Are you still motivated to use WorldHub?

WorldHub Discussions
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Hi there!
After few weeks, I would love to have feedback of other users of WorldHub closed Alpha. Based on this post “Q for Asobo: Limits of Creativity - #9 by Vincent1064” I’m still personally be not much motivated to spent hours just for few taxiways and signs fixes

I know that I’ll reach a limited number of people by doing from scratch an airport and sharing it as freeware (via flightsim.to for example; unable to use the MarkePlace) but I found more valuable, motivated for me and personally creatively challenging to build something rather than fixing something and finally let huge awful things at this airport, like unrealistic and unscaled buildings that I can wipe out and replace in a minute with the regular SDK.

Any other though?

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I’m less motivated, but for different reasons:

I’m about to submit KBWI airport. In real life, I have taken off out of this airport one time, and I have never landed at it. In the sim, I don’t think I’ve ever been to the airport for fun. However, I decided to work on this airport in order to fix this bug, which was logged only two days after Microsoft Flight Simulator launched and which has 47 votes in the main forums:

This bug report is almost four years old!!! It is in Microsoft’s bug tracker at least once, though possibly a few times, as it has been both raised in the forums as well as on Zendesk, and it still has not been fixed, despite not one, but two world updates to the United States. (As an aside, shouldn’t world updates seek to close all bugs associated with that country by launch time? This is a question I have raised multiple times, and the answer seems to be a resounding no.)

So I went and started to fix it, not because it benefitted me in the slightest, but because it’s a highly-voted bug report and a lot of people are upset by it, and I want to help. In the process, I discovered that the aerial could be ten years old or older, as it still contains runway 4-22, which closed in the year 2014. This has become a massive undertaking, as the airport is so far and away outdated. I’m about six weeks into the process and I discovered two weeks ago that submissions might be rejected if the supporting underlying aerials don’t exist:

When I heard that, I was furious, as I was already four weeks into work on this airport and I have seen nothing about this apparent rule that they have. Not only do I have the potential to see four weeks of work being flushed down the drain, but there is also opportunity cost involved, as I could have spent those four weeks working on airports that actually matter to me, personally.

Martial later said that they’re working on putting together a list of rules to publish. The World Hub was stalled for a year as the website went through Microsoft’s certification process. During this time, did nobody think to get these rules together? Four weeks into work, I decided to finish the airport, anyway, as I had already invested so much time into it, and I only had a few days’ worth of work left. During that time, I discovered even more and more stuff that needed fixing, and now I’m six weeks into an airport that might get rejected. My morale is currently at an all-time low.

To compound matters, in this last developer stream, Jörg stated that aerials will get a refresh:

Great! What does that mean for all of our World Hub submissions? Will they get overwritten? I asked that question for the April 2024 stream and it was not answered.

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Sorry, I need to continue, as there is even more that upsets me.

When the World team (Gaya, Orbx…maybe members of Asobo, too?) makes a bespoke airport, they seem to fix nothing in the underlying “default” airport and instead put all of their fixes into a custom airport package that you must now download and keep on your hard drive.

There are many examples, but here are two of my bug reports that illustrate what I mean:

Seward, Alaska (PAWD):

Valdez, Alaska (PAVD):

If these or any of their other bespoke airports mean something to you, you have to sacrifice several hundred megabytes (or worse, a gigabyte or more) of your hard disk to get their fixes. I have escalated many times up the chain saying that the AI system needs to be re-trained not to cover up segmented circles, as they are needed for VFR pilots, and the AI system needs to be re-trained to know that if it sees a segmented circle, there’s a really, really good chance that there’s a windsock inside of it, not 100 m somewhere else. Things like windsock placement, runways, approach lighting, taxiway signs, taxiway edge lights, painted lines, terrain fixes, etc. all need to be done in the default airport, not the thing you download. Yes, they still end up on your hard drive, anyway, under fs-base-genericairports. But I’m looking at my fs-base-genericairports folder, which contains all 40,000 generic airports around the world, and it takes up a mere 801 MB on my computer because it’s all text data. Let the custom airports you download from Content Manager contain all the custom PBR textures and 3D models that you make. Those Content Manager packages should be for eye candy, but everything you need to fly safely into an airport, adhere to all of the rules, and avoid runway incursions should be in the default airport.

