What is, in your opinion, the best looking airport. KLAX and KVNY look pretty bad IMO. Also, does real or AI traffic ever land or take off? I see planes taxiing around but I never see anything other than that or already in the air.
Aircraft land and take off all the time on my screen.
I am ex FSX SE and an ex aircraft engineer (retired). I live, worked and fly sim, GA and vintage military, in the UK with most of that being in Wales and Scotland. Most of my sim flying has been done from airfields where I have worked in the past and in FSX SE I have add ons for as many of them as I can get. Since splashing the cash on MSFS I have tried flying from EGOV, which is 10 miles from my home and where I worked for the last 5 years of my career, from the ramp I could not recognise even where I was on the airfield! The modelling bears absolutely no relation to the real place in any way shape or form. I have also tried EGCK, which does have a FSX SE add on which is very realistic, and I had to stop on the taxi way because there is a mobile home (complete with AC units) in the way. The wind turbines by the side of 02 are not represented in MSFS and again the buildings are not representative of the real place. I have also flown from or to EGPO, EGPB, EGET, EGPA, EGPE, EGPL, EGNS and EGAA. Not one of those airfields remotely represents the real thing. I didn’t believe all the pre release hype but this is so much worse than I expected and hoped for. Additionally, as well as mobile homes, I have encountered fork lift trucks, security vehicles and fuel bowsers parked on taxiways and even a fuel bowser on 13 threshold at EGOV.! On start up on the ramp, it seems to be a common theme that there is some dude(s) with an electric tow cart right in front of the aircraft. It all seems quite bizarre. It might be okay if you want to fly a bus out of Heathrow but move away from the featured airports and you’re in never, never land. So, best looking airport? I haven’t found one that is remotely good yet and not one that matches or even comes close to ORBX or even Just Flight bolt on scenery airfields IN FSX SE.
I’m not a pilot but I have done a fair bit of flying in GA, rotary and military fast jets. I have only flown the Cessna 172 in MSFS and I have to say, that seems to work well.
Heathrow (Premium Deluxe Edition only) is very impressive, imo. It’s gigantic. Offline A.I. Traffic works - albeit it takes an age to start cranking up its schedules. Quite enjoyable to just sit back and watch the airport go about its business. Still nowhere near as good as something like Traffic Global in XP11, though.