Airport Template

[exikutioner 10]

Drool......:pray:

Cant wait for this to release!

[wld427 1705]

looks very nice

[Macadam Cow 1]

thanks a lot guys,

It should be ready soon, I'm busy with IRL stuff, I hope I'll find some time to finish it tonight. I've unfortunately delete most of the marker for the scripted land and take off while I was changing all the runways lights :(

A small ingame video, no music so my german friends can also enjoy it ;)

F2lBBEHLbow

A few numbers :

- 3 Runways of 1.2km

- 2 main taxiways

- 17 hangars

- + 2700 lights

- + 20 guard towers

- 6 helipads

- Total superficy of 650.000 m² = 0.65Km²

Edited February 9, 2011 by Macadam Cow

[Macadam Cow 1]

Now released :)

See first post for more info

[TheBigHerm 10]

This is excellent! Great job

[vengeance1 50]

WOW can't wait to try this out, especially if the land and takeoff script now works in A2 OA.

NICE! :)

[lao fei mao 21]

Big and Nice airport, I think it should be apply to big islands like f65b or 29 palms!

[Guest]

Thanks for informing us about the release, very nice work!! :)

Release frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

Airbase template v0.5



- AGS industrial buildings

- OPX Buildings

- Mondkald's island objects

- Map Editor Upgrade

- ASC EU Lights

[Macadam Cow 1]

Thanks guys, any feedback/suggestion is welcome ;)

I'll try to update it as soon as I get some free time between my work and this

And thanks a lot for the mirror and the frontpage Foxhound, really appreciate it :)

Edited February 13, 2011 by Macadam Cow

[ray243 11]

Would be great if you could help us populate the base, and add a HQ base. Maybe more barracks and vehicles and etc.

[Derbysieger 11]

that really looks great ;) However the layout could be more interesting. An airport similar to Farnborough would be awesome.

[Macadam Cow 1]

I wanted to release several templates (US, Russia,Civilian,...) with vehicles and "population" but as I said I don't know how much time I'll have to do this in the next weeks so I thought I could just release a "basic" template, since everything I could add could also be added by anybody.

I wasn't sure about barracks and stuff like that, the objects number is already quite high. I can't add just 2 barracks and a single tent, would look weird on such a big airport.

I also wanted to do a more complex layout (crossed runways,...) but there are problems with textures clipping into each other, it will require some fine tuning and thus a lot of time.

I hope I'll be able to show or even release an update version on tuesday evening but I can't promise anything.

Thanks for the suggestion guys :)

[ray243 11]

Possibly make a lite one? A smaller airport, lesser lights etc. And maybe a smaller runway, but more other stuff?

And thanks for your hard work!

[ajsarge 10]

A couple things from my not-so-expert knowledge.

-Make the runway lights a little more spaced out. As far as I know, IRL, the lights are spaced so far apart that you don't notice breaks in the lighting for taxiways. Don't go overboard adding lights.

-"Square" your taxiways. Instead of having them go to the middle, send them to the ends, with one or two in the middle to turn off early. BIS's example on Chernarus is actually very good.

-Speaking of that airbase, single runway plus hangars/cover for fighters and a parking ramp for transports is probably the most realistic setup for an in-theater airbase. See the northern airbase on Takistan for an example. And the buildings you're already using look mighty fine for what you're using them for.

-Dim, blue lights on the taxiway sides. Dim, green lights in the middle of taxiways. The default BIS lights work perfectly on the runway edges.

-Don't forget the PAPI's! These 4 lights are used for glide-slope correction when landing. Noticeable as 4 red\ lights that turn white as you move into the correct approach.

-NVG compatible. It's rather hard to do in Arma 2, but having your lights dimmer is better. Keeps the contrast in NVGs flyable, and looks a bit better than ub3r-bright lights with no NVGs.

Little things that I nitpick about, being OCD about what I know it's supposed to some-what look like. Just my 2-cents in my hope for a fully-realistic airfield/base.

[Macadam Cow 1]

I already have a "lite" version, with just one runway, a few big oil tanks and a small pipeline network, I'm going to work on it and I'll add it to the next release ;)

Thanks for your not-so-expert knowedge AJsarge :)

I'll see how it looks like with less lights, and I'll add green light to taxiways

Infortunatly the PAPI would only be cosmetic, I haven't figure out how to script that. I'm really a noob at scripting thus I have no idea how to make lights dimmer. I might try to get in touch with the ACS team but no promises.

Thanks again guys :)

EDIT : I just saw this topic had almost 2000 views but only 100 downloads on armaholic, may I ask to those who didn't download it why ?