So, my morale is also low because despite years of asking for these changes, we have to go in and fix them manually, one by one. My flesh-and-blood human self will never match the productivity of their AI system run on a server farm, which can rebuild the world in hours. And there are a lot of things I would rather be doing than fixing stuff that could have been re-trained into the AI system. (Note: I’ve also asked a developer stream question as to whether our World Hub fixes will be used to re-train the AI system. Was not answered.)

Going back to my point about what should be in the default airport and what should be in the custom airport, I do hope that scenery developers who don’t intend to do airports from scratch will seek to fix what they can in the World Hub before placing custom objects into their packages. At least then, everyone will benefit from accurate taxiway signs, proper approach lighting, and fewer taxiway lights on their centerlines.

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When I contacted airfields for additional information, I always tried to explain that I’m working within strict limitations, I tried to explain what I can and cannot do, and I always tried to sell it by mentioning that my improvements would be rolled out to all the millions of MSFS users within weeks, for free and as automatic updates, without the need for the user to download or install anything manually.

Alas, the people running airfields in my region are not nerds. Only one (out of about a dozen I contacted) has ever used MSFS.

I took screenshots when the changes were rolled out and sent them to the airfields. The feedback was never “the ground textures are matching much better now” or “great work painting all those lines on the ground”. The feedback was “the new hangar is missing”, “the height of the buildings is all wrong”, or “our beacon is on top of the tower”.

So, yeah, what demotivates me is that, while “in my bubble” it felt great to improve a bunch of airfields, people in the real world don’t recognize their home airfield by the shape of the apron or the correctly curved taxiway lines. They look at the whole picture, and a missing or unrecognizable building appears to trump all the work I’ve put into apron details.

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In short, I am not as motivated to use the World Hub as I once was.

The main reason? Simply, is that the system isn’t ready yet. I understand this is an Alpha. Of course things will not be fully finished or functional. However, what I am seeing is that this system is more of a tool to edit small things in an airport, such as runways, taxiways, etc. That’s great for small airports. What about large airports? Especially, commercial airports. They have stuff in there that we cannot touch or edit, like buildings. I somewhat understand why this isn’t allowed but the fact that I cannot add a missing building that is in the aerial and just have to cover it up using an apron texture makes me upset.

I will say this though, that the tool has enough features to edit the airport so it’s flyable with no bells and whistles. But it’s missing stuff :slight_smile:

@N316TS - I agree heavily on what you said. Especially the part where a rules system should have been implemented before the alpha.

I’ll say it again - yes I know this is an alpha. Things will not be ready. But before the World Hub goes public things like these need to be implemented.

A bit of praise before I finish this - I do admire that we have a tool to update airports instead of having Asobo do that. It gives them more time for them to focus on major stuff - not focusing on a misplaced runway light at an airport that no one has ever heard of. I hope this tool continues to thrive and I cannot see what will come when it’s finished fully :slight_smile:

Anyways, that’s it from me! :wave:

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I am less motivated to continue with the World Hub, too. I know it’s an Alpha (although Jorg said something like “Should we call it an Alpha, a Beta, Final?”), but as no changes have been made or proposed since this Alpha started, AFAIK, it makes me wonder where this is headed.

At the start of the Alpha there were no rules and many of our airports were declined because we had not covered up vehicles, buildings, bright spots, roads, etc. I expected there would be a set of rules issued within days. But here we are, weeks later, and still nothing formal.

The old vs. new aerial issue is a big one. We can’t fix many airports that have been reported as “bugs” because the aerial doesn’t match the current airport. Now we are to get a new set of aerials either slightly before or with the introduction of MSFS 2024. As @N316TS says above, “What does that mean for all our submissions? Will they get overwritten?”

It seems one of the objectives of the World Hub should be to keep airport layouts current and accurate, so, for example, VATSIM users can use the corrected airports with confidence. But with current tools, this cannot be done at a large percentage of airports, particularly major airports. Yes, new aerials will fix this temporarily, but they will be, as I understand it, from 2023. So they, too, will quickly become outdated until new aerials are issued. Is there a plan to address this?

