Over the past few weeks, I’ve been writing quite a few reviews of airports for MSFS. They’re by no means the be-all, end-all of judgment, but I hope they can help some in finding some good scenery.
Feel free to criticize. I can take it as much as I dish it
PS: I asked the community team whether it was ok to post these here before doing so, just to be sure
PPS: As a general disclaimer all of my reviews are based on a review copy provided by the developer/publisher.
Thank you @Abriael for these excellent and constructive review of these airports. It definitely helps one in making an informed decision before purchasing. As always your posts are excellent reads.
Just don’t understand why EFHK (Helsinki) by JustSim chose to omit the VDGS.
“ Unfortunately, the stand guidance system isn’t functional, but this seems more the norm than an exception as Microsoft Flight Simulator’s SDK matures.”
Aerosoft’s developer Jo Erlend has managed to implement them in all of his airport developments. Similarly the developer for the freeware EGKK (Gatwick) has a working system. So there is a technical solution and I fail to understand the reasoning why JustSim and other developers chose to wait for “SDK maturity” when it is not the case.
Yep, I am aware. Jo mentioned that a while after I wrote that review, and I was surprised to see that it was possible since all reports I heard before stated the contrary.
I am guessing lots of developers apply to that the same (again a guess) reasoning many may apply to omitting ground services, which I really doubt are hard to implement and yet are often missing (triggering me horribly). Perhaps they think their main target flies on VATSIM or IVAO, so something that relies on the default ATC isn’t considered very useful.
That, or it’s challenging enough that many haven’t yet mastered what it takes to do it and think it’s not implemented/available.
I’m fairly sure as time progresses, it’ll become more common.
What I’m still wondering is, why so many payware devs even don’t implement the correct taxiways and positions for ATC. For example LOWW (Vienna) from gaya simulations. You always get the same parking position and no taxiways are given by ATC. This is a downer for me.
It is. As long as add-on keep coming, I’ll keep reviewing them. Not all of them of course, because there’s too many
As for ATC picking always the same position, and often sending people to the cargo apron or other less than appropriate places (which I believe is at least part of the problem you mention) I believe it’s a two-fold problem.
Some developers seem to be a bit inconsistent in how they label ramps. Like I’ve seen airports with gates marked as GA ramps or even cargo ramps, and cago ramps or remote parking stands marked as gates. This is made more problematic by the fact that the simulator seems to have a strict logic to decide which aircraft is sent where, so the same or similar ramps are always chosen if you give it the choice.
A partial workaround is to pre-choose the gate/ramp you want as your destination when you set up your flight.
I’m not 100% sure why with some scenery ATC doesn’t mention the specific taxiways, but I’m guessing it’s developer oversight, pretty much like those who don’t implement the ground services.
