excludeAirports removes navdata procedures (stock + Navigraph) – unintended behavior

[MSFS 2024] Bug Reports Airport & Sceneries
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1

Version: 1.6.34.0

Frequency: Consistently

Severity: High

Context:

We’ve encountered an issue related to the excludeAirports flag in exclusion rectangles.

When enabling excludeAirports, it correctly removes the default airport elements from MSFS. However, it also removes all associated navdata procedures, including:

  • Default MSFS procedures (SIDs, STARs, approaches)

  • Custom procedures provided by Navigraph

This results in the airport having no available procedures in the FMC / World Map, which is not the intended behavior.

This creates a major issue, especially for Xbox users, where:

  • Default handcrafted airports cannot be disabled

  • Developers must rely on excludeAirports to override stock content

Currently, using this flag forces a tradeoff:

  • Either keep stock airport → conflicts

  • Or remove it → lose all procedures

Bug description:

Repro steps:

  1. Create a custom airport package
  2. Add an Exclusion Rectangle
  3. Enable:

    • excludeAirports

    • (optionally) excludeAllObjects

  4. Load the airport in-sim (with or without Navigraph data installed)
2

The navdata is contained in an airport, so this is by design. You would usually only use exclude airports if you want to change the ICAO code or something like that AFAIK?

3

Then the design is wrong, and this is a change from all previous versions of FS. I haven’t looked at this yet myself, but in all previous versions, excludig navdata and procedures was a separate choice, including in 2020.

I will say, however, also normally in all previous versions, you shouldn’t need an exclusion rectangle to exclude an airport. If you’re editing an existing airport, normally you choose to exclude the base airport and any other versions of it lower in the priority list with buttons in the airport properties page. After that, sure, you may need exclusion rectangles for buildings and lights and cars and whatever.

So my previous comment about the design is valid for the airport properties exclusion choices. I’m nit sure what excluding an airport with a rectangle should do.

4

The design hasn’t changed, and was the same in FS2020. We run into this all the time on both FS2020 and FS2024.

6

I’ll take a look, but last I looked, all the airports I’ve released with navdata procedures still have navdata procedures even though I checked “delete airport” in the airport properties page.

I’ve never used an exclusion rectangle to delete an airport. Only to delete buildings, TIN, carparks, and somesuch.

7

There are a few ways that scenery devs break the navdata, documented here Scenery Developers - FlyByWire Simulations Documentation

8

The biggest issue is on Xbox, where in some cases you have to remove handcrafted airports. On PC, this is less of a problem because you can always disable the package from the Library. The ideas proposed by the FBW team make sense, and we’ve been following a similar approach, except for point 2 (as mentioned above).

The ideal solution would be the ability to remove the airport while preserving the navdata, assuming those two elements could be separated. Maybe this is something to consider in the future.

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