Suggestion: Elevation Correction

[Travis]

Hi Peter.
Like always, JoinFS is awesome and I enjoy using your program pretty much daily! Thank you!

I would like to suggest a feature that would be nice to have. As I am sure you have came across before in your flying, people don't always have the same scenery. The elevation is usually slightly different. Sometimes I cant see others or they cant see me because one of us is underground to the other. It would be great if the program recognized this and showed the aircraft above the ground. I understand that this will make landings not look correct for one person, however if they are going underground it doesn't make a difference anyways. I have seen this fix used in the program V-pilot, and may be a good place to investigate.

Your software is amazing, and therefore this possibly may be my last suggestion, at least for a good while. Thanks again!
Travis

[Peter]

Hi Travis,

that's an interesting idea. It would help to remove that frequent thing where you're wondering where some of the aircraft are at the start of a flight.

I'll have to have a think about it as I can't think of an easy way to do it. I have elevations for most of the airports so perhaps I could use that as a starting point. Since most of an airport's taxiways should be at the some elevation that might actually work quite well.

Thanks,
Peter

[Travis]

Hey Peter,
I was wondering if there was any update on this topic. Our community at msFlights.net would enjoy if this was possible.
Also, this is kind of a selfish request, but would it be difficult to have the installer look for where you installed the last version? every time I update, I have to make sure I install over the right location because I have it on my D drive. It isn't a big deal, and I would have no problem living without it. But it would be nice if it was an easy fix.
Thanks for everything you do, and catering to many peoples requests!
Travis

[Peter]

Hi Travis,

I haven't looked at this yet, but as it might be relatively easy and will make a big difference, I'll try to get a fix in either the next version or the one after.

Peter

[Robert]

Just a thought but most group flights us the same or similar planes, start at a specific airport, and all meet up before taking off.

Maybe instead of having to have a table of elevations for all airports, you could just have a button or similar for each aircraft to say "set to my altitude"? The offset used to bring them to be the same altitude could then be continually used to maintain that offset. That way you can correct the aircraft that need correcting and leave the others that don't need it alone.

Haven't thought it through all the way but I think that would work.

For those that join in the air, if it is a multihop flight, you can just correct them at the next airport.

Of course if sceneries vary in elevation from airport to airport this wouldn't work so well.

[Travis]

An idea may be, if other user's aircraft is reporting wheels touching ground, to somehow force the aircraft shown to be touching the ground. Could also make this a check-able item in the settings so it can be turned off if it messes things up while testing.

[Peter]

Thanks, I'll probably go along with, if you are 'on the ground' then all other 'ground' aircraft nearby are set to the same ground level. That should cover the worst of it.

Peter

[Travis]

Hey Peter,
I saw you added this! Thanks alot! You are the best!!!
I will have to test this out later when I have time.
-Travis

[jordan96xj]

Thank you for adding this! It means a lot when you are sitting around an airfield with other flyers.

[Peter]

Thank you for adding this! It means a lot when you are sitting around an airfield with other flyers.

No worries, thanks for testing it. I didn't really get a chance to test it properly myself.

Peter

[RCFlyer]

Peter:

I was flying last evening with another fellow and noticed an elevation issue. He was using FSX Steam and I was using P3dV3.4. We were at Hood River, Or, airport on the ground. When I was on the ground he was about 6 feet in the air. We also experienced this issue a couple days ago at Port Hardy.

We were connected through a hub rather than directly.

Danny

[Peter]

When you saw him six feet up, how did he perceive you? Were you under the ground from his perspective?

Peter

[Ron Attwood]

We have been suffering, or rather, experiencing, the same thing.
We are a mixture of P3D and FSX and have differences in elevation of the sort only seen before when someone doesn't have a particular piece of scenery installed. Last Saturday and the previous Saturday we saw this even though we all had the relevant airports. Could this be due to the elevation corrections feature? The terrain on these airports was undulating (outback Australia)

[Peter]

Ah, that might be it. I believe that FSX uses flat airport scenery. I imagine that P3D supports undulating, is that correct?

Do the aircraft look higher than your own aircraft? Could you check the actual altitude figures, from the aircraft list? They ought to give the same reading.

If it is to do with undulating scenery, I may have to switch it off for P3D users, although that may just make it worse.

Peter

[Ron Attwood]

Speaking for myself, all the wayward aircraft were higher than me. I didn't see any 'shark attack' instances. There were 5 P3Ders and 3 FSXers. If we have any more roller coaster runways I'll take a survey of who sees what. But it won't be until next Saturday.