I started work on a reported bug, the St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport (KPIE). For the same reason @N316TS is working on KBWI, I am not doing this for the flying I do, but for the good of those who will use it. I’ve found that the in-sim aerial is quite old but haven’t been able to figure out exactly how old. Someone posted the FAA layout from 2021 but the aerial is older than that. So I started to use coordinates from the latest Bing Maps aerial (which appears to be the same as is shown on the World Hub website) and change the airport based on that data. It takes a lot of time to do that, but I see no alternative. It could be the airport will be declined and I’ll have to post it on FlightSim.to or some other site to distribute it. But I can hope.

Then there is the apparent reluctance of Asobo-MS to make the World Hub similar to “other” flight simulators where complete renditions of airports can be submitted (with buildings, lights, corrected elevations, etc.). This makes it a good hobby, similar to model railroading, but virtual. But speculation on this Forum is that this idea has been nixed by commercial developers, that it would cut into their market. Why have other simulators not so severely limited what “free” developers can do? It seems to me this cuts out a very significant part of the “hobby” aspect of a simulator and leaves the tedious and un-glamourous aspects of development to the “free” developers.

Still, I’m hopeful that the concept of the World Hub has been more fully developed by Asobo-MS and that it will evolve to a more fully functional tool. There has been talk from time to time of a “Free” section on the Marketplace. Is that the ultimate goal? Right now everything seems “up in the air.”

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Welp, I’m shocked to report that my KBWI got accepted! So, my morale is a little higher than it was a few days ago. (Though not as high as it could be, as my earlier post might indicate.)

Best of luck! I obviously can’t guarantee anything, but I do have one data point showing that it is possible. I do not know why mine was accepted and others who tried were not. I do think that the technique of doing every single point using Bing may be what got mine accepted, but I cannot be sure, as there was no feedback on my submission. I was going to do Incheon (RKSI) airport in the future, which suffers from the same problem as BWI. But we still live under threat of rejection of our work, so knowing the emotional rollercoaster that BWI was – working for weeks without knowing your work was going to be accepted – I will abstain. Seoul will have to wait for either the MSFS 2024 aerial update or a future Korean world update. Or someone else who’s brave enough to attempt weeks of work without a clear set of documented rules.

A few responses:

My hunch is that the physical World Hub we see now is not going to be much different than when it goes into production for everybody. I could be wrong, but my guess is that they are more focused on process than on adding new bells and whistles. What do the different submissions we send them look like? How hard are the scenarios we give them going to be to get through? Is anyone going to slip them a custom object that they haven’t figured out how to catch yet? (Looks like that already happened once.) Do they have enough staff to support the expected volume of requests?

I don’t expect to see more SDK bells and whistles by the time the World Hub goes into production. I’d be very, very happy to be wrong, though.

I hate to say it, but buildings at small airports are off, too. Like the building in this example, which was not placed on its aerial correctly. Or hangar buildings that are way too tall. They’re all over the place, at both small and large airports, and two days ago, they announced that they would not be fixing them.

This has nothing to do with this discussion, but just a heads up that in the United States, you can get official airport diagrams for free for larger airports (usually class D and above): https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/diagrams/. (Here’s another useful link: chart supplements. When one goes through private pilot training, they drill into everybody’s head to use current charts to ensure that you are getting the most up-to-date information possible. Outside of the United States, you can look up 'AIP" or “AIS”, AKA “aeronautical information portal/service”. Here is a list of European ones: https://www.eurocontrol.int/articles/ais-online. Just note that some of them are behind a paywall.

That’s awesome that you do that! Even though you may not get the feedback you’re hoping for, I salute you.

Okay, sorry for the interruption.

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This is very good to hear! That’s what I’m doing for KPIE and it’s taking forever, but maybe it will eventually be approved. We’ll see. I’ve started other airports in similar condition using the same technique, node by node, that really need an update. This gives us hope! Thank you!

P.S. Looked at your notes for KBWI…wow! All those YouTube videos referenced. That’s dedication!

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Great discussion and I agree with most of the critique here.

I’ve had to slow down my editing due to other obligations, but expect to be increase again eventually. On one hand, I enjoy editing airports - I’ve been doing this in one way or another for over 30 years. I also enjoy digging into airport design and the specifics about what make airports both standardized yet unique.

