ANSWERED PAKT Level Errors

[pilotforfun]

I am having trouble with the PAKT Airfield. I have trolled through the forums and cant seem to find an answer that fixes my problem I have installed Pacific Fjords and PAKT and installed both update patches with no change. The problem I have is that when I first start the levels are all wrong with my aircraft on a low level and the rest of the world moving above! Pics as below. Any help on this would be appreciated.

[Ian Routley]

Russ will no doubt be along to take a look.

The first thing that springs to mind is whether you have any conflicting scenery or traffic add-ons that might be altering the terrain.

A search of your FSX folder for any file that contain PAKT might be helpful.

Also: addon mesh products, which mesh settings do you use? 5m, complexity 100% ?

[pilotforfun]

I do have Traffic 360 and although I see that the installer for PAKT says to turn this off because this airfield cant use it, I have left it on at approx 50% as whilst I understand that for PAKT it wont work I like to fly with traffic everywhere else so unless it can be disabled for this one airport I want it on. If it comes down to an either or scenario unfortunately I will go with having other traffic in the sky!

I do have Global 2008 installed but it is definitely way below the list in the scenery tree.

I have the Scenery mesh resolution set to 2m, Complexity set to extremely dense and the Autogen Density slider set to Very Dense.

I dont seem to have any performance issues at present

[Russ White]

Traffic 360 is the most likely cause of your issue, despite AI not being active for FTX PAKT, Traffic 360 will have an active PAKT traffic file and it's APX is forcing your aircraft through the 'false' terrain of FTX PAKT and onto the FSX terrain surface below.

3rd party mesh and mesh resolution will not cause this problem so dont worry about Global 2008, thats fine.

The problem exists because to accurately reflect the real world PAKT with multiple elevations, the airport terrain has to be faked by making it out of modelled polygons instead of the FSX terrain. 3rd party AI programs dictate a custom APX for airports and this is over riding the hard surface built into the FTX PAKT modeled terrain, making your aircraft believe it should be at the height of the FSX terrain, which of course if far below the FTX airport height to prevent surface proximity bias at altitude.

Russ.

[pilotforfun]

Hi Russ

 

Is it possible to turn the AI off just for PAKT???

[lthendrix]

there should be some bgl files to disable within traffic 360 scenery thats what I did for conflicts with some runway and taxiway alignments in my my traffic folder. hope I helped

[Russ White]

I cannot provide much support for the Traffic 360 program, other than to say rename any file with PAKT in the title ( that is found outside of the Orbx scenery folder) from .xxx (eg .bgl) to .off

 

Russ.

[retep49]

Hi Russ

 

Is it possible to turn the AI off just for PAKT???

Pilotforfun, go to the map Just Flight in the main FSX folder and open this, than Traffic 360 - AirportFacilities  -Scenery- here you see a file AF2_PAKT. You can delete this file or you can chance this like this: AF2_PAKT.OFF.

This will resolve your problems. I have Just Flight TrafficX for 2 years now and had the same problems.

 

Peter

[pipeorgan]

I also have this problem and have changed the only file I can find in Traffic 360 with PAKT in it to AFX_PAKT.OFF. Unfortunately this does not fix the problem. How can I search through Prepar3d to see if there are any other files to be changed i.e. what would the search string be?

 

I have just found another 3 files, manually, in the P3D/scenery/world/scenery and changed them. 

ADE_FTX_PFJ_PAKT_17AK_Ketchikan_TEMSCO_heli_1m_ALT.OFF

ADE_FTX_PFJ_PAKT_AK1H_Ketchikan_N_Tongass_Hwy_heli_8m_ALT.OFF

ADE_FTX_PFJ_PAKT_elevation_adjustment.OFF

 

 

 but the problem remains so I need to search automatically,

[pipeorgan]

I have found out how to search using the windows key and the F key with windows 7, very neat. Cannot find any othe non Orbx BGL file with PAKT in the file name so need to try something else. Am I only looking for BGL files or could there be other types causing the problem?

I have changed the 3 files that I changed in my previous post as they are obviously Orbx files.

Any help would be appreciated so that I can use my recently purchased PAKT.

[Hangar200]

I used to use Traffic X the Traffic 360 - hopefully can help.

 

All the airfield elevation BGL files should (I say again "should") be found in Microsoft Flight SImuator X\Scenery\World\Scenery folder.  ORBX has been kind enough to label their adjustment BGL files with a full name to include area, airfield (or helipad) and "elevation_adjustment" (Thank you ORBX).  

 

In this folder I see three ORBX files for PAKT, one for the main airfield and two for the helipads across the water:

 

ADE_FTX_PFJ_PAKT_elevation_adjustment.BGL--the one for the main airfield-- it is the key file.  You must have it in there but it is to be left alone; FTX central is the only application that should touch that file.  If it is not in there, then you have a problem, possibly with how the PAKT scenery or PJF scenery loaded. 

 

I would suggest that you look further into that folder for any other files, aside from the two aforementioned PAKT helipad FTX files, that has "PAKT" as part of their file names.  If you find one, I recommend remove it from the folder completely -yes, I know setting the file extension to OFF works but I like removing the file completely.  You can create a folder called "Back Up" (or "The Land of Misfit Files") and keep it there. The file name will probably be less clear than the FTX naming convention.  However, it might have the abbreviation "ALT" for altitude in it's file name. If you find a non-FTX BGL file with both PAKT and ALT in the file name, you have probably found your culprit.

 

I would also recommend you go through any other Traffic 360 folders you have and remove any PAKT file, also putting it in the same Back Up folder.  Finally, you might want to check your Scenery Library within FSX and make sure your "FTXAA_AIRPORTS" is on the top of the list.  I would think that should fix part of your problem. . . I hope.

 

The other part is the AI air traffic it self.  Since ORBX's PAKT is on two levels (as in the real world) AI aircraft will disappear after they land (no place to park) and no departure aircraft will appear (no parking spot to start).  If you don't mind that, leave things alone.  If you want to change it, go into the Traffic 360 control panel and I believe you can find all flights to/from PAKT and delete them (that might take a while) and then recompile into a new main traffic BGL.  

 

I hope that helps.  PAKT was one of the first airfields I purchased and it is a lot of fun to fly in/out of.  

 

[pipeorgan]

Many thanks for your suggestions, I have learnt quit a lot from this experience. Wow, what an airport, never experienced anything like this before!

 

I looked through lots of files but could not find any other offending one, only the one traffic 360 file which I renamed the file extension from BGL to OFF and placed it in a new backup directory which I created as a sub directory of the directory it was in. I also noted the 3 orbx files which you highlighted.

 

The strange thing was that on reloading P3D the problem still remained!. I then uninstalled traffic 360 but still the problem remained. I then realized that the file and sub directory that I had created still existed, this file still had the extension .OFF but when I deleted it  my problem was solved.