Didn't see this coming. Looks cool!From Orbx:Here's a very brief development video showing the upcoming CrowdFlow technology which will make its way into all Orbx airports. With a low FPS hit, this adds a whole new dimension to arriving at an airport, and the view from your cockpit will be more immersive than ever!Watch for CrowdFlow to be patched into all Orbx airports in early 2011, and of course it will be selectable from the airport control panel also.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pPoUnSXzvc

Wow! That looks amazing. Too bad my computer is going to cry when I try to run it.It also seems like that they're just walking around with their heads cut off on the tarmac.

Wow! That looks amazing. Too bad my computer is going to cry when I try to run it.

Mine would too at a larger airport, but it would be great to see one or two other pilots puttering around the apron at Darrington or Stark's Twin Oaks. Don't imagine the hit would be too bad in that type of scenario.

Looks like a TSA security's nightmare.

Passengers wandering about all over the apron, I bet that'd go down well in real life. Let's hope they include an option for them to get ingested into the engines LOL Seriously though, looks pretty cool.Incidentally, you can actually create that stuff yourself in programs such as GMax and FSDS if you are prepared to make the effort. It's basically the same as tying any other custom part animation to an unused animation tag that FS can handle. That's most often seen in add-on aircraft which use the 'concorde visor' or 'wing fold' animation allocations to play some other custom animation such as a bomb jettison or whatever. So in the case of a person, all you do is create a model and give the walking animation loop one of those part names and then make them a 'service vehicle' as far as FS is concerned so they will appear to walk as the 'vehicle' moves. Takes a bit of trial and error, but it's not really desperately hard.Al

Nah, that must be a joke, right ?..... :( People aimlessly wandering about like demented chicken on a highly dangerous apron ?.... Couldn't care less about the air bridge ?..... C'mon Orbx you know waaay better than that ! :(

Hi guys,the point of the video is to show the animations not where the people are walking or that they would be placed like this on a tarmac. I suppose Russ should have stuck them on a parking lot or in an empty hanger for this tech demo :( Cheers, Holger

As per Holger's comment this is a "tech demo" video, meaning we're just showing you the animations, not necessarily where we would place people in an airport environment. We'll have a proper in-situ video coming shortly.There is very little FPS hit with these animated people (This demo at YMML2 only incurred a 1FPS hit with shadows disabled). Obviously we'd only place them in moderation, and as per all our user manuals we'd advise you against turning shadows on.As for Al's comment about how easy this is to do, we're looking forward to your version real soon! :(

Thanks for your work, Its better than the guy doing the Michal Jackson moonwalk, air side at FWI Bermuda when I taxi in.

As for Al's comment about how easy this is to do, we're looking forward to your version real soon! :(

I didn't say it was easy to do, I said it isn't desperately hard to animate someone walking in FS if anyone wanted to give it a shot, which is not the same thing at all. You'll note I also said yours looks pretty cool, which it does :( Al

Its an OK start.  Its gotta get better than that .. with all the security in place today .. passengers do NOT get to wonder around. Their path to and from the plane is very structured.

What part of tech demo went missed here?Great idea!

Actually, there are still a few airports where you do sort of wander out to the aeroplane. Off the top of my head I recall that Almeria is one where it still happens, Galway is another and I seem to remember doing that once at Tampere too. And to be honest, even if they don't do that at many airports these days, I still think it would look cool to have people tramping out to the air stairs of my 737 instead of simply imagining they are using an air bridge.Al

This is brilliant :( All you need to do is get the pax to be able walk from the terminal building up the airstairs and into the plane.You can read door locations in FS (I believe AES works this way), so I'm sure it would be possible.There are a million great things you could do with this...Cheers,

Let me just reiterate something here, we could have put those people on the wing of the B737 or we could have put them on the Esplanade of Surfers Paradise, or on the moon, just imagine that the background is not there, it is about the animated people not the rest of the video :)