In the most random way possible (I think I’ll fly the 737-800 today. I think I’ll fly a cargo variant, hmm… only a couple are US N-reg liveries, I’ll fly this Prime Air one, where do they fly? oh, KCVG > KDEN, where is the cargo depot at KCVG?, oh, there is an entire Amazon Ramp) I discovered that the Amazon Ramp at KCVG in the sim is still baren land.
That got me wondering, “What is the update frequency for airports in this sim, anyway?”
Anyone have any knowledge they can shed on this?
I’ve found strong correlation with whatever the aerial photo was showing whenever the procedural generation sweep was last performed. I’ve discovered some fairly obvious “time stamps” by checking a strange in-sim configuration against historical aerials. One good one was when the runway at Nut Tree (KVCB) was extremely shortened in the sim. Checked the aerials and sure enough, it had undergone temporary shortening several years prior - which happened to be the aerial the AI used to generate the airport. I fixed that in the World Hub.
Asheville (KAVL) was another, in which the sim still had the temporary runway (made from the parallel taxiway) depicted while the main runway was being resurfaced.
KSMF is another. It’s missing the entire taxiway W complex east of Y2 (and deletion of Y in the same area). This change happened over 10 years ago. What makes it even worse is that I fixed it in the world hub, but they must have done a new sweep to build that airport in 2024 that overrode my fixes and reverted it to the >10 year old version. For evidence, it didn’t remove the taxiway lights I added in that area, so they’re sitting there, an anachronism.
I have plenty more examples.
Bottom line, it’s another mess. I get that we can’t expect every little week to week or month to month change to be reflected, but when it gets to be strange things like VCB or extremely outdated ones like SMF, there should be something that flags it for manual review. That, and reopen the World Hub.
Thanks for all your efforts with the hub and advocating for its existence and reopening.
It really is a mess out there, at times.
I know that my local GA airport (KVTA) has undergone extensive upgrades in the past couple of years (since the last Google street view update–it still shows the pre-remodel airport). In the sim, the aerial photography shows the renovations in progress (with lots of grassless dirt, and some new buildings built, but also some old ones that have been torn down still standing). The actual taxiways and autogen buildings are still based on the old layout though. The taxiway was moved further from the runway, and you can see this in the imagery, but the actual taxiway object is still where it was. These changes would have been probably around 2024-ish, so that gives an idea of the lag between imagery and objects.
https://flightsim.to/file/69700/cincinnati-northern-kentucky-international-airport-kcvg
I updated this airport to have the AMZ building and DHL buildings in 2020. You can try to see if works for you in 24. I don’t have any issues with it running on 24 for me.
In my / our experience, it’s extremely rare that airports ever get up dated. For instance, KFIT closed one of it’s runways back in the 2020 time frame. The Boston area has received several updates and the runway was still there last I checked. KCON got a taxiway to it’s secondary runway a decade ago, still no taxiway last I checked. I could be wrong.
And the funny thing is, KFIT looks correct in the world map, but it’s wrong in the game last I checked.
What I wonder is, with all these airports that still have features that are long gone, what good are the airac’s? And how does Asobo get around these “anomalies” when they release AIRAC’s every month? It seems to me they’re ADDING work for themselves by not doing updates with every AIRAC cycle.
