Der Zeitgeist

Steam user here as well. I had some problems with the very first sim update shortly after release last year, when the download got stuck and the entire sim essentially disappeared from my drive in the process. But after that, it all went very smooth during the last few months. Updates seem to go active on Steam the moment they officially release, and the downloads within the sim itself didn't have any troubles either. During the Steam installation, I selected a drive that only contains MSFS stuff for the Steam Library, and for the big package download inside the sim, I made a dedicated MSFS folder on the same drive. That one contains my community folder, so almost everything is in one place and easily accessible. There's only a few config files that reside in c:\user\appdata...whatever, but I almost never have to touch those.

I don't see much response over there to be honest. They're closing threads and in one case deny that a problem even exists. In other cases, they claimed that certain things were patched while they're still not fixed at all.

Does OrbX Van Nuys at least have all relevant ground services available? I just noticed that EGLC London City from OrbX still doesn't have services like pushback tugs at the departure gates.

As I explained above, it's not just the ILS frequencies that are not implemented but also some other core features of MSFS airports.

Hey, I've got 30 years of experience in flying a Skylane out of Meigs and crashing it into the Hancock Building! 😋

Well, you need to take into account that these problems were first reported 10 months ago, right after the sim came out and OrbX released their first airports. As we see now, they didn't really do anything in all this time and didn't even understand what the problem was in subsequent bug reports. I can understand when people get angry in a situation like that, and quite frankly, I am too. When all you get is "we are discussing this" it begs the question what they were doing for the past 10 months? Ignore it?

And no one can really claim realism as an excuse here. The G3000 has a nav database with infos on frequencies of any airport, that's the entire point.

Finally. I hope they'll eventually fix the SR22 at some point.

It's a fundamentally different approach to product development. OrbX (and many other payware developers) essentially start with eye-candy and add functionality later (if at all). I was testing the early versions of the freeware addon that puts the missing Stuttgart airport into MSFS. The first thing these guys did was put a runway there, add taxiways and parking spots and then tested the thing until everything, ATC, ground services, ILS selection and autotune and every taxiway direction from ATC worked perfectly, BEFORE even starting to put buildings there. What really annoys me is that almost no one on the forums seems to notice these problems, probably because most people there aren't using the stock ATC or other core functionalities of the sim. I suspect that installing Navigraph might also cover up the problem, so to speak, because it adds its own nav database (and maybe airport data) that replaces the native MSFS stuff.

Oh, and just to add to that: As this thread shows, it's not just ILS frequencies that are missing, but (at least for some OrbX airports) also things like ground support functions (another core MSFS feature that the stock airports have): https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/207395-lowi-missing-ground-vehicles/

It's a basic feature that all of the stock MSFS airports have, and that accurately simulates the feature set of the G3000 avionics suite (having an internal database with accurate airport info). Just because you think it's not that important doesn't make it less of a bug or oversight. I mean, even most freeware addon airports manage to include this, so I see no reason why I should accept OrbX just ignoring this in a product that I pay for.

Yes, those were the ones I meant. Especially with airport addon reviews, I see a tendency to obsess over things like texture quality or other eye-candy aspects while totally neglecting the core functionality of the airports. I guess that's why so many of these errors with ILS, frequencies, taxiways and other core MSFS functions occur.

From my experience, there are hardly any trustworthy reviews about payware Flight Sim addons anyway. Most reviewers seem have an unhealthy brand loyalty, especially towards the big addon developers, and in the process you simply don't see any negative reviews at all. To check if there's any problems with a particular product, you then have to sift through countless forum threads to know how good an addon really is.

The OrbX airports for MSFS truly are hit & miss at this point. I bought a few during the recent OrbX sale, and I'm now finding out that more than half a year after being made aware of the problems with missing ILS-autotune and selection in the G3000, some of their airports still are missing that feature.

Yes, it sounds like you may need to download the deluxe and premium content. Look for it in the marketplace, it should show up as "owned". When MSFS first launched, a lot of people also had to simply restart their sim after first launching it to get the deluxe and premium content to download.