Expectations of the World Hub’s capabilities and features have varied from modest to all-encompassing.
Where have my expectations ended up? I expect that its primary function will be to let users fix all of the “incorrect” things Blackshark AI has done to all of the auto-generated airports.
The auto-gen airports are generally good from a (figurative) 10,000 foot view, so their AI has made it possible to use all of them, but when you get down to the (figurative) ground level, you will find that the names of taxi-ways, gate numbers, “size” of gates, location or type of auto-gen building are not representative of reality. I would guess that the AI tried to identify taxi-ways and just started labeling them A, B, C, etc… and then we get what we get. So, I think World Hub would allow a person to take a real airport diagram, go in and clean up all of those auto-generated labels and names, and submit them back to the sim for inclusion in an update.
I am not expecting it to fix terrain issues or re-build runways. Maybe I’m wrong there.
That’s exactly what it should be able to do at a minimum level. I remember I took a live chart for KSTL and went in and reworked all the taxiways and gates. Took about an hour or 2 but the result was satisfying. AI planes used the taxiways they were supposed to and all the airlines parked at the gates they should. I even uploaded it and shared it with the community because the last version of the airport was well over a few years old.
So, what’s up with MS and/or Asobo about this? Lost their voices?
What’s so hard to tell what happened with something which has more than 1100 votes right now, was said to be released with WU14, and now - obviously - again postponed (until when, infinity… ) ?
Currently the World Hub was on the roadmap to be released alongside World Update 14. This didn’t happen as intended so we inquired. The World Hub is currently going through accessibility and privacy requirement reviews, and our aim is to release it as soon as we can. We are hopeful the release will be alongside Sim Update 13 in September, depending on how the reviews go.
Looking forward to this. My local airport S50, Auburn Muni has incorrect runway/taxiways. Plus, this fall the runway numbers will be changing. I’m hoping the editor is easy to use to add the proper increased length and arrow markings and correct the taxiways.
This. Especially without having to perform each fix individually and market them as such as well. I can see putting a ton of work into a project like that and someone finally figures out how to import the database that’s published every 28 days. Or marketing a fix for this and that individual airport - but it’s only just adjusting lights, so who is going to pay attention? Are we expecting people to have ten thousand folders of airport lighting fixes in their community folder?
I don’t want to even contemplate opening the SDK for each airport and manually combing through and andjusting all the wrong lighting, then trying to manage the file structure for export. I mean it’s literally thousands of them. Gross.
The person-hours for that project could be minimized by a lot if we are able to inject things directly into a database.
My understanding is the improvements would be rolled into the base sim, rather than the improvements sitting as mods in a community folder. But then the question is whether MS has the capacity to review and push in a ton of improvements at any scale. Improvements seem to move extremely slowly in most other contexts, which is worrying.
Unfortunately, I think the manual method is how the World Hub will work unless they’ve produced a way to import in fixes at a larger scale that we have not seen yet. That said, the World Hub should be easier to use than the existing SDK.
Just Flight apparently has taxiway signs for 1000+ airports in the sim. I’m not quite sure how they managed that. But if they can do that is seems like lighting should also be possible.
Any news about the scenery gateway aka world hub?
Haven’t heard of it in the recent past although it’s meant to be released this month. Or have I missed something?
It’s a kind of confidence (and last but not least, respect) to the customer base to get this published.
If they don’t I won’t mind voting for anything on the wishlist.
