Now isn’t that awesome to hear 
It is. Imagine the quality of this sim with its huge user base.
There is significant terraforming and taxi sign work that needs done at my closest international and regional/executive airports.
If the community and MS/Asobo wants to have this fixed for the majority of users at their home airports some type of change management system where the community can submit changes for approval in future updates will need to be implemented if we want airports updated any time soon.
After installation and stability issues I think this is tied with autopilot with the most important fix the community would like to see. I know VATSIM users in particular have taken issue with the lack of taxiway markings.
Ill be upvoting this thread when the new forum changes to into effect.
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There already seems to be such a thing going on. Folks are tweaking existing airports and adding missing airports. Many of which are freeware.
I just wish somebody’d write, or point me to, a guide for how to do this stuff with the SDK, so I could join in. I’m not looking to create new assets, just rearrange the existing ones and fix the striping, grass, trees, lights, etc.
While I agree that X-Plane’s default airports desperately needed the Scenery Gateway, unlike MSFS’ default airports, I have to disagree that MSFS couldn’t still greatly benefit from their own Scenery Gateway.
I’ve done a handful of local airports for the Scenery Gateway, and bias aside, they’re noticeably better than MSFS’ defaults. I’m sure the same could be said of everyone else’s Gateway submissions.
My experience with X-Plane Scenery Gateway is that the addition of scenes or airports should be better controled by Laminar. I have seen very bad quality items marked as reccomended.
Same can be said for the multiple scenes and airports being published for MSFS: no control and really only a small number match the level required for the sim.
Although the interest shown by the developers is appreciated, the results are not always good.
Fully agree. Asobo should have tight control on the system and only accept submissions that are, for example, original works, not to large in terms of polygon size, should not contain any copyrighted material etc.
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That is what they are already doing with the in game marketplace.
Not really.
The in-game marketplace does accept scenery addons yes, but they are provided as a separate addon which users have to manually install to avail in their sim.
A gateway system implements these handcrafted scenery into the streamed base scenery data, so it is streamed to every MSFS user.
Ah I thought you are talking about something like X-Plane Scenery Gateway.
If this system is just open for everyone, it can’t really scale because there is no money to cover moderation effort. For paid mods, Microsoft and Asobo can get a cut of the sale to cover their moderation.
This can be done for trusted partners or established company though because Asobo doesn’t have to worry too much about moderation, and they have already done that with Gaya’s airports in the Japan update. This however does not give back enough attention to the airport maker comparing to a free item in Marketplace, so I doubt many would be interested to do free of charge.
I was in fact referring to something like an XPlane style gateway system, except in MSFS I’m proposing that we extend that gateway system to scenery and POI’s rather than just airports.
Maybe, but I’m certain that it would be much cheaper to have developers approve scenery submission to the gateway system, than to have a large team of dedicated developers just to create 3D scenery, although having both at once would be even better. Something like 1 hour of moderating submissions and the rest modelling World Updates.
I don’t really understand here. I didn’t see any streaming in X-plane. Did I do something wrong? In X-plane I have to download whatever I want to see before the flight.
And it’s not cheaper on the legal view 
(which is pretty bad in game development), so you will see that game companies are really scared of taking any work from outside, unless you are an established company with signed contracts, mainly due to previous ridiculous lawsuits on IP and revenue sharing.
Correct. XPlane scenery is not streamed, but pre-downloaded.
The way the gateway system would differ in MSFS is, after the community submissions are approved by the devs, they integrate it into the 2PB of scenery that is streamed from their servers, so every user is able to view this new handcrafted POI for example without having to download any further addons as this has been added in the base scenery of the sim, which is the whole idea of a Gateway system.
You raise valid points. While we can’t speak for the costs or the legalities of this system, they can implement certain strict terms and conditions such as no Google Earth ripoffs, no excess polygon counts, can’t use licensed textures etc.
If you’d like, you can view my topic ‘Scenery Gateway System’ on the Wishlist category which explains my proposed MSFS-compatible gateway system in detail.
Yep I have read your post before. And I am all for community contribution, but I doubt it will ever happen.
The problem with accepting free contribution (in terms of work hours) is always about that legal risks, and the more you sell, the larger the risk (so Google Maps is very safe by providing the map for free). Hiring someone to do stuffs gradually presents no risks, and is easily budgeted.
It’s a bit better in the software dev world than the game world thanks to the more established license and legal system of open source, but big companies are still very careful taking anything from outside (you always need to involve a legal team and a long approval process) due to the unnecessary risks. Basically, they can’t trust you if you simply say you don’t steal (unless you are an established company so they can sue you for fraud), and they can’t simply push all the blame to you when the IP holder sues.
I think Asobo kinda sidesteps this by opening up the community folder. So for example, nothing stop flightsim.to to create a downloader to do what you are mentioning in the same way X-plane is doing. But they’ll have to absorb all the cost, or start to prepare for possible lawsuits if their moderation let any unauthorized stuffs go through. And even if they do all for free, they can still get Cease & Desist letter or some take down request from IP holder. Those have all happened before for community projects.
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Thanks for taking the time to explain this. I wasn’t aware of the legal implications behind such a system. Unfortunately i’m not too well versed in legal speak so can’t comment further but ultimately I hope MS figures a way to help us help them make MSFS more accurate and updated in terms of scenery.
Sure hope they do find a way. Right now probably I’ll have to go back to all the sharing sites haha.
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