Default Airport Updates Coming?

[JesC 88]

Some interesting hints of a new product in development at fsaerodata. I suspect it has a way to go before it is realized but sure good to see someone is working in that direction.

You can see what has been said about it here:  https://www.fsaerodata.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=136 

There is a recent update near the end of thread.

Jesse

Edited November 17, 2018 by JesC

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

That product has been in development for a while now. It's hard to tell whether it will update either just runways or that plus taxiways, gates and aprons. My Traffic 6 did the latter, but now that's way out of date also.

I've done the full update for about 150 NA airports that have significant commercial traffic (minus the payware airports that I own) and I can tell you it takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to revise an airport. To revise thousands would take a long time, but it can be done.

One first has to load a high resolution image of the airport into ADE using either FS Earth Tiles, SBuilder or a similar app. Then one has to load an airport diagram into ADE, like for example from Flightaware, which shows taxiway numbering. Then runway lighting and markings need to be revised as does gate information. I made the process even more complex because I replaced the default jetways with a generic SODE version that I made myself.

 

[JesC 88]

All I can offer is what they said in their post about that:

"The previous months, the project has focused on developing the tools and algorithms that generate the taxiways, aprons, runways and rest of airport data. "

"The time taken to generate the airport was aprox. 4sec, which might help to generate and update thousands of airports in a reasonable time. "

I think it looks promising. Time will tell but I think it bears watching.

Jesse

Edited November 17, 2018 by JesC

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Don't take my comment the wrong way. If anyone can pull this off, it's Jose from fsaerodata. I was just pointing out that this product has been under development for a while and there is presently no release date. I've worked with Jose directly on a couple of issues and he's a hot shot coder, so he probably has the database concepts already worked out. The problem is the inconsistency of publicly available airport data from a variety of jurisdictions.

[David Vega 348]

Jesse, thank you for posting this.  Hope their automated update method ends up working as expected and that we can use it to update all the default airports just like we update navigation data.  As Jay said, it takes a while to manually update an airport, plus there are several variables to consider, i.e., how does the update impact the airport boundary, especially those airports with runways very close to coastlines.  

Edited November 18, 2018 by SAX702

[mtrainer 136]

It seems like things are moving in many directions at once- we have Lockheed's old MSFS data, some are using the latest Navigraph data, some are using 3rd party airports, and now we have this update to the default airports.  It's a mash-up as things currently stand.  When I fly into an airport and call up the approach templates on the Internet, I never know if I'm really going to acquire the localizer or not, or if the airport diagram will match what I am flying into.  

I am glad to have the 3rd party add-ons, and this sounds like a product I would likely purchase, my main point to all this is that I wish Lockheed Martin would once and for all update their airports to make them current so we can all be on the same page again.  I do understand it will always be a moving target but pick a semi-recent point in time and bring us all up to that level with respect to runways, ATIS frequencies, Localizer frequencies, and general airport layout.  And yeah, I've purchased 3rd party airports for my frequently flown routes, but the nice thing about occasionally flying into an old, original Prepar3D airport is the smooth framerate.  After all, while I'm landing I'm not staring at anything but the instruments and the runway.

Mark