Xplane-style Scenery Gateway

[alternatelaw2 11]

TL;DR: Can MSFS come with its own scenery gateway like XPlane?

 

I am a freeware XPlane scenery developer. I have never made an airport for Microsoft ESP before so I have no clue as to how you folk do things on your side.

In XPlane, we have a scenery gateway (see: https://gateway.x-plane.com/). The logic behind the site is as follows:

1. Users use Laminar Research's assets to make airports

2. These are then uploaded to the Gateway and checked by appointed moderators

3. Moderators give feedback and either approve/reject the user submission

4. If approved of, the scenery is then shipped with the latest XPlane update. This ensures that the scenerys can be updated and that the default airports are constantly improving.

As a result, the XPlane ships with some superb default airports. I would like to note that these are independent of freeware airports that can be found on any other websites as the Gateway ones purely use Laminar's assets.

Edited October 2, 2019 by alternatelaw2

[ca_metal 2,017]

Agreed, but it will depend on how good will be the smaller airports. But I can't how it would be negative to let users improve/update the airports and upload those updates/improvements to be incorporated to the base sim.

[Paraffin 2,197]

It's a good model that MS would be smart to emulate. Everyone with an interest in learning the tools makes their own local GA airport to fill out the world, and if it's approved, it shows up in the next major update. As I fly around the world in XP, I'm often astonished at all the little airports with full 3D buildings, static aircraft, etc. 

It doesn't close out payware developers because you have to use the generic tools and "Lego" building blocks that the Gateway will accept. Anyone is free to do a better job with either free or payware content distributed separately, with fancier custom 3D objects to get closer to reality. You just load them higher in the Custom scenery file and they take precedence over the default Gateway airports. 

[pracines 823]

I cant imagine having grass, weeds, and 1.5 trillion trees, but the airports suffer loss....I sure hope not. It would be akin to the detail of the highway signs and railroads being more detailed than the weather in XP11. 

- makes no sense, or taking an easy route, letting budgets/"business models" rule. 🤢 🤮