FSDT Chicago a few days from release.

[B777ER 2,484]

On 8/4/2019 at 7:14 AM, virtuali said:

That's because there hasn't been any proper announcement. That was more like an informal hint of what is *likely* to happen but, as explained so many times already, it's no use announcing a date, which can always change even at the last minute, considering that was a reply related to the GSX update.

The scenery is basically finished, we are in the final optimization stage ( the scenery developers calls me "the fps cop", which is where I check the scenery for all places where fps could be improved ), to tune performances and, if this takes longer than expected, there's the issue of most of us going in vacation the next week, and we might decide to release it later in the month, to be sure we don't release something with the whole team away, which would prevent us to fix any possible post release problems with our usual blazing speed. In this case, we'll release the GSX update first.

Didn't a dev say within days and now you all are going on vacation and it will be postponed? That dev should've kept his fingers off the keyboard. #fail

[B777ER 2,484]

10 hours ago, DChockey08 said:

While the terminal interior looks good and I understand it won't hit the system until you get close to it in avatar mode...

...I may be in the minority when I say I hope this type of rendering doesn't become commonplace for FS. I'll probably walk through the terminal once in Avatar mode and say "wow this is cool!" and never do it again.

To have to wait an extra few weeks/months for this type of modelling to be done is a shame.. I'm looking forward to this scenery but would much rather have had it earlier without these gimmicks.

But that's just my opinion.

Agree. Have that mode shut off and will never walk inside the ORD terminal. My opinion only but an utter waste of time on FSDT's part.

Edited August 5, 2019 by B777ER

[virtuali 4,419]

I'm sorry but, the issue is, you are missing a crucial piece of information that we have, the most objective tool ever available:

--- SALES DATA ---

We have been doing airports since so many years ( even long before FSDT, which is 12 years old BTW), and we have been able to directly correlate sales with the amount of eye-candy in a scenery. It's almost like mathematics and we could write an equation for it, which would look like this:

SALES = AIRPORT_SIZE * EYE_CANDY

Where "AIRPORT_SIZE" really means "Airport importance", which leads to following very easy considerations:

- A small airport that looks bad, will just not sell, and would be better to be freeware, since nobody will buy it anyway

- A small airport with lots of eye-candy will sell decently. OrbX has made so many of them for a reason: they sell just fine, and don't take years to make

- A big airport that looks bad will only sell if it has no competition and it might even sell very well, if the lack of competition continues.

- A big airport with lots of eye-candy will sell more than all the other combinations.

So, we are clearly choosing the last option, since we don't really like being the ones that do bad looking stuff that only sells as long there's nothing better available.

 

Having said that, I don't think we are the only ones doing terminal interiors, it's just that (as usual), we go a bit the extra mile doing this but, again, I would really like this "FSDT is losing their time" nonsense to stop, as we don't know what we are doing:

- The passenger walking inside terminals it's a technology we took from GSX L2 passengers, and expanded to follow arbitrary waypoints and we needed a test case, so KORD was the perfect opportunity to try this, but it will eventually return to GSX, because A LOT of users asked for the ability to see passengers walking out of stairs and enter in a terminal without a Bus, and for this we required to extend the core "passengers" feature in GSX to have walking paths which could be specified freely, and create the required tools, so we "lost time" to use KORD as a test-bed for the technology, which will make it back in GSX, and be usable everywhere to improve every airport.

- This waypoint technology will also require some kind of visual editor, because this is what users will have to use if they will want to add their own walkable paths to any scenery. With "users", not really meaning "everybody must have to do this", but more like "those that like to do that, and like to SHARE their creations", like Cartanya or Inibuilds or several Facebook groups dedicated to sharing GSX configurations to improve hundreds of 3rd party airports for free.

- The waypoint technology AND the visual waypoint editor that will be used to edit passengers paths, will be required by the "GSX Pushback Total Remake", which will be the base of the next GSX major update. And the improved human characters we now know how to create fairly quickly (and it's easier if they are P3D4-native) will help for that too.

