4 minutes ago, Jazz said:

I think it is a matter of improving whatever they use that interprets what it sees and then converts it into these airports. Naturally, getting AI or whatever it is to create perfect renditions of every airport is an idiotically unreasonable expectation but making it operate under some basic rules of logic such as taxiway lights and signs should never be placed in the middle of taxiways strikes me as a not too difficult task for such capable people to achieve.

You should volunteer to help them. 😉

9 minutes ago, Jazz said:

getting AI or whatever it is to create perfect renditions of every airport is an idiotically unreasonable expectation but making it operate under some basic rules of logic such as taxiway lights and signs should never be placed in the middle of taxiways strikes me as a not too difficult task for such capable people to achieve.

But AI should easily be able to get rid of taxiway lights or signs in the middle of taxiways--no one's worked with it to tell it not to do that is my guess and could be resolved pretty quickly.

9 minutes ago, Jazz said:

getting AI or whatever it is to create perfect renditions of every airport is an idiotically unreasonable expectation but making it operate under some basic rules of logic such as taxiway lights and signs should never be placed in the middle of taxiways strikes me as a not too difficult task for such capable people to achieve.

Seems like AI should easily be able to get rid of taxiway lights or signs in the middle of taxiways--no one's worked with it to tell it not to do that is my guess and could be resolved virtually instantly if given the attention.

Just now, Noel said:

But AI should easily be able to get rid of taxiway lights or signs in the middle of taxiways--no one's worked with it to tell it not to do that is my guess and could be resolved pretty quickly.

Yes. I suspect it really is not a hard thing for them to do to put certain exclusions in for this to be better.

I have wondered if the reason they have not seemingly put any work into improving this system to improve the defaults is that they are working on that "feature" that will allow users to correct and submit the airports of the world and therefore see it as an unecessary use of resources.

Pure speculation on my part though.

9 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

You should volunteer to help them. 😉

Ok, Bob.

6 hours ago, Jazz said:

I reported this a month or two ago.

To be honest, I have had just about enough of the state of the airports in this sim. They really are an absolute mess and it just isn't good enough and if I have one real issue with this sim it's this. Even the airports that you pay so much more for such as KDEN and HECA in the "Super Duper Regal Bespoke DeLuxe Edition" profoundly broken but many of the other "hand-crafted" airports are unusable as well and there is no excuse for it. When they say "hand-crafted" I can only assume that their "equity and diversity" department have hired blind rainbow unicorns and intellectually challenged pixies that are not qualified to "hand-craft" them in order to fulfull their obligations to "the party" resulting is substandard useless pap like this.

It feels now that every airport I try to fly to is unacceptably broken in some way. Signs in the taxiways, elevation issues, jetways not connected to the terminals and that's if the terminal has a building at all! Parking spots that are isolated so GSX won't work etc. The entire beautiful world of MSFS is marred by this unusable nonsense as though someone has painted pockmarks all over the Mona Lisa. I now spend FAR too much time before flying somewhere trying to mitigate the problems with the default airports by loading the sim, checking the state of the airport, then finding a download of a replacement for it, loading the sim again to check the state of the download, then spend time creating parking spaces for GSX because they are all small and won't accept a 737, excluding jetways for that particular airport because of duplucate parking spots etc etc. Often, by the time I have done all this I no longer feel like flying and I feel like I have to do it far too often.

I wish they would prioritise fixing whatever automatic system they developed to create these airports and fix them but there is already no excuse for the state of this "hand-crafted" rubbish. If I have one regret it's paying for the nonsense deluxe version. I should have spent that money on some airports. I don't feel like a mug often these days but they got me on this one.

It's the only thing I think P3D did better. Alright, all the airports in that were uninspiring but at least there were no lights in the taxiways, you could taxi about without using a winch to pull yourself up the elevation problems, the terminals had jetways and your altimeter displayed the correct elevation because the airport was at the correct height in space and time.

 

I'm upgrading KILG.   I used Airport Design Editor to import default  KILG,  and I ran ADE's fault finder.   AI won't follow a taxiway link that doesn't have a designation letter.    If taxiway points form too tight of a radius,   they are listed as "broken links".   I found "open" taxiways links,  un-named taxiway links,  and ground polys with over lapping vertex points.   I found taxiway signs that don't make sense,  one or two hold short points that were reversed,  and a few taxiways which no longer exist IRL.  It took me several hours to fix.    Also,  the default airport's autogen ground polys went totally nuts with the number of vertex points.  For example,   there might be 50 or 60 vertex points in a short 90degree arc.  It's no wonder that some of them ended up overlapping.    For a while I theorized that it might be what's causing the ground texture clipping in DX12,   but I digress.

In one of the recent dev talks they were asked about the quality of airports,  and they more or less said it's a job for the community and 3rd party devs.