Is it just because you're not interested by it ?

Or because of the several required addons ?

What were you looking for when you've checked this thread ?

Is it my bad english ?

Edited February 14, 2011 by Macadam Cow

[bearking19 10]

I have some problems with the a10 taking off as default in your template. They move a few meters then stop with engine on ? Any reasons ?

[Macadam Cow 1]

Hello,

Could you provide a little more information :

-On which island are you using the template ? (a small rock can stop a plane)

-Did you move the plane or did you rename it ? (if so change the init file appropriatly)

-Did you move a marker or rename it ? (if so change the init file appropriatly)

-Did you save your mission ? (if so don't forget to move all the files (except the mission.sqm) that were in the initial template folder into your own mission folder)

[hailstorm 4]

Hey Macadam Cow, nice work. your base looks really nice.

If you're aiming for something more realistic, here's a few more pointers from my experience as a civil pilot:

The most important things for a large-ish airport are the layout of the taxiways and runways. at the minimum, for each runway, there should be 1 parallel primary taxiway that runs from end-to-end next to the runway, and it situated between the runway and any secondary taxiways leading off to hangars and parking areas - this main taxiway is for constantly moving aircraft of all sizes, so having tall buildings or aircraft parking anywhere near it is a no-no. A good BIS-made example of an airport is the one on Malden, from OFP. DON"T take layout inspiration from anything made in ArmA or ArmA2, each airport there has something that would legally prevent it from being called an aerodrome IRL lol (main Cherno, Takistan & Sahrani - bulidings way to close to runway and taxiways, Cherno grass strips - trees way to close to runway ends, Utes - that deathtrap of a tower placement :omg:, etc.)

- What you should do is replace that perimeter road with an actual taxiway following the same route - aircraft usually try to only travel on one runway while taxiing on the ground, the one they actually be landing/taking off from. crossing two runways to take off from a third, while not illegal or anything, is inefficient and also very dangerous if those runways are also in operation.

Runways are actually much, much wider legally than just the strip of pavement with the lines painted on it - This Australian legal document outlines the basic space requirements of a runway - figure 2B on page 3, specifically. an interesting thing to note is that this is for a runway that has only a 15m wide paved area - the rest is referring to areas that just need to be free from any obstacles, like fences, buildings, trees, etc.

-It might be a good idea to remove those hangars and parking bays in between and off the runway edges, their position is way too unrealistic for a base (and runways) that big. Just replacing them with taxiways running the length of the field would make things look much more realistic.

-The hesco walls you've ringed the base with don't seem to be breaking the clearway rules, they're low enough and far enough away from the runway to not be a problem.

-With lighting, the lights alongside a runway only need to be placed every 90m or so - nothing Christmas tree-like. also, runways are always bi-directional, since aircraft always prefer to land into the wind as much as possible, so having runway landing lights at BOTH end of each runway is how they're set up. that being said, only one set of lights will be turned on at any one time, but with parallel runways, those lights are on at the same ends...

Here's a real-life triple-parallel runway airport to draw some inspiration from - Bankstown Airport, in Australia. I've scanned in a diagram of the airport from one of my aviation documents for you:

Black means runways and buildings, grey means taxiways, and letter/number combinations are talking about specific sections of taxiway (i.e taxiway Lima, which runs to the south of all three runways, is split up into 7 different sections (Lima-1 to Lima-7) by taxiway intersections.

At the end of each runway there is a number detailing what compass bearing the runway sits on (110 degrees or 290 degrees) as well as wether the runway is the Left, Centre, or Right runway from that direction.

-Things worth noting is how far away any sort of parking is from the actual runways, and how the taxiways are there mainly to allow planes to taxi onto the far end of each runway, as well as allow landing planes to get off the runway quickly when they stop short of the ends of the runway.

PAPI lights, in ArmA AFAIK, are made up of four separate objects in that catalog - they require no scripting to work, just some skillful placement by the creator. all the objects do are project a white or red light at the player depending what vertical angle they are relative to the light - if the player is too low on glideslope (5 degrees IIRC), all four lights looks red to the player, too high, they all look white. the real system (and the game system) works by having the lights change from left to right depending on the player's perspective (this is already programmed into each light). each light changes at a different angle, so (assuming the player stands on the ground in front of them and ascends vertically) the light on the the left changes to white first, then the 2nd to left, then 2nd to right, then the right-most one, in order.