- The two McDonald people, which seems to be the most over-the-top feature, are just a marketing trick to get many views/reviews on social media, and took exactly a half day work, because we already had all the tools, the knowledge and the experience from the new GSX PBR characters. And they were made for fun, while we were waiting for the main GSX developer to finish with the new waypoint technology so no, they haven't took ANY time from release date.  Of course, since nobody wants to have facts in the way of a good story, it's easier to say "FSDT delayed KORD because they lost their time doing a Mcdonald lady".

- The *working* AI board inside the terminals, which is another never-seen-before-in-a-scenery feature, was made as a testbed to refine our exclusive DirectX rendering features, which lead to the easy to customize jetway/operators logos in the GSX PBR update that use it. Same as the working information panels on top of the gates, which are a very distinctive KORD feature, that no other scenery has.

Do you know the first GSX jetways were initially made for KORD ? GSX L2 came out only after we thought "wouldn't be nice if we could place those nice jetways *everywhere* ?

So no, we know exactly what we are doing, and there isn't a single thing we do that hasn't been thought with an eye on future usage and how it might benefit other sceneries or GSX or both. They are part of the same big plan which will always come to a full circle, eventually.

Edited August 6, 2019 by virtuali

[fakeflyer737 991]

27 minutes ago, virtuali said:

I'm sorry but, the issue is, you are missing a crucial piece of information that we have, the most objective tool ever available:

--- SALES DATA ---

We have been doing airports since so many years ( even long before FSDT, which is 12 years old BTW), and we have been able to directly correlate sales with the amount of eye-candy in a scenery. It's almost like mathematics and we could write an equation for it, which would look like this:

SALES = AIRPORT_SIZE * EYE_CANDY

Where "AIRPORT_SIZE" really means "Airport importance", which leads to following very easy considerations:

- A small airport that looks bad, will just not sell, and would be better to be freeware, since nobody will buy it anyway

- A small airport with lots of eye-candy will sell decently. OrbX has made so many of them for a reason: they sell just fine, and don't take years to make

- A big airport that looks bad will only sell if it has no competition and it might even sell very well, if the lack of competition continues.

- A big airport with lots of eye-candy will sell more than all the other combinations.

So, we are clearly choosing the last option, since we don't really like being the ones that do bad looking stuff that only sells as long there's nothing better available.

 

Having said that, I don't think we are the only ones doing terminal interiors, it's just that (as usual), we go a bit the extra mile doing this but, again, I would really like this "FSDT is losing their time" nonsense to stop, as we don't know what we are doing:

- The passenger walking inside terminals it's a technology we took from GSX L2 passengers, and expanded to follow arbitrary waypoints and we needed a test case, so KORD was the perfect opportunity to try this, but it will eventually return to GSX, because A LOT of users asked for the ability to see passengers walking out of stairs and enter in a terminal without a Bus, and for this we required to extend the core "passengers" feature in GSX to have walking paths which could be specified freely, and create the required tools, so we "lost time" to use KORD as a test-bed for the technology, which will make it back in GSX, and be usable everywhere to improve every airport.

- This waypoint technology will also require some kind of visual editor, because this is what users will have to use if they will want to add their own walkable paths to any scenery. With "users", not really meaning "everybody must have to do this", but more like "those that like to do that, and like to SHARE their creations", like Cartanya or Inibuilds or several Facebook groups dedicated to sharing GSX configurations to improve hundreds of 3rd party airports for free.

- The waypoint technology AND the visual waypoint editor that will be used to edit passengers paths, will be required by the "GSX Pushback Total Remake", which will be the base of the next GSX major update. And the improved human characters we now know how to create fairly quickly (and it's easier if they are P3D4-native) will help for that too.

- The two McDonald people, which seems to be the most over-the-top feature, are just a marketing trick to get many views/reviews on social media, and took exactly a half day work, because we already had all the tools, the knowledge and the experience from the new GSX PBR characters. And they were made for fun, while we were waiting for the main GSX developer to finish with the new waypoint technology so no, they haven't took ANY time from release date.  Of course, since nobody wants to have facts in the way of a good story, it's easier to say "FSDT delayed KORD because they lost their time doing a Mcdonald lady".

