quite tricky when touching the Mesh, I would say it is essentially built not to... which is rather disappointing, in years Laminar was requested to take a different approach but never really bothered, modifying the mesh itself is a very very challenging part even for simple adjustment. Just to shed some light on behind the scene on this particular sim. 

 

They surely can be fixed however it means re-modifying the whole mesh which takes quite some time.

 

Thank you for this very interesting input. As a lay person, however, as a mere user without any technical knowledge about XP11, it seems interesting to me that, as shown in previous posts, there are plenty of freeware sceneries with runways that have a slope similar to Courchevel. And one of them, by the way, is actually Courchevel!! (It lacks the surrounding eye-candy, but is able to replicate the runway).

 

Tricky is one thing, impossible is a quite different one. 

 

Cheers, 

 

Dario 

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39 minutes ago, Dario said:

 

Thank you for this very interesting input. As a lay person, however, as a mere user without any technical knowledge about XP11, it seems interesting to me that, as shown in previous posts, there are plenty of freeware sceneries with runways that have a slope similar to Courchevel. And one of them, by the way, is actually Courchevel!! (It lacks the surrounding eye-candy, but is able to replicate the runway).

 

Tricky is one thing, impossible is a quite different one. 

 

Cheers, 

 

Dario 

 

That's because it really depends what else was modified :) it is really weird to be honest... another thing as general knowledge for the platform and perhaps you can come across it with Washington where lots of airfields are and therefore two or more can be in the same "Xplane Mesh Square"

 

If I modify only my bit of mesh for my scenery but then "developer Z" modifies his bit in the same "square" or area it may be that my scenery now looks wrong, that is a known limitation of Xplane which Laminar never addressed.

 

If you check this scenery there is custom mesh all over it (the tunnel under the runway must have been a huge work to be honest on a mountain cliff) hence the job for the developer to fix that part isn't as straightforward as one may thing considering how much fidelity and customization was put into this.

 

Most freeware run on regular mesh, there are some very cool very sloped airfields on the org, these make use of the default mesh system.

 

Hope it helps understanding how more or less it works, considering I am all but a navigated dev and I rather not go where custom mesh is mandatory :)

 

 

EDIT: https://www.thresholdx.net/article/afsdix here there is a nice explanation by one of the most know devs which explain the issue further.

 

 

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I've seen the answers about the slope and the mesh but almost nothing about the surrounding landscape witch is not really accurate (we lose all benefits of our beautiful Alps photorealistic scenery). Could be a good option to work on the compatibility  with ortho4xp scenery for example.

 

Cheers

 

Adrien

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Leeds also needs some work, it’s (hard to believe) but like a mini Courchevel.  The slopes are too angular. 737 takeoff with full forward stick still causes the nose wheel to bounce off the runway very dramatically and unrealistically.  Some smoother transitions would be very welcome. 

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