To get them to work on your airbase, you just need to place the lights roughly 2M apart from each other, next to the touch-down point on each end of the runway (you can tell it's the touchdown point by the large amount of tire markings on the runway texture), while placing the correct PAPI lights in the correct order so the light change pattern is what you see when you look at them as you're trying to land. IRL, the aim is to see from the cockpit the two left-hand lights white, and the two right-hand lights red as you're trying to land.

I know this was a huge read, but hopefully it helps buddy.

Edited February 20, 2011 by HailStorm
Spelling

[Macadam Cow 1]

Thank you so much for your help Hailstrom !

You're answering a lot of things I was wondering about.

It will help me a lot for future updates.

I think everything you said will be easy to integrate into the template except the ligthing part. I really have no clue how to make a whole group of lights set to on or off, it would require scripting knowledge I don't have (yet).

That's why I wen this way, allowing the player to choose which side he wanted to land.

Also I 'm not sure I'll try to change runways numbers. First I'd have to understand how to do that, 2nd get proper permission and 3rd finally do it.

All this would become useless if someone change the airport direction so...but I might try to make the L/C/R thing.

The next update will probably feature the same general layout in a more realistic way.

Now all I have to do is get my hands off of DCS:A10 for a few hours :D

Thanks again for your help Hailstorm, your post is priceless :)

I have some problems with the a10 taking off as default in your template. They move a few meters then stop with engine on ? Any reasons ?

I think I've found the solution !

(from the first page)

Place this in the init file :

[av8b_3, false, 15, 180, 350, 10, 0.11, [getMarkerPos "taxi1",getMarkerPos "taxi1_7",getMarkerPos "taxi_align_rw1", getMarkerPos "takeoff_rw1"], -0.22008, 1, 62, true, ""]execVM"mando_takeoff2.sqf"

av8b_3..............................= vehicle name

false..................................= Vertical takeoff? (true/false)

15.....................................= Taxi max speed in km/h (> 0 and < 31 Km/h)

180...................................= speed in Km/h to reach before raising the nose

350...................................= final speed in Km/h to reach after climb starts

10.....................................= Max nose up angle while climbing in degrees (10 ~ 89)

0.11..................................= acceleration factor (use values between 0.05 and 0.2)

[getMarkerPos "taxi1",...].= Array of taxi positions (last one is take off one, at least one must exist)

-0.22008...........................= Take off direction in degrees (Direction the plane will use for final take off run)

1.......................................= Number of crew members inside the plane before starting take off procedure

62.....................................= Number of seconds to wait idle after all crew is inside

true..................................= Radio comms (true/false)

"".....................................= Ejection SQF script or "" if none, any script receiving a single argument, the plane.

Change that number to your needs and it should work now. Be aware if you set that number to 0 for each plane they'll most likely collide on taxiways. I would suggest to let 2 or 3 sec between each start up, remember it's a script, AIs wont perform like if they were on a "real" airport, they wont slow down to avoid collision.

Edited February 20, 2011 by Macadam Cow

[Cyborg11 10]

Downloading the required addons now :)

Do you recommend a big island for your airport? :)

[Macadam Cow 1]

Oh yeah, I strongly recommend one, but I can't provide any link so far :(

It also fits on three other islands (see post #4) :

- Bagdad

- Aoraki

- Marrom

Edited February 22, 2011 by Macadam Cow

[adamcarolan2290 0]

i cant dl the addon AGS industrial buildings it just re directs me to the log on screen ?????????

[HunterTX 10]

Macadam Cow,

To address your question, its an awesome airfield but to large for most of the missions I work on and a few to many add ons. I am however looking forward to your "Lite" version :D

EDIT : I just saw this topic had almost 2000 views but only 100 downloads on armaholic, may I ask to those who didn't download it why ?

Is it just because you're not interested by it ?

Or because of the several required addons ?

What were you looking for when you've checked this thread ?

Is it my bad english ?

[Macadam Cow 1]

i cant dl the addon AGS industrial buildings it just re directs me to the log on screen ?????????

Thanks for the info, Armaholic is not hosting PMC files anymore so I've updated the link of the first page, should work now.

Macadam Cow,

To address your question, its an awesome airfield but to large for most of the missions I work on and a few to many add ons. I am however looking forward to your "Lite" version :D

Thanks for the answer :)

I'm still working on it, just got a bit busy with IRL stuff.

Opteryx allowed me to post a link of his Nevada Desert Terrain (first post updated). Also Lester (MAP:EU) and Mondkalb (Monkalb's building) agreed to let me include their addons in my template folder, so you guys don't have to search for them :)

I hope to post an updated version soon...or later :p

[ryguy 10]

Would it be cool for me to make an airport diagram of this?