There continue to be some QoL issues within the SDK workflow that drive me a little crazy (alignment of nodes and parking spots especially). There are objects missing that are kind of important (fences, tie downs, hangars, fuel tanks, more lights, more variety of windsocks). There are some major, important design factors that are unachievable (certain runway markings and/or their size). Can’t remove misplaced beacons, that’s a big oops (also no variety there). Having to convert from feet to meters. Generated taxiway lights are incredibly frustrating.

Additionally, the scope of corrections could use more clear categorization, especially with regard to intent of previous editors. Is the edit just runways (and lights), taxiways, parking spots and ramps, is it minor or major, exactly what’s changed, and how should we document it, ya know? BTW, @N316TS , that is above and beyond documentation of the changes you made to BWI! I’d love to point that out as setting the bar, but I simply don’t have time to do that each time, lol! I find runway lighting is the biggest, easiest opportunity that affects actual flying, but I also can’t seem to stop myself from putting in every single tie down.

I agree that the AI hallucinates. I seem to have helped with the understanding that the AI draws aprons on flattened airports in places that are not accessible by aircraft irl, and thus are irrelevant and actually confusing from a human-factors standpoint (especially without other vertical visual boundaries like buildings and fences). We really can’t and shouldn’t start covering up every haystack, outbuilding, and vehicle adjacent to an airport. It gets to be a major question of where to draw the line. The moderation seems to take that into account now and that made things a bit more palatable.

But the biggest frustration that’s currently giving me pause, as with others, is the changing aerials. I put at least six hours into Byron Airport (C83) and found out that the aerial I had worked on isn’t the one showing in the sim (and I have no active mods in the area). There’s no way of knowing exactly the date of the aerial in the SDK, versus the one in the sim, yet we only have access to current official data (chart supplements, etc), so there’s a weird temporal disconnect.

Still, there is a question of credit. For instance, look at the changes @N316TS made to BWI. They should get an immense amount of credit for that. If you’re in the world hub, you can easily see who made such drastic changes. However, when it rolls out to the public - will they only see the last person who did the work? I mean, I’m not really looking for wide recognition, but say I went in and fixed one taxiway at BWI. If that were the case, since I was last, does that mean my name goes on it and people would see me as getting credit for the major work done? I sure hope not.

So yeah, it’s frustrating without more guidance and tools. I’ll probably continue, but I might just start focusing more on the runway lighting and less on all the things.

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Wow, thank you, @CurrentFoil3744 and @CharlieFoxtrot00 ! I feel a big weight off my shoulders after getting KBWI through. The hilarious part about my notes is that, that’s a condensed version. I write the notes in real time. I always have the same sections for each airport: Airport, Runways, Ramp, Taxiways, Videos and Photos used for Reference, and I just fill them in as I go. Quickly, I realized that what I was writing was just too untenable, and that nobody was going to read it. So that’s actually a summary.

The QoL for the SDK is a big one for me, too. I started with the SDK in 2022 and was reasonably comfortable with it. Now, having put ~300 hours into the World Hub since it started, I would consider myself to be an expert on the stripped version of the SDK that we have. (I would not consider myself to be at a moderate skill level with the full scenery SDK, and woefully inadequate when it comes to exporting Blender models and textures. But that is another can of worms for another day.) So many pain points with the user experience with the SDK. If I get the ambition, one of these days, I would like to start a thread of pain points using the World Hub and the SDK. Unfortunately, the list is so long that it will require a significant amount of time to think up and write. So I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
 

I agree. The AI system adds aprons over segmented circles and other painted circles in the ground that aid pilots in identifying where windsocks are, and in the case of segmented circles, the traffic pattern(s) for the runway(s). I can only imagine that the system was trained to do that by scenery developers who never went to private pilot ground school and learned about these things.

As for the other things we need to cover up, I also agree. And I worry that, if the AI system is being trained on our submissions, that it’s being taught that covering up stuff is good instead of trying to render 3D models on top of said items.
 

Heh. I am actually working on a second KBWI submission. Much smaller than the first one: mostly things I either thought might get rejected (e.g. deleting parking spots on top of the deicing pad or deleting the big helicopter “H” that doesn’t exist) or things that weren’t necessary for fixing the main airport, like adding an apron at the end of one of the taxiways. Once that goes live, I will be covering up my own big lift with my own submission!

