1 hour ago, Doering said:

They have done Guelph and Waterloo. Burlington is in the works. I have flown to Guelph and Burlington, airports almost in my backyard! 

Burlington is already done. It’s great too. 

Looks awesome!  I'll hold out for a review with an eye on the performance,  but if it stacks up... I gotta buy my home airport.

I have spent literally thousands of hours in this airport over the past 2 decades. My initial impression is that it looks pretty darn good. I am excited for this.

I heard FlyTampa was working on Toronto but not from an official source. I think these older developers will need to work a little quicker. I think the days of "claiming" an airport and no one else would begin work on it have passed.

That looks really good...I was eagerly awaiting FlyTampa's CYYZ but it looks like it has a competitor now!  I own Waterloo and Guelph from this developer and both are very good quality so this is exciting news for Canada's biggest airline hub.

I do hope that they tighten up the AFCAD file for the airport as the screen shots show a lot of airlines in places other than where they should be.

Edited February 26, 20224 yr by regis9

3 hours ago, Cognita said:

I heard FlyTampa was working on Toronto but not from an official source. I think these older developers will need to work a little quicker. I think the days of "claiming" an airport and no one else would begin work on it have passed.

I think so. Not that I want FB or FT to start pumping out airports like the "Brasil Land Games" but 2 years in the making for an airport doesn't cut it anymore, even more as the base sim is continually changing itself.

I'm looking forward to this, too, but after the recent suboptimum EGLL and LIRF and I'll tame my expectations.

Kind regards, Michael

Looks very good, if performance and pricing holds up then it’s going to sell well. An international hub that ticks all the boxes so far. 

Edited February 26, 20224 yr by Carts85

2 hours ago, pmb said:

but 2 years in the making for an airport doesn't cut it anymore, even more as the base sim is continually changing itself.

The problem is, users has been spoiled by what 2 years of development could achieve in a simulator that progressed at a slower pace (P3D) and, right now, the hard reality is that basically nobody has made a really big airport for MSFS ENTIRELY from scratch. Something that started from zero *after* MSFS came out.

Potentially, the better MSFS graphic engine would allow for even more detail, and the requirement for adding multiple LODs, to keep fps and memory usage under control, especially on Xbox, is just increasing the already high development time.

So, most of what you are getting right now, is something that was either already made on P3D and converted ( conversions are NOT inherently "bad", if the original scenery was good, and enough care was used to redo textures in PBR, modeling is modeling. ), or something that started its development in P3D or X-Plane, and at a certain time was retargeted to MSFS. I'm only referring to very large airports here.

PBR is nice, and we think to know a thing or two about it, our KORD V2 started development with P3D V3, which had NO PBR but, we were BETTING the next version would eventually get it, so we made all its textures AS IF we had a PBR-based game engine, with a very complex custom Substance Designer plugin that converted back the PBR textures to the non-PBR format required by P3D3. The scenery wasn't finished until long after P3D V4 came out, so we never released it for V3 like we could have but, since it was already a 100% PBR scenery ( and I maintain to say it's still one of the FEW out there that hasn't been "converted to PBR", but it was born with it ), we were able to obtain a proper result in MSFS relatively quickly. But that's JUST because we DID spent 2 years+ in the making, considering the project started with P3D V3, based on the (correct) assumption that all the simulators would go to PBR, eventually.

So, you (and we) got lucky to have a proper KORD only a month after MSFS came out, but that's just because most of the work was already done before ( PBR *is* PBR and modeling *is* modeling ). 

If you want something to be done "quickly", you must be prepared to compromise on quality, there's no way around it, it's not as if you could speed up development time by decree: and the fact the sim is constantly changing, is not helping, it's making it worse.

As an example, we were almost ready to release KCLT last Summer, like we planned, it only required finishing touches, like the airport layout, taxiways, parking spots, taxiway signs, and all the work that must be done in the internal editor. But at the same time, SU5 came out, and it had a catastrophic bug that resulted in an almost immediate crash in the editor as soon you tried to move/add something, which wasn't obvious if you were editing a smaller airport. We reported this the next day after SU5 Beta started, but it was fixed only in SU6, which came out 3 MONTHS later, that delayed the scenery ( and the ones after it, like KIAH, which we are working on right now ), and made a serious impact on our financials for 2021, since both sceneries were supposed to come out before the end of the year.

 

Edited February 26, 20224 yr by virtuali

I really hope they get YYZ right. The ore airports I have personal experience of, the better. As long as they don't simulate trying to get a whole ice hockey team and kits through security and immigration!😁

4 hours ago, 109Sqn said:

I really hope they get YYZ right

I hope so too! It is hard to tell from a few selected screenshots but it appears to be generally accurate and decently textured. They even modeled the art installation in the T1 international departures lounge. The team are from Toronto which is also a good sign. From their website it seems they are basically done so hopefully we will get it soon.

 

5 hours ago, virtuali said:

The problem is, users has been spoiled by what 2 years of development could achieve in a simulator that progressed at a slower pace (P3D)

Virtuali, I really appreciate your descriptions of the development work as it helps me connect to it. I was really happy that a high quality Chicago released early in the life of the sim and it got a good amount of use as the only good quality hub in my area of the world. It does seem development is speeding up, maybe only because there are more people involved with knowledge of the methods and tools used in MSFS. It took since the dawn of FSX to get a decent version of Pearson Airport -- I think Fly Tampa released their version in 2015 - and now we have what at least on the surface seems to be a decent version after only 18 months; and this is the same with many other airports around the world. This is great for us that "consume" airports but it must be a different environment in which to develop.

I'll certainly be in a Rush to get it if it's good.

🤘

13 hours ago, Cognita said:

I heard FlyTampa was working on Toronto but not from an official source.

It's official.

 

I'll wait for FlyTampa's to have previews before deciding. But this one doesn't look bad at all.

Edited February 26, 20224 yr by Tuskin38

According to RegDesigns Discord, they are aiming to have this ready for release tomorrow. 
 

Fingers crossed that no last minute road blocks pop up.

 

 

Edited February 26, 20224 yr by Barnes

If it does come out tomorrow, then I will be very tempted.

If this comes out tomorrow and MDPP ends up coming out today as announced (haven’t seen it yet ?) the city pairing for a nice A320N flight tomorrow will be an easy choice.

Well, I was always a fan of the FT CYYZ. I lived in Toronto for many years. I'll wait for FT. I know it was one of there most complex projects. I wish the other developer well but again I saw some odd things in that Video and Virtuali's remarks make perfect sense. Can see how 4 guys could churn out in a short time what it took FT years of work to do.