Some Definitions

This section contains some of the terms and definitions that are used in ADE.   It is not complete and we will continue to update it on a regular basis

 

AIRPORT REFERENCE POINT   This is the position that is shown in charts and so on and represents the point of reference for the airport.   It contains the latitude, longitude and altitude of the airport.   Reference points are published in documentation about airports.   They are not always at the center of the airport and in some cases you may wish to move it to reflect its real world position.   In Airport Design Editor everything you see in the display is referenced from this point.

 

AIRPORT HEADER In technical terms all the information that is needed by FSX to display the infrastructure of an airport is collected under the airport header.   In relation to the XML source code everything that is enclosed in the Airport Element forms part of the airport.   Not everything in an Airport Design Editor project is under this header.   Scenery items and exclusions are separate.   Things like terrain is generated in a different way

 

AIRPORT ELEMENT A part of the airport such as a runway, apron or parking spot.

 

ADE GRID   Sometimes just called the display.   this is the main working area of the program and where the two dimensional picture of the airport is created and maintained.

 

COMPILERS.   To get from the source code created by Airport Design Editor to the final file that is used to draw the airport in FSX we need a compiler.   ADE uses two compilers from the FSX SDK.   The first generates the airport and scenery information and the second generate terrain information.

 

FILE FORMATS.   The two main formats are XML (.xml) and BGL (.bgl).   In addition Airport Design Editor has its own format for project files (.ade).   These files are much larger than the Bgl file but also contain information that cannot be stored in the compiled file.

 

LOG Airport Design Editor maintains a log of what is happening while you work with it.   This log can be very important in helping the development team to track down faults and other problems.   you should always provide a copy of your latest log when reporting a problem or crash.   The files are located in the main Airport Design Editor folder and named ade_YYYYMM.log.   So, for example, in August 2008 the current (latest) log is ade_200808.log.

 

STOCK You will see Stock used many times when working with ADE.   When something is referred to as Stock it means that it is part of the FSX installation as shipped by Microsoft.