No Buildings at many General Aviation Airports

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Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?

No

Have you disabled/removed all your mods and addons?

Yes

Brief description of the issue:

Many General Aviation Airports in USA have no buildings. Satellite image shows buildings but none are rendered. This can be seen at random airports across the country. Some do have a building or two.

Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:




ICAO or coordinates (DevMode > Options > Display position)

D73, 5BA2, KCVC for example

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

Start a flight at a General Aviation Airport such as one of those listed.

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
GPU: Nvidia RTX 3080-Ti
SSD: Samsung 970 Evo NVMe PCIe M.2 500GB
SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 1TB
HDD: WD Black 1TB (2010)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3000 C15 4x8GB
MBD: Asus ROG STRIX X470-F GAMING

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

Latest MSFS update.
Is this normal or is there a problem on my end? I did a clean install of MSFS and the issue remains.
I had not really looked closely at the smaller airports until recently. And I know there are addons which add buildings to some such as 5BA2 Saratoga Co.
I mostly want to know if other users are having the same result at some of these smaller airports.
And I thought Blackshark AI placed buildings on the satellite images. I can even see there are houses and buildings placed outside the airport so I think the Blackshark AI is working. Is it that the AI ignores airports?


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Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Yes, for example at KAJO in southern California

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

Do you have flatness at any of the ones I posted?
Such as D73, 5BA2, KCVC

Haven’t checked yet, not at the gaming computer right now. But I’ve seen this effect at many places many times.

Me too. I want to learn why there are houses and buildings outside the airport but not inside the airport. It may be that there is an exclusion polygon keeping the AI away from the airport.

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I’ve reported, individually as bug reports, a number of airports with a similar affliction. They have all, I think, been fixed.

I wonder what the cause is.

In my experience, the building information is passed from Open Street Map, especially where there is no photogrammetry in the sim. This is the case for Covington and Monroe. Corona has buildings, but they may have been added after the information was pulled into the sim. I don’t know how often OSM data is refreshed in the sim. It appears to be used for road traffic, light generation at night (except for airports), and building height in non photogrammetric locations. I will try to put the building footprints into OSM then submit a Zendesk ticket for missing buildings.

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

KMMI is also missing airport buildings. Only ortho images flat on the ground.

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

KTOL is flat. The giant Air National Guard hangar and entire base is flat. The Burlington cargo terminal is flat. Most of the GA apron is flat

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

This also happens at the old Naval Air Station Willow Grove just outside of Philadelphia, PA and the old Baeder Field just outside of Atlantic City, NJ. Granted both airports are closed, but they are still there so it would be nice to have the buildings for them in MSFS 2020 since they are still there in the real world.

Topic moved out of Bug Reporting. In bug reports, they only want one area (issue) per report. Most of these areas have been logged individually either through the forum or via Zendesk.

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

I’ve had the same issue since January.

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

All buldings have simply disappeared (except for the photogrammetry buildings, which are intact).

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I’ve got the same PC specs as yours. I’ve tried cleaning cache, reinstalling, etc. Still no effect.