Hi all. I received an email from Just Flight about their sale and noticed that Real Taxiways has a reasonable discount. What are your thoughts on this product? Does it improve things or does it cause more problems than it’s worth?

Thanks,

Alistair

My anecdotal experience was: more trouble than it is worth. 

I bought this last year (I think a similar holiday sale) and to get it to work, you have to edit some default MS files.  Not a horrible thing, but you have to go searching in their forums to find it (this may have been patched, but I don't think so).  Every time the sim updated you had to switch the file back. 

Item #2 is that you have to make sure you remove any airports that this updates when you add 3rd party airports.  This process is well documented in the manual (all the airports are just "icao.bgl" so easy to find).  Again, nothing difficult, but you really want to have a spreadsheet of all the freeware and payware airports.

I basically uninstalled and have not reinstalled.  Seems like it could be a good product, but just too much hassle for me.  I really don't want to be editing default files in the sim.  I'm finally not crashing to desktop all the time and am in "don't touch it" mode. 

1 hour ago, kerosene31 said:

My anecdotal experience was: more trouble than it is worth. 

I bought this last year (I think a similar holiday sale) and to get it to work, you have to edit some default MS files.  Not a horrible thing, but you have to go searching in their forums to find it (this may have been patched, but I don't think so).  Every time the sim updated you had to switch the file back. 

Item #2 is that you have to make sure you remove any airports that this updates when you add 3rd party airports.  This process is well documented in the manual (all the airports are just "icao.bgl" so easy to find).  Again, nothing difficult, but you really want to have a spreadsheet of all the freeware and payware airports.

I basically uninstalled and have not reinstalled.  Seems like it could be a good product, but just too much hassle for me.  I really don't want to be editing default files in the sim.  I'm finally not crashing to desktop all the time and am in "don't touch it" mode. 

Hmm. That was what I was worried about. If it was a set it and forget it thing I'd be OK with it, but having to tweak and replace files, that's a no from me. Thanks for the feedback.

1 hour ago, kerosene31 said:

I bought this last year (I think a similar holiday sale) and to get it to work, you have to edit some default MS files.  Not a horrible thing, but you have to go searching in their forums to find it (this may have been patched, but I don't think so).  Every time the sim updated you had to switch the file back. 

 

I'm pretty sure this has been fixed by Asobo in one of the more recent SUs when they introduced the scenery ordering. Two big things that make it a value for me:

1. It corrects taxiway signs for the Asobo defaults that are incorrect

2. The big one for me - if you decide to replace the MSFS textures, which I choose to do: it fixes all of the sign styles worldwide so that they look realistic, compared to how Asobo styled it, which didn't look realistic at all.

Bonus: The Real Taxiways signs are more legible in VR than the Asobo ones

If you have third-party airports, you should go with the taxiway signs that are bundled with that scenery (unless they didn't make any custom ones). For any conflicts, you can always "exclude" an airport by renaming the BGL file named by its ICAO code.

Edited December 20, 20232 yr by AeroMaster12

36 minutes ago, AeroMaster12 said:

I'm pretty sure this has been fixed by Asobo in one of the more recent SUs when they introduced the scenery ordering. Two big things that make it a value for me:

 

This is the taxiways showing MMMM/OOOO issue?  I just checked their support forum and this is the #1 post, granted, nobody seems to have posted there since 2022.  Just seems kind of suspect that there's zero posts in their forum on Justflight for an entire calendar year.  Is there somewhere else they post?  If everything is fixed, that's great. 

29 minutes ago, kerosene31 said:

This is the taxiways showing MMMM/OOOO issue?  I just checked their support forum and this is the #1 post, granted, nobody seems to have posted there since 2022.  Just seems kind of suspect that there's zero posts in their forum on Justflight for an entire calendar year.  Is there somewhere else they post?  If everything is fixed, that's great. 

I believe so - either this was a symptom, or Asobo did something to force its own default textures to take precedence every sim update, which required manually patching the asobo_props\texture\TAXI_SIGN_BACK_ALBEDO.PNG.DDS file for the addon to work. 

However, it has been a really long time since I had to do that, and I don't remember seeing any MMMM/OOOO taxiway signs in the past year... I remember that during the very early stages of the product, however.

Edited December 20, 20232 yr by AeroMaster12

17 minutes ago, AeroMaster12 said:

I believe so - either this was a symptom, or Asobo did something to force its own default textures to take precedence every sim update, which required manually patching the asobo_props\texture\TAXI_SIGN_BACK_ALBEDO.PNG.DDS file for the addon to work. 

However, it has been a really long time since I had to do that, and I don't remember seeing any MMMM/OOOO taxiway signs in the past year... I remember that during the very early stages of the product, however.

Interesting, maybe I'll give it another try.  As a GA flyer, it did really help default airports.  I still have a hard time recommending it to people given the lack of developer support.  Even on sale, this product is not cheap.  I have no issue putting in a little manual fix here or there, but this issue was at least happening well into 2022. 

Edited December 20, 20232 yr by kerosene31

If you're mostly into GA flying I think this addon is a must-have. I haven't had to think about it with regard to addon airports or the taxiway textures in years, so that issue must have been sorted out. It definitely does as advertised, as I am able to use FAA charts with rarely encountering something not correct.