February 20th, 2020 – Development/Insider Update

[Amon1973 1,421]

9 hours ago, marty2756 said:

Did I understand correctly, did they somehow edited manually 37000 airports ? Even with the best tools or pipeline I can't imagine how they can do this.

They do have a very large team, so you have to believe what they say is true.

[FDEdev 955]

11 minutes ago, bashope said:

That's such a poor argument that it shocks me that you can't see it can also be used on you... or will you post videos of the 40000 runways to prove YOUR point? 

After more than 40 years and +17000hrs flying all over the globe, I think I've got a pretty good picture about the average runway on 'real' airports.

[RALF9636 1,951]

Maybe we all can agree on this:

Airports with undulated runways (and taxiways) exist in the real world and it would be great to have these airports properly represented in the sim including the undulations.

 

[Amon1973 1,421]

9 hours ago, aleex said:

I'm going to be the black sheep this time, sorry for those ones who think it's something personal, it isn't.

- I miss the explanation of the difference between photogrammetry airports and "autogen" ones. I mean, both requieres work, but not the same amount of work, or yes, but IDK.

- I miss some more explanation about AI traffic and AI vehicles over the airports (will be set by region, by airport, all the same everywhere?).

- Has they changed the way active runways were handled by FSX? Or we will still see unreal landings?

- 80 airports heavily edited manually. Nice, but I can see a war on the horizon about which airports should be selected (and there we go again to the photogrammetry ones, are those included in those 80 airports or not?).

I mean, It's a HUGE improvement from what we have. This is not about how the sims looks at all. But I miss a longer and deeper discovery video, furthermore after being delayed for a week. 

But hey! MS/AS, if you want to include me on the alpha, I'm glad to discover it by myself! No problem

I agree that they could of give us more info about things like active runways etc, but the 3rd party Devs will see an opportunity here, and be all over it, looking for ways to improve the sim even further.

[Scottoest 1,561]

31 minutes ago, eaim said:

They do have a very large team, so you have to believe what they say is true.

The tools look powerful (and simple) enough that they could have even farmed out this step to contractors.  Of course, I'm sure the 80+ airports that got more attention were all internal though.

[Beru 41]

For me, there is also one important aspect in this new MSFS: finally, we have a product that feels pretty completed. No more, "wait, now I've to install this other plugin and this other asset, or download this map or ...." Almost everything that we had in dozens of different plugins is now part of the same product done by the same people. Sometimes I got the feeling I had to invest 30min struggling to make things working.

[Bear242 68]

4 minutes ago, Beru said:

For me, there is also one important aspect in this new MSFS: finally, we have a product that feels pretty completed. No more, "wait, now I've to install this other plugin and this other asset, or download this map or ...." Almost everything that we had in dozens of different plugins is now part of the same product done by the same people. Sometimes I got the feeling I had to invest 30min struggling to make things working.

No more tweaking with fsx.cfg

[Beru 41]

6 minutes ago, Bear242 said:

No more tweaking with fsx.cfg

Exactly!!!!

[Amon1973 1,421]

9 hours ago, ual763 said:

The grass strip in Costa Rica on the update is the Sirena Ranger Station in Costa Rica.

True to life, the only thing that needs sorting is the grass in the sim, unless it's only the amount of zoom being used which produces the overly long and thick grass.

[Casualcas 830]

True, real world airports have undulating airports,  but please remember real world resolution on EVERYTHING, is higher in real life than on any data that I have used or seen. In all honesty,  if I had a choice, of being bounced around on the ground, or taxiways inclined sideways because the underlying mesh resolution is poor, I'd rather they flatten it.

[Bottle 663]

I hope they ultimately list the 80 airports done in detail and then someone can construct a flight plan for, "Around the world in 80 airports".

[Bear242 68]

1 minute ago, Bottle said:

I hope they ultimately list the 80 airports done in detail and then someone can construct a flight plan for, "Around the world in 80 airports".

With a 747-8

[MatthewS 761]

1 hour ago, bashope said:

It's called statistical analysis 🙂 or are you saying that any statistical research is meaningless? 🙂

EDIT: That's such a poor argument that it shocks me that you can't see it can also be used on you... or will you post videos of the 40000 runways to prove YOUR point? Useless discussion. The airports that I MYSELF fly to, either in RL or in sim, have noticeable undulation (which is very well represented in X-Plane) and I expect nothing else from MFS.

 

Just ignore him... FDEdev 🤡 doesn't even comprehend or remember his own assertion which was that 99% of runways appear perfectly flat. ROTFL 🤣

 

5 hours ago, MatthewS said:

ok, well 99% have undulations that are perceptible to some degree, the other 1% appear perfectly flat.

FDEdev "This is of course wrong again, it's more the other way round."

 

Edited February 21, 2020 by MatthewS

[Chock 17,769]

Whilst I can't say I'll be especially upset if it turns out that the runways are all flat in Microsoft's new flight sim, the fact is there are plenty of runways which have considerable undulations in them, as well as elevation differences from one end to the other in terms of the threshold height. The FMC in most airliners does either ask you to enter the runway slope figure, or automatically insert that figure for you if you fill in all the take off and departure sections including having selected your departure runway, which should make it abundantly clear that runways are not flat. And of course neither are taxiways.

