Rejected for doing real-world things. Could somebody from the World Hub team please comment on how to approach these scenarios?

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Yesterday, I submitted LSZR to the World Hub. It got rejected for three reasons, all deliberate design choices:

  1. The fuel TaxiwayParking spot overlaps with a taxiway. The fuel in real life is under the small overhang of a structure:

    LSZR fuel real life
    LSZR fuel real life1920×1080 113 KB

    Here it is in MSFS. They’re adjacent to the building because that overhang part was not rendered as a building:

    LSZR fuel sim
    LSZR fuel sim1916×1078 321 KB

    It got rejected because the parking space overlaps with a taxiway. If you take a look at the top picture, do you see any way that a jet (note: the top screenshot says Jet A-1 fuel) could possibly fuel up there and not block the taxiway?

    LSZR fuel overhead
    LSZR fuel overhead1920×1080 58.7 KB

  2. Parking 2 blocks the taxiway:

    LSZR parking 2
    LSZR parking 21920×1080 346 KB

    Yes, it does. This is Bing:

    LSZR Bing
    LSZR Bing1920×1080 50.8 KB

    That wasn’t a fluke. This is Apple Maps (sorry, it doesn’t zoom in as far):

    LSZR Apple
    LSZR Apple1920×1080 131 KB

    Want a video? Here’s an Embraer 190 at LSZR. Guess where it’s parked: https://youtu.be/KkiN6jTjKqQ?t=278

    So what’s the alternative? Not allow large jets to park at this airport? That’s the only spot I’ve seen them park at.

  3. Putting a TaxiwayParking space on top of a helipad.

    LSZR parking 1
    LSZR parking 11920×1080 441 KB

    Here’s a shot from real life. Notice the jet parked on the helipad?

    LSZR jet parked over helipad
    LSZR jet parked over helipad1920×1080 66.3 KB

    Again, not a fluke. Here’s Google Maps, with a jet parked over the helipad (by the way…it’s also blocking the taxiway):

    LSZR Google
    LSZR Google1920×1080 118 KB

How are we supposed to handle these real-life scenarios?

  • I could remove TaxiwayParking spot 1. I would lose the “1” painted into the ground because the SDK doesn’t support painted numbers for helipads. So you would have a “2” and a “3” in the ground, but no “1”. And it would be less true-to-life.
  • I could exclude the building housing the fuel and move the fuel there, but if I did that, I would also have to delete the vehicle TaxiwayParking (where actual vehicles park there in real life…again one more piece of realism being subtracted). I would also have to shrink the radius of the TaxiwayParking spot so that only Cessna trainers and Pipers could get at that Jet A-1 fuel.
  • I could shrink the parking space for TaxiwayParking 2, thereby disallowing any mid-sized real-world regional traffic from showing up at this airport.
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I have a second airport I’ve actually completed where the parking situation is very complicated:

Bing:

A Coruña aerial
A Coruña aerial1920×1080 85.3 KB

MSFS:

A Coruña MSFS
A Coruña MSFS1920×1080 231 KB

Right now, I know I can’t submit it because it will be rejected due to yet another helipad overlapping with a parking space.

These aren’t made-up scenarios. This is real life.

I’m on vacation starting next week, which means that neither of these submissions will be in the July AIRAC cycle.

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I haven’t taken the time (yet) to fully understand what your situation is, but the comments you received may be the same or similar to what I received for this submission..

If you download the associated submission, you will see the situation. If that is the same or similar to your situation, it may not be as difficult as you’re thinking. I will look more at what you’ve described in this post when I have some time. But I thought the comments I received may apply to your situation as well and it was a simple fix for a problem that I hadn’t realized was a problem until it was pointed out.

I hope this helps!

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Thanks. I haven’t had the chance to download your submission yet (though I can’t download the rejected version).

It might be similar. It sounds like KAVL had some parking spots going over some taxiways, which is my situation. But the problem is, that’s just the way it is at this airport. At LSZR, I built the airport according to the aerial and my research and it got rejected. The only way to fix each of the three rejection reasons would be to remove realism in all three scenarios.

I leave for vacation on Tuesday. If I’m lucky, somebody from Asobo will reply to this on Monday and maybe I’ll have a chance to squeeze in a submission and get this in this AiRAC cycle.

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Didn’t realize you couldn’t download the rejected version. Sorry.

Basically, look to see if there is a taxiway path that intersects with the inner circle of a parking spot. If so, move the taxiway path so that it no longer intersects the parking spot.

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No problem. As an aside, it’s actually one of the concerns I have about the November refresh’ Someone who doesn’t have a backup whose airport gets overwritten will see a new version by MSFSbot. With no backup, if they want to redo their airport, they have to do it from scratch.