- The *working* AI board inside the terminals, which is another never-seen-before-in-a-scenery feature, was made as a testbed to refine our exclusive DirectX rendering features, which lead to the easy to customize jetway/operators logos in the GSX PBR update that use it. Same as the working information panels on top of the gates, which are a very distinctive KORD feature, that no other scenery has.

Do you know the first GSX jetways were initially made for KORD ? GSX L2 came out only after we thought "wouldn't be nice if we could place those nice jetways *everywhere* ?

So no, we know exactly what we are doing, and there isn't a single thing we do that hasn't been thought with an eye on future usage and how it might benefit other sceneries or GSX or both. They are part of the same big plan which will always come to a full circle, eventually.

You're a badass and you tell it like it is and I love it. I'll be buying ORD the second it comes out. 

[anden145 2,282]

Wow, man! Nothing's ever good enough for you. You guys in here, sure are hard to please... 

Interesting and thanks for the detailed explanation, @virtuali Looking forward to the release.

 

Edited August 6, 2019 by Anders Bermann

[ZKOKQ 984]

If not for FSDT, and always breaking new ground, I would have buried FS a long time ago.

[threexgreen 3,135]

8 hours ago, virtuali said:

Same as the working information panels on top of the gates, which are a very distinctive KORD feature, that no other scenery has.

What will the panels display? If they actually display flight number and destination, how is the information gathered?

[fluffyflops 1,845]

8 hours ago, fakeflyer737 said:

You're a badass and you tell it like it is and I love it. I'll be buying ORD the second it comes out. 

thats why everyone makes the same airports, all chasing the same $$$.  i guess you cant blame them really.

[virtuali 4,419]

38 minutes ago, threegreen said:

What will the panels display? If they actually display flight number and destination, how is the information gathered?

They rotate several informations:

- the Lat/Lon coordinates of the gate, which are useful to set the reference position in the FMC. They are taken directly from the AFCAD so, in case that would be updated, they coordinates will always be correct, without having to update the scenery textures.

- the current outside Temperature and Pressure

- the flight information. These are taken from the loaded flight plan ( if you loaded one using the default planner ), and they work with AI too. UT Live AI unfortunately don't show ETD times and won't get a flight plan until a few minutes before departure, but other AI kinds using the standard method, will show complete informations.

- the status of the current GSX operation being performed, like Boarding, Catering, etc.

Edited August 6, 2019 by virtuali

[G-YMML1 582]

quick question - will ADE be editable for us, AI fanatics?

[threexgreen 3,135]

7 hours ago, virtuali said:

They rotate several informations:

Sounds very good.

[Boeing or not going 578]

Please do not forget cargo flyers. At your old version the south ramps were too small to fit aircraft in their correct parking spots, you could not fit heavies north and south in the ramps and still have enough room to taxi. Another scenery is out and they ignored the cargo parking at south eastern cargo 5 spots are missing. Please pay attention to these details for us freighter flyers thanks.

[Drumcode 1,892]

@virtuali Umberto, just wanted to say keep doing what you've been doing for years by pushing the envelope with your work. I've seen a lot of negative comments all over the forums about the modeling of T1, wasted time on this in development, blah blah blah. You guys are respected members of the community and should be treated as such. I've waited for this scenery for a long time, sometimes being impatient for its release, but it's right around the corner and it's looking great. Ignore the negativity and don't stop delivering the quality. 

[Bigt 192]

7 hours ago, Drumcode said:

@virtuali Umberto, just wanted to say keep doing what you've been doing for years by pushing the envelope with your work. I've seen a lot of negative comments all over the forums about the modeling of T1, wasted time on this in development, blah blah blah. You guys are respected members of the community and should be treated as such. I've waited for this scenery for a long time, sometimes being impatient for its release, but it's right around the corner and it's looking great. Ignore the negativity and don't stop delivering the quality. 

Not for nothing, but just because they are respected members of the community doesn't mean they can't/shouldn't be criticized at times.