I actually want to work on some airports that have already been altered in the World Hub: KCWA, KMCD, KOSH. These three airports have meaning to me. I have not seen what has been done to them so far, and I don’t even know who did them (maybe it was somebody on this thread, for all I know). And maybe I’ll look at them and determine that no further work needs to be done. But I almost feel like I’m stepping on somebody else’s toes by editing an airport someone else worked on.
 

I don’t know if this is the same issue or not, but when I did KUUU for my friend CasualClick, sometimes MSFS would load up one aerial. And then other times, MSFS would load up a much newer aerial with a significant portion of the ramp under construction. Neither aerial was current, but the object placement at the default airport seemed to be based on the older aerial, and that is the aerial I worked off of. When the newer aerial loaded up, I actually stopped work and went onto another airport. Eventually, after loading into KUUU several times, it would temporarily revert back to the old aerial. It added much unnecessary pain to what should have been a simple airport to work on.

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Fantastic summary! I feel about the same regarding my level of expertise - not good at blender or any “goodies,” but have gotten okay at navigating the SDK in world hub mode. I may eventually try some larger airports that are near and dear to me, but mid-sized regional airports and smaller are my wheelhouse.

I’m with you - this is needed. I’ve been putting things up as wishlist/vote items as I encounter them but the World Hub is so niche at this point that there doesn’t seem to be enough activity in this forum to push it either way. I have no idea if they’re falling on deaf ears.

Great point. I hadn’t thought of that.

Same! And I don’t know how it would feel if it were my toes stepped on. Again, I’m primarily doing this for the love of the sim and don’t mind a little credit, but it’d feel weird if someone else gained wider recognition for my work.

But I appreciate the folks commenting in this thread - it warms me to know we’re not alone in our frustrations (sometimes I think I’m going crazy!), but we’re all still pushing for a better sim experience.

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Not at all. I picked one airport to do because it had big white splotches on the ground where buildings should be. When I found that the WorldHub wouldn’t allow adding buildings I quit, restarted, and rebuilt the airport for myself. No one else gets the benefit of that 8 hours of work. Haven’t opened WorldHub since.

Eddie

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That they are, unfortunately. I watched the Q&A from last week and it appears that they didn’t fully answer the question when asked (that is, editing buildings and adding default SimObjects). I don’t blame them, they could potentially be not willing to comment at this time. It’s just something that needs to be added if we want the full use out of this tool.

Congrats with BWI by the way! :partying_face: I admire your work. :slight_smile:

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First vbazillio i like your works on flightsim.to

Functional limitations do exist, but there are still things that can be done;

Recently I was working on a small airport in Iceland,
Last year I spent some time on a few small airports and published them on flightsim.to, using the base version and WU DLC resources.
Last month, I submitted more than 20 small airports in Iceland. For these airports, I only made simple designs for Parkings, taxiways and windsock;

During this process, I found that some AI airports were wrong, with wrong locations, wrong runways, etc.; this basic data can currently be corrected.

Then there is no parkings at the AI ​​small airport (airstripe). For people like me who like to fly in the countryside, starting the game from the air or runway when flying with friends is not a good experience. So my current main goal is to add parkings to these small airports.

If WorldHub can develop more features in the future, these airports can be maintained again.

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@N316TS, KPIE was accepted today, so it seems the use of coordinates to place nodes has been confirmed. It can result in approval. It takes a lot longer but is worth it to fix many out-of-date airports!

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I saw that this morning when I was checking my own airports! Congratulations! :partying_face: I was actually going to mention you in my other thread but I’ll do that, anyway.

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I’ve given up on the world hub. I’ve applied twice and have yet to get access to it. I’ll just keep releasing updates on FS.to. Hopefully 2024 won’t need it but I don’t have high hopes.

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Hi SageLobster5901 , welcome to devsupport. Sorry to hear about this! May I ask, are you seeing an error when you try to log in, or did you never receive an email saying, “Welcome to the Microsoft Flight Simulator World Hub Closed Alpha”?

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Hi
I’m sorry to read that
Please send me a PM with your Xbox Live account (e-mail adress) and I will give you the access to the world hub

Cheers

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Im wit you brudda! Cant even do the most basic fixes is absurd. Leave it to MS to torture people who try to make the simulator better for FREE. MS has tested my patience severely the last few years.