Airport Buildings Missing

[cchiozza]

I bought the full version and installed it but there are no airport buildings. It seems there are at KSEA. At other airports there are only outlines with where he buildings would be. What am I missing? I have airport detail turned all the way up as far as I can see. Should major airports have terminals?

[Flying_pig]

Airports only have buildings if there is custom built scenery for that airport so if you want to see buildings you're going to have to get some scenery and install it to your custom scenery folder also a few major airports in europe like heathrow for example have custom scenery you can see which ones have scenery by looking in the custom scenery folder

[Andyrooc]

What area of the world, or what type of airports are you looking for cchiozza? There are plenty, probably thousands, of airport scenery packages available online - even right here at x-pilot.com. Most are freeware too. Check here:

 

http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php/files/category/14-dsf-scenery-packages/

 

or use google to find some.

[cchiozza]

Thanks

[Colin S]

The reason Laminar didn't include all these buildings in the main install is because sometimes one airport and local scenery can amount to over 1GB of data, which in turn would add up to terabytes of installation. This way you can select which version of airports, photoscenery, etc.

[greggerm]

The reason Laminar didn't include all these buildings in the main install is because sometimes one airport and local scenery can amount to over 1GB of data, which in turn would add up to terabytes of installation.

 

Respectfully, I must disagree strongly with that reason. It seems to me the reason Laminar didn't include all these buildings is because they chose not to pay for the (expensive) data to populate the database, and pay for the development needed to make it happen.  Instead, they've made it their policy to depend on users and 3rd party developers to populate these items, as well as develop more realistic airport layouts (taxiways, aprons, etc.)

 

While there are examples of very well done airports in X-Plane which take up hundreds of MB's of space, airports made with default objects and facades will only add 10-20% more space to the total airport data file... going from a 100MB airport file to a "whopping" 120-130MB size. Take a look at some of the Aerosoft offerings in the X-Plane Global edition... a few use default structures and only clock in under 100kb, nevermind megabytes - with the majority of data being the actual runway/taxiway data, not the buildings.

 

As you see, it's not a space issue which drove the decision to omit airport buildings, it was a price and effort decision. Regardless of the reason though, it is what it is at this time. I did my fair share of crying over it when I was first introduced to X-Plane, but I've since joined the WED crew and whipped up a few dozen airfields in my local areas of interest which desperately needed attention.

 

Thankfully, Laminar is working on a system which will allow people who have edited airports (like me!) to submit their work with buildings to the master database which is included with X-Plane. Granted, they won't be custom models and textures, but we will be able to include accurately placed structures and terminals, adding needed life to the otherwise abandoned areas known as X-Plane default airports.

 

Until that's completed, you have places like X-Pilot, X-Plane.Org, and other flightsim websites which host many scenery files for you to find and use. Or, if you're adventurous, take a stab at learning WED and design a few yourself! For me, working in WED is more enjoyable than flying in X-Plane!

Edited March 18, 2013 by greggerm

[Flying_pig]

Seriously speaking if laminar had chosen to put the effort in and make scenery for every airport in x-plane they would of had to hire hundreds of people as i think there are 30,000 airports in the apt.dat file and if youre wondering why they didn't make a program to do it for them remeber that one person wrote the program that made all the scenery and i took him over a year to make or in other words it's not that laminar didn't make an effort it's that it wasn't feasible

Edited March 19, 2013 by mj12345

[Colin S]

Basically, Laminar is practically a garage company making one of the most powerful simulation tools out there, and it's just not their slice of pie to be doing that. That's for other people.