At my own place of work - EGCC - it is pretty noticeable that there are considerable up and down slopes along the runway when you drive along the airport perimeter track and see down Runway 23R. In fact, you don't even have to be on the airport to see that, if you stand at the end of 23R at the airfield's perimeter fence and watch an aeroplane land, it will go out of sight as it goes down the runway, only to have its tailplane appear again some time later as it comes up the other side of the dip in the runway.

If I recall correctly, there is only a few feet of difference between the height above sea level of both ends of the runways at Manchester (off the top of my head, I think it is something like maybe 256 feet above sea level at one end and 254 feet above see level at the other, or something like that, which itself would hardly be worth considering), but the aerodrome booklet for Manchester does mention the considerable dip in the runway which is about a third of the way along it. It mentions it because if you land long and come down on the upgoing part of the dip, it effectively increases your rate of descent a bit and can make for a hard landing. And any hard landing means we have to have an engineer from the airline come and inspect stuff, which fortunately is rare, but personally, one of the things I always look when doing a walkaround, is evidence of a tail strike (especially on a 737-900, an A321 or a 757 since they all have quite a considerable overhang from the rear wheels, making a tailstrike a bit more of a possibility for a tail scrape which has gone unnoticed by the crew). Some people at work think I'm a bit fussy when I do walkarounds, but I call it thorough and make no apologies for being that way.

You can see the considerable dip of 23R quite well on this video of an A380 landing there:

https://omyplane.com/commercial/airbus/airbus-a380-description/stunning-overhead-approach-landing-on-runway-23r-emirates-airbus-a380-manchester-airport/

Also of note in the aerodrome booklet, is a cautionary note when landing the other way on that runway and the one to the right of it (i.e. 5L and 5R) about a considerable dip in the terrain when on short finals, the warning points out that your radar altimeter will read high for a small part of the approach as you pass over that terrain dip. That's not the actual runway dipping, but it does at least indicate that the terrain is not ironing-board flat where the airport is in spite of appearances. This feature is mentioned on the approach charts for these runways too.

Operationally, the slope of certain parts of the airfield is a consideration that I often have to take into account when pushing out aeroplanes. There are two areas in particular where this can be an issue. Stands 49-54 are a bit uphill toward the taxiway and from stands 31/32 to the tug release point which is adjacent stand 65, is fairly uphill. When pushing something like an Etihad 787, 777 or or (sadly no longer) Thomas Cook A330 off stand 31, we tended to make the crews wait a bit before letting them crank the engines because on big aeroplanes like those, even the idle thrust of the massive engines can make the pushback to the tug release point a bit of a struggle on the gradient for some of the less powerful tugs, especially in the wet. Strictly speaking, the airport operations people would prefer everyone to not crank the engines at all until at or right near the TRP, but this is something you have to make a judgement call on in order to not cause delays.

We frequently push NEO A320s off stands 49 through to 54, and because of the long spool up time for the engines on the NEO, pilots are always mad keen to start the engines ASAP. My standard patter for headsetting aircraft out is as follows (and it is especially for the reason of engine thrust making the push harder in the wet for a smaller tug): Upon asking for the pilots to release the brake, and having signaled the tug driver to begin the push, I always say to the crews: 'Push commencing. Stand by engines 1 and 2'. This tells the crew that there is no point in them asking me if they can crank there engines as they are rolling backwards (uphill) off those stands because I've already told them to wait for my say so. I will generally let them start cranking when the NEO has crossed the road and is in a turn for the taxiway since at that point by the time the engines are generating any thrust, we'll be on the main taxiway. The crews don't especially like this, but apart from supervising the engine starts and all that other stuff, my job is to make sure they get out on the taxiway without any problems and so I have to consider alleviating difficulties for the tug driver.

As I say, it won't break my heart if the runways are flat in the new sim, but those who are suggesting that runways are all pretty flat with no undulations in them, are wrong, it's actually fairly common to see that they are not at various airports around the world, which isn't really that surprising since a 10,000 foot runway is after all, about two miles long, so it will most likely encounter some dips and rises over that kind of distance.

 

Edited February 21, 2020 by Chock

[SierraHotel 976]

When MSFS 2020 was first announced and after watching the early videos I was so disappointed with my existing flight sims I simply uninstalled them! A couple of weeks ago I started experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms (commonly known as "nosimphobia"). I had a complete relapse yesterday and in a mad half hour, I re-installed P3D and quite a few of my addons. This morning I awoke and continued the installation, with the crazed idea that this just might relieve the symptoms! By this time I had installed "all" of my Orbx products and REX SkyForce 3D, however, when I tried to enter my serial no REX kindly informed me that I had run out of installation credits! (I know, really!!). I tried their automatic system, but the page wouldn't load! And it was just then in a flash that all the horror of running P3D, FSX or X-Plane came rushing back!!! Then I caught sight of the latest Video on Airports from MSFS! Well all, I am pleased to tell you that the symptoms have abated and I have once again uninstalled P3D (thank God) and will wait patiently (maybe) for MSFS 2020.

P.S. To Dev Team, Hi Guys, I have just received my extra 16gig Ram, so I now run 32gig (Just in case you are still looking for testers..;-)