Re: RFC: Taxiway/Apron heuristics

David Megginson writes:

> David Luff wrote:
> 
> > This has certainly cut down on aprons with taxiway markings that looked
> > horrible, but at smaller airports without taxiway lighting everything is
> > coming out as apron - there's no taxiway lines.
> 
> That's not a bad match for real life -- small airports without taxiway 
> lighting often don't have lines painted on the taxiways either.  Of course, 
> we do need to make it selectable somehow.
> 
> > I'd like to modify it to the following:
> > 
> > - if it's an asphalt or concrete taxiway over 150 ft wide, *or* if it's
> > wider than it's long, assume it's an apron.
> 
> A much better solution is for us to add a field to the runway format 
> distinguishing taxiway from apron.  We have hundreds or thousands of 
> existing aprons, and they'd have stripes all over them.  In the meantime, 
> the lack of a taxiway centreline is not all that noticeable (at least not 
> compared to stripey aprons).
> 

Yes, I take your point, it would break the majority of existing layouts.  An apron / taxiway field would be good - I'm not sure how easy that would be to implement given that we rely on a joint database though.

I'll put it in as a commandline switch in my own tree for doing .twy files where I want that behaviour.

Cheers - Dave