Somehow when I was selecting an airport to test my Goose Ski variant, I came upon NZSP (South Pole) in Antarctica and considering I have never been to that one in any of the sims, that’s the one I selected. What happened next was… special. Something that needs to be experienced. I ended up being spawned in between two worlds, the aircraft was falling through continuous layers of something before crashing.
I thought… “hmmm, a peculiarity of MSFS. That airport must somehow be glitched because it’s near the South Pole and weird things have been reported at the poles. Let’s try Prepar3D!”… So I booted up P3D 5.3 and exactly same thing happened. I didn’t bother trying X-Plane 11 because that sim doesn’t have coverage for far North or South… I don’t think it even does Svalbard.
So this is universally, a place that breaks all sims.
Does anyone have an explanation WHY though? What is it about the poles that freaks out the simulators and makes things fall through the ground there?
Some other threads about Antarctica for interested folks.
2004,FSX and thus P3D had wierdness with Antarctica. I’d imagine both poles are extremely difficult to create.
My theory: because the earth is stitched together at the poles, similar to a , unless you start on one of the stitch strings, your falling into the earth’s interior
I am almost certain that the root cause is the same. They must interpret the planet via a similar/same method. I am just curious exactly what happens at those two poles that seems to confuse the sim so much. I suppose, it HAS to be “spherical” in nature since you can fly OVER the poles. (Which makes me wonder what happens… I remember back in 2020 when I was doing my first world tour it started getting wonky around Svalbard on default jets - they WERE in the right place, but their FMS didn’t think so - it was completely off… I THINK that has been remedied, but I haven’t flown to Svalbard in MSFS2020 lately). I imagine it’s the beginning of weirdness and the closer you get to the poles, the more craziness ensues.
Yeah, @FlyingCookie650 is in the sim right now finding all kinds of weirdness at the North Pole.
He also noticed that NZSP is not in the sim, so we’re both wondering if you spawned at coordinates or if you have a third-party airport.
I think that the VFR Map didn’t go as far north as Svalbard, but it was fixed when they did the Nordics update, but it still doesn’t go all the way north, I believe.
I’ve also tried to spawn at NZSP in the sim with hilarious results; while I haven’t tested it in a few months, it was there in the past when I looked it up by code. Note I use Navigraph data; that shouldn’t make a difference though should it?
Definitely didn’t spawn by coordinates. NZSP is selectable in the World Map for me (if you type it into the box, it shows up). I do have Navigraph data installed, so that’s one possibility. The only other thing I can think of is - I have Aerosoft’s Antarctica Vol. 1 but to my knowledge, it isn’t one of the locations it touches. To my knowledge, there are only 3 locations in it - Rothera, Sky Blu, and some other hole in the wall.
It might be part of Aerosoft’s Antarctica Vol1 or another addon, because i dont have scenery addons in that part of the world and NZSP doesnt show up in MSFS
For the record, I don’t have the Antarctica mesh, but I do have that airport. I do, however, have Navigraph navdata in which I believe advertises itself as fixing missing airports.
i have no 3rd party anything for this area and can confirm NZSP does not exist in the base game
if, as JollyGreen suggests, navdata adds scenery addons?, then you may want to notify them about this
just some fyi
as far as i know McMurdo station is the only ‘fully operational, non seasonal airport’ in Antarctica
thats why some nav sites/apps have more and other nav sites/apps dont
I love this video. It’s kind of disappointing that it alludes to the notion that - if Asobo really wants to make the poles and their rendering work right - they would basically have to remesh the whole planet and redesign everything (down to the base code for all the functions of the game).
It’s a steep price to pay for the minority of simmers that want to genuinely fly near the south pole and simulate the Antarctic Programs of all the various partner countries.
Yes, Sebastian’s videos are great. They inspire me to get back into gaming graphics development.
Yep. Flight Simulator is built on top of FSX, and this is one of the side effects. Using FSX as the foundation gave them a massive head start in several areas of the title, but it will no doubt hold them back and haunt them in other regards as they try to drag the title further into the future. Going back to the design phase for a rewrite from scratch would require years of additional work.
Aerosoft pulled it off and did a great job with McMurdo and many surrounding areas, in FSX. They replicated the two seasons, had cargo ships, penguins, snow and ice machines all running 24/7.
I think they even had some igloos & Leopard Seals! I flew FSX for 9+ years and McMurdo was one of my go-to places.
Yes, the GPS navigation system was tricky and it’s even that way in the real world (from what I was told). But Aerosoft did a great job with it IMO.
Rich
with Antarctica. I’d imagine both poles are extremely difficult to create.
, unless you start on one of the stitch strings, your falling into the earth’s interior 