[mpo910 2,112]

On 8/6/2019 at 3:39 AM, virtuali said:

I'm sorry but, the issue is, you are missing a crucial piece of information that we have, the most objective tool ever available:

--- SALES DATA ---

We have been doing airports since so many years ( even long before FSDT, which is 12 years old BTW), and we have been able to directly correlate sales with the amount of eye-candy in a scenery. It's almost like mathematics and we could write an equation for it, which would look like this:

SALES = AIRPORT_SIZE * EYE_CANDY

Where "AIRPORT_SIZE" really means "Airport importance", which leads to following very easy considerations:

- A small airport that looks bad, will just not sell, and would be better to be freeware, since nobody will buy it anyway

- A small airport with lots of eye-candy will sell decently. OrbX has made so many of them for a reason: they sell just fine, and don't take years to make

- A big airport that looks bad will only sell if it has no competition and it might even sell very well, if the lack of competition continues.

- A big airport with lots of eye-candy will sell more than all the other combinations.

So, we are clearly choosing the last option, since we don't really like being the ones that do bad looking stuff that only sells as long there's nothing better available.

 

Having said that, I don't think we are the only ones doing terminal interiors, it's just that (as usual), we go a bit the extra mile doing this but, again, I would really like this "FSDT is losing their time" nonsense to stop, as we don't know what we are doing:

- The passenger walking inside terminals it's a technology we took from GSX L2 passengers, and expanded to follow arbitrary waypoints and we needed a test case, so KORD was the perfect opportunity to try this, but it will eventually return to GSX, because A LOT of users asked for the ability to see passengers walking out of stairs and enter in a terminal without a Bus, and for this we required to extend the core "passengers" feature in GSX to have walking paths which could be specified freely, and create the required tools, so we "lost time" to use KORD as a test-bed for the technology, which will make it back in GSX, and be usable everywhere to improve every airport.

- This waypoint technology will also require some kind of visual editor, because this is what users will have to use if they will want to add their own walkable paths to any scenery. With "users", not really meaning "everybody must have to do this", but more like "those that like to do that, and like to SHARE their creations", like Cartanya or Inibuilds or several Facebook groups dedicated to sharing GSX configurations to improve hundreds of 3rd party airports for free.

- The waypoint technology AND the visual waypoint editor that will be used to edit passengers paths, will be required by the "GSX Pushback Total Remake", which will be the base of the next GSX major update. And the improved human characters we now know how to create fairly quickly (and it's easier if they are P3D4-native) will help for that too.

- The two McDonald people, which seems to be the most over-the-top feature, are just a marketing trick to get many views/reviews on social media, and took exactly a half day work, because we already had all the tools, the knowledge and the experience from the new GSX PBR characters. And they were made for fun, while we were waiting for the main GSX developer to finish with the new waypoint technology so no, they haven't took ANY time from release date.  Of course, since nobody wants to have facts in the way of a good story, it's easier to say "FSDT delayed KORD because they lost their time doing a Mcdonald lady".

- The *working* AI board inside the terminals, which is another never-seen-before-in-a-scenery feature, was made as a testbed to refine our exclusive DirectX rendering features, which lead to the easy to customize jetway/operators logos in the GSX PBR update that use it. Same as the working information panels on top of the gates, which are a very distinctive KORD feature, that no other scenery has.

Do you know the first GSX jetways were initially made for KORD ? GSX L2 came out only after we thought "wouldn't be nice if we could place those nice jetways *everywhere* ?

So no, we know exactly what we are doing, and there isn't a single thing we do that hasn't been thought with an eye on future usage and how it might benefit other sceneries or GSX or both. They are part of the same big plan which will always come to a full circle, eventually.

Thanks for clarifying. A shame on forum users who think they can and may justice how FSDT is using their development skills and time (to market). I am reading really a lot over here. And what I see is a lot of aggressive attack at suppliers (also discussions from users who are justifying about when an update should be free or what an update may cost!). This is not how I thought this community is (re) acting together. Developpers should not loose time on clarifying why they did what......let them work and use their skills on what they are good at. Users should simulate and fly. Also they should sound what they would like to see in future (User Stories). Really not amusing what is going on here. And .....FSDT did a great Job. Your sceneries are eye candy and worth to buy in my eyes! Regards Marcus

Edited August 8, 2019 by mpo910