One of the problems with FSX and P3d is the airports are from 2009.

 

Is this fixed in FSW?

 

Edited May 1, 20188 yr by warning23

I doubt it since FSW was developed using the FSX code basically. Some improvements might have been made to certain airports, but I don't think it was don wholesale.

 

I tried to run Pete Dowson's MakeRwys on FSW to see if I could compare with FSX. Since DTG changed the BGL format, MakeRwys cannot parse any APX file that was updated. From the results I guess around 60-70% of FSW airports are in files that were modified by DTG but I can't drill down to see which individual airports were changed. The other 30% of airports are in files that were directly copied from FSX (you could even open such files with ADE and edit them). 

I suspect a lot of the airports in FSX/FSW are generated from Jeppesen data and DTG likely bought updated data and regenerated many of the airport files. Unfortunately since the file format changed those files could not be copied back over to FSX.

I don't think that very many airports were updated in FSW, although some new airports were definitely added. MakeRunways doesn't work because the file-naming conventions for the sim's BGL files were changed. ADE doesn't work correctly for the same reason. Some APX BGL files open correctly and some don't. This may have been done by DTG to prevent wily users from swapping files between FSX-SE, P3d4 and FSW.

I read up a bit and MakeRwys uses scenery.cfg to find folders to search and to understand layer ordering, but I need to check which scenery.cfg file it uses for FSW (presumably it finds one in FSW root folder and uses that?). As far as BGL files it finds in said folders I'm guessing it looks at the section pointers following the BGL file header to see if any sections contain airport data. Depending on file naming conventions wouldn't work well with addons so I doubt it cares about file names. The problem is I think DTG actually changed some code values in the BGL header which would confuse most programs trying to open them.

I had a discussion some time back with someone complaining about a fairly obscure airport in FSW which had runway numbers that didn't match up with the charts he had (from his VA I think). Turned out the VA's charts were out of date, the runway numbers at the airport had been changed in the past year and FSW had the correct present-day numbering.

There were a few updated airports. TRPG for example, wasn't in FSX or P3D but its in FSW.