Time linked to Asobo statement,

 

Edited February 19, 20233 yr by Waldo Pepper

1 minute ago, Waldo Pepper said:

I've been working on a project to upgrade KILG.   I used Airport Design Editor to import the default Asobo KILG,  and then I ran ADE's fault finder.      It's found broken taxiways links,  un-named taxiway links,  and ground polys with over lapping vertex points.   I found taxiway signs that don't make sense,   and a few of the default taxiways do not reflect the current state of the facility.     Multiple taxiways in the sim no longer exist IRL.  It took me several hours to fix.    Also,  the default airport's ground polys went totally nuts with the number of vertex points,  for example,   there might be 50 or 60 vertex points in a short 90degree arc.  It's not wonder that they overlap (ADE refers to them as "Twisted" pixels.    For a while I theorized that it might be what's causing the ground texture clipping in DX12,   but I digress.

I fixed so many airports in P3D, I can't even remember how many. taxiways that disappeared altogether was very common, ILS Locations and Frequencies wrong, the list goes on and on. I used ADE to fix them all. Didn't know it worked in MSFS

This discussion reminds me of the shock and awe I experienced during those first few months w/ MSFS w/ regard to not only scenery but nothing burger airports everywhere and how distinctly superior they were to the absolute garbage in P3D (v4.5 is as far as I went).  Here's one from Greeley CO 40m from my home.   Nothing special per se, just really sweet if simple:

And flying in APL takes me to places I never would have been, and this is just another fabulous example this time in Medellin CO, and Rio DJ below--one can hardly tell these aren't photographs of the RW:

 

I wonder when these elevation issues happened, because they were not there a year ago

I think all the handcrafted airports that launched with the sim were Asobo. The world update ones are mostly Gaya, but sometimes ORBX as well.

The New Zealand ones coming next week are ORBX and NZL

Edited February 19, 20233 yr by Tuskin38

2 hours ago, Jazz said:

Take a drive around their Denver.

If you want a laugh.

I bought the flightbeam version as soon as it came out so I’ve never had the pleasure.

I’ve used EGLL (before buying inibuilds), KSEA, KATL, KDFW, KJFK, EDDF, EHAM and all are perfectly serviceable to me and good enough until something better comes along.  

Having said that, elevation issues etc as discussed in here should be a high priority to fix given that they are marketed as “enhanced” airports…there’s a big difference between those airports and the tens of thousands of AI generated airports at which it’s more forgiving to have issues crop up.

I had never flown to HECA before in a sim so it was disappointing to arrive there and find it sitting in a canyon.

Edited February 19, 20233 yr by regis9

29 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I fixed so many airports in P3D, I can't even remember how many. taxiways that disappeared altogether was very common, ILS Locations and Frequencies wrong, the list goes on and on. I used ADE to fix them all. Didn't know it worked in MSFS

It's still an alpha,  "Alpha 21 Hot Fix 5".    https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/forums/airport-design-editor-for-msfs-2020.160/

One cool new feature is "two-way editing".   You can open a project in ADE,  and open it in MSFS.   Then you can make changes in MSFS,   hit save,  and it syncs them with ADE.   (or, vice versa)

Edited February 19, 20233 yr by Waldo Pepper

7 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

There are about 37,000 airports in MSFS, so fixing them all will probably take a bit of time. 

Yes but HECA is described as a hand crafted airport...

8 hours ago, Jazz said:

🙄

Or you could just chuckle at it as though it was the was the mild humour that is was intented to be.

Mild might be overstating it.   I'd go for "close to imperceptable". 😄

I agree with the OP about HECA.   It is shocking.   BGGH (Nuuk, Greenland) is the only other airport that I visited in the sim that had an apron that was built on non-flattened land it would seem. 😄

Yet daily, I fly from airport to airport, and all are perfectly "usuable" and far superior to the default airports I saw in P3D.   Do you not think perhaps  your diatribe was just a little over the top?  Try a camomile tea, then fly to Ulan Baatar in Mongolia. (Nice Eznis Air repaint for the PMDG -7 on the .TO site). 😉   It's plain, uncluttered, nothing pretty, but very usable.

13 hours ago, Waldo Pepper said:

It's still an alpha,  "Alpha 21 Hot Fix 5".    https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/forums/airport-design-editor-for-msfs-2020.160/

One cool new feature is "two-way editing".   You can open a project in ADE,  and open it in MSFS.   Then you can make changes in MSFS,   hit save,  and it syncs them with ADE.   (or, vice versa)

As you seem to know ADE : can the ground of these these handcrafted airports be flattened with ADE ?

And if so : how do we do it ?

Even Amsterdam Schiphol has these elevations issues.In a lesser way but they exist.

I do have ADE for MSFS and if I know what the steps are I will try to fix EHAM.

Thanks in advance.

 

 

8 hours ago, JYW said:

Do you not think perhaps  your diatribe was just a little over the top? 

No, I do not. It's the truth. Or would you prefer I lie to align my experience to yours and use silly smiling faces to instruct you when there is humour involved?

🤨🙄🤪🤣