2 things that really annoying me...

2º Maybe is my main complaint, I always make flights in paved runways, (with very few exceptions), and the AH tell me that I land on urban or grass terrain, in this case was urban because was in the city!   HOW? how I ask, but the answers are to vague, blamming the scenery etc.., and I ask, why not blaming the AH?

Herege, I guess the best answer to that question at the moment is because we're not hearing it from anyone else. 

Let's hear from the rest of you guys.  Are any of you getting surface damage (not hard landing damage) when you grease it and straddle the center line?
 

AH must be capable to deal with this, if not, as a good sense action, are not to punish the user about this.

AH reads the surface that FSUIPC reports at the moment you touch down.  If that surface type does not match one of the runway surfaces at the airport where you're landing, surface damage results.  If you're seeing urban or grass on the flight report (at an airport that does not have a grass runway) that's what FSUIPC is reporting.  AH thinks you missed the runway. AH can't get any further inside FS than to read what FSUIPC reports.  It's how it works - it's all it can do.

I suspect that this is being caused by funky scenery - I just can't come up with any other plausible explanation for it.  Again, all AH can do is to read the surface type reported by FSUIPC - it can't see what you see out the windshield. 
 

Today I have a example, I landed twice in 2 different runways with greese landings, center line all fine, and AH got from me about 52% of aircraft wealth. Something are wrong here no?

Yes, something is wrong.  I hate to bombard you with questions but it's necessary if you're going to help us understand the root of the problem...

- What version of the Flight Sim are you using?

- What operating system are you using?  Is it 32 or 64 bit?

- What version of AH are you updated to?

- What version of FSUIPC do you have installed?

- Have you re-run the scenery import after installing the last AH Service Pack? (I don't know if that's necessary but it can't hurt.)

- Have you installed, edited or deleted any scenery since last running the AH scenery import, including changing the order of scenery in the FS Scenery utility?

- What scenery/terrain mesh add-ons do you have installed in the part of the world where this is occurring?

- How frequently is this happening (X out of Y landings)?

- Have there been any landings on the same airports/runways where surface damage did not result?

- Has this been happening since you began with AH or is it a new problem?

- Can you go back to your cashbook or flight log and make a list of the airports and aircraft where it has occurred?

- Using the list of occurrences, can you copy out the Flight Log Records to an Excel file and delete all rows all except the arrivals where this occurred? 

...the same kind of information from anyone else who is having the same issue would be appreciated as well.  I know this is a lot of fooling around but I dont' know any other way to go at it. 

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
 

If AH can't handle with this, please, don't punish the pilots/us with this penalty, because if as many say, the AH are not guilty, US are not guity too, right?   Sugestion, disable this type of punishment till AH can read / fix correctly the terrain reading, or more simple, ban this kind of punishment from AH because have no sense have this working in this way.   This is a not fair judgment that AH make from us that work hard to make good landings and not so, and I think that I'm not the only one with this problem. Something must be done.

Herege, we feel your pain, but let's take a deep breath and get to the bottom of this.  Surface damage for off-runway landings is an important feature of the app and appears to be working correctly for almost everyone.  Removing that feature would require an update and if installed would deprive the other users of that feature even if it's not malfunctioning in their installation. That's pretty strong medicine for this.

If the surface damage feature is removed, how will we figure out what's causing it?  Bear with us and help us figure out what the problem is.  This is a case where this very positive, valuable and involved user community can bear a hand resolving an issue.
 
John

Hi Herege,

It's curious all of your examples are in Hawaii - perhaps it's something specific to the scenery package you are using.

The only experience I have had with surface-based damage was landing at a photo-realistic airport that was "painted" as a texture on the surface of the ground. (Similar to something like google-earth). There wasn't an actual runway present at the airport even though it looked like I was landing on one. This was confirmed by going into AFCAD2 as John suggests - there was simply nothing at the airport except for the reference point.

My greaser landing caused 8% damage as AH regarded me as landing on grass (bumpy), luckily, although if the underlying texture underneath the photo-airport was "urban" I'm sure I would have copped a lot more damage.

John's suggestion of using AFCAD on those airports would be my first starting point to figuring out the mystery too. Put FS9 into windowed mode (Alt-Enter) and resize it so it fits next to AFCAD. Then use slew (Y) to move your aircraft around different key points such as runway thresholds and centrelines, etc. You should see your aircraft moving around the AFCAD map in real-time for comparison purposes.

Hope this helps somewhat.

Cheers,
Andy

Connor,

AH gets the expected runway type from the scenery files, and the actual surface from FS when you touch down - it is NOT AHs fault if the two don't match - it's the fault of the person who wrote the scenery and who's runway surface types given don't match the scenery.

It seems the only way to get slopes runways is via this method - if you're landing on sloped runways you might see if more often than not.

All I can do is disable it, but for the majority of users it's not a problem per se.

Herege wrote: To be sincerely, I think that the first choice is a global medicine to cure this problem and avoid the future problem with the same cause.

Although I empathise with Herege's situation i'd be against removing this feature. It's a good feature that works well in the majority of circumstances, such as when a late gust blows you off, or short of the sunway and the poor little Cessna's (or mighty big Boeing's!) undercarriage goes rumbling across the grass or crashing through the threshold lighting... 

It's not a difficult game to make a lot of money and these sort of things keep you on your toes and your skills sharp. 

Well guys, this study case are put me crazy, but I solved the problem in this area (Hawaii) I think!

Thank you John for your words.

Thank you  very much acurnow, I will give it a try, after reinstall again the Bluesky photoreal scenery, but my problem was in Hawaii and not in Ontario with Bluesky scenery, well, I try when I must delivery some cargo on Hawaii. I appreciated for remembering and share this information here, thanks again ;)