It seems many users, including myself, have problems with airports not appearing, and instead seeing heliports. I asked about this in this forum, and understand the solution of the manual, but find it unsatisfactory.
Not "many users". SOME users reported this problem, and we included a way to handle these special cases, and it works. Because we always listen to suggestions, when they make sense, even when reported by so few users, like in this case.
Note that, of all (few) users the reported it *after* we added the airport_visibility option, most of them weren't even aware this could be fixed, so they thought it was something that needed some kind of fix on our part.
Of all (few) users that reported this issue, you are the ONLY ONE that found this to be difficult or not satisfactory.
(1) Never display a heliport to a pilot not flying a helicopter.
The helipad case, assuming the airport IS correctly flagged as an helipad, is just ONE of the several possible cases. There are others, such as:
- "airplane" airports inside another "airplane" airport. Like military bases inside a civilian airport.
- two normal "airplane" airports that are just very close. Closer than the 3NM visibility threshold GSX uses by default.
- helipads or seaplane bases that are NOT flagged as helipads or seaplane bases, but just airports with a fictional ICAO.
ALL cases can be covered by the airport_visibility command in the same and easy way.
(2) If that is not feasible, give pilots a choice to select another airport, either in a separate menu or in a menu item of the Ctrl-F12 menu. It might suffice to offer the next closest airport.
This solution would be worse than the problem. This way, you will be forced to select another menu EACH TIME, forever, each time you fly to that airport.
Instead, with airport_visibility parameter, you will have to edit the configuration file ONCE, and then GSX will automatically switch between the two, depending on your positions, without having to select an additional menu in the game.
Without that, I find myself having to use your fix for most airports.
No, you don't. You need to do it only for those airports with helipads, seaplane bases and similar inside or very close to them, which are not so common.
Note that, it's not enough that "just" having an helipad would cause a problem. Most airports with helipads have the helipads flagged as parkings or starting position in the normal AFCAD for the main airport, and these are not a problem. The ONLY case you need to fix this with the airport_visibility command, is when the auxiliary airport has been programmed as a SEPARATE AFCAD with its own separate ICAO code.
And it did not work every time.
If you set the visibility range correctly, it will work every time.
The only way to find out is to fly to that airport, because starting on it yields the correct choice.
I believe, a fix like (2) could be done in about a day of programming effort.
The solution already provided by GSX works correctly, there's no need to fix anything ,and the end result it's easier for you, because it won't force you to go through an additional menu EACH TIME you use an airport. Our solution is better, because you do the editing ONCE, and for all.
Do you have a list of all YOUR add-on airports (since no default airport have this problem) that have helipads with separate ICAO codes ? It will probably less time for you (or even for me), to just create a configuration line for ALL of them, then the time it took to reply to this post.