I don’t know about KAVL, but the taxi parts here have their centerlines. So any moving would be visible.

Consider this one: There is only one parking spot for medium-sized jets at the airport. I could shrink the parking spot, but then there will be no place for medium-sized jets to park at the airport.

LSZR Bing
LSZR Bing1920×1080 50.8 KB

They let their planes block taxiways. That’s simply how they do it there.

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I’ll download your submission later and take a look at it. Sounds like a challenge, for sure!

8

If you want to, but please don’t feel you have to! All of the pictures in the first post show the problems without booting up MSFS:

  1. In real life, there’s a Jet A-1 fuel pump that blocks the taxiway. The only way I see to fix it is to shrink the parking spot there so that only Cessna 172s can access the jet fuel.

  2. This is the one I talked about – In real life, they have one spot for parking medium-sized jets like E190s. When they park aircraft there in real life, they block their own taxiways. That’s just how they do it. I got penalized for that. And if I shrink the spot, there will be no parking for that size of aircraft anywhere at the airport.

  3. I put a parking spot above a helipad because again, that’s just how they do it (and sometimes, aircraft block the taxiway when parking there, too). This one’s the easiest to fix: I could simply remove the parking. However, this all takes place in a space where three parking spots are labeled 3-2-1. If I take away the TaxiwayParking, I’ll only have 3-2, as helipads have no option for ground markings.

I see no way out of these without taking something realistic away from the airport.

9

So I just took a more detailed look at your situation. I had intended to download your rejected airport but realized you already tried to look at one of my rejected airports and couldn’t, so why would my experience be any different (daahh!)!

This seems like a reasonable option. Could you use painted lines to make a “1”?

Could you remove the centerlines from the taxiway parts and replace the centerlines with painted lines?

This airport does things in a special way. I’ve not seen any other airport that blocks taxiways for parking or makes a helipad available as another aircraft parking spot. I wonder if other airports do the same or if this is the only one?

It will be interesting to see how you get this one to pass inspection. Good luck!

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Yeah. I would post the XML, but I don’t know what the rules are for this closed alpha.

It would be an ugly “1” and it wouldn’t look like the other ones, which are black on yellow.
I could also lose the helipad, but I’m not really keen on that, either.

You have a point there. I could do that, but it would mean that no traffic could access part of the taxiway. I would also consider it a hack, effectively removing a taxiway in order to get it approved.

Off the top of my head, I know one other one. Also, I already did LECO airport, which would be rejected if I submitted it for having a helipad blocking a taxiway.

These two airports represent three weeks’ worth of work.

These are my notes for LSZR. It’s a lot:

Expand

Airport:

  1. Changed airport polygon size from S to M
  2. Added windsock for runway 10 at 47.485326, 9.553106
  3. Added windsock for helipad at 47.487262, 9.562404
  4. Created CarParking near new parking spaces, PARKING-16-NONE and PARKING-17-NONE, and connected one of the roads to taxiway M (47.487451, 9.556791)
  5. Fixed many grass aprons covering items in the ground so that they didn’t stand out as much

Runway 10-28:

  1. Changed width from 28.451054 m to 30 m
  2. Runway 10: Added approach lighting and removed REILs
  3. Runway 10: Adjusted PAPIs so they fit better on aerial
  4. Runway 28: Changed PAPI spacing from 6.5 m to 6 m and adjusted so it better fit on aerial (see note #3)
  5. Added circle and lines to center of runway

Runway 10L-28R:

  1. Fixed taxiways to 10L and 10R so that they went over the hold short lines in grass
  2. Drew hold short lines in grass
  3. Pulled back start positions

Taxiways:

  1. Made all taxiway signs smaller and the same size (that addresses this comment: St. Gallen Altenrhein (LSZR): Double taxi signs at handcrafted airport (after WU6 + hotfix) - #15 by HXArdito - Resolved - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums )
  2. Corrected all taxiway signs at the airport so that they are real-world accurate. These taxiway signs are now more accurate than the bespoke LSZR provided in World Update 6.
  3. Removed centerline lighting from all taxiways (see https://youtu.be/jmDw9H_Uu4E – there is no centerline lighting)
  4. Added TaxiwayPaths near hangars A1-A3 (vicinity of 47.487527, 9.560880) and C1-C5 (vicinity of 47.486809, 9.563942)
  5. Fixed the PaintedLines at 47.486563, 9.552876 and 47.484682, 9.570766, as even though they were of type “marked”, it was too small to produce a runway marking on the ground
  6. Changed PaintedLines at 47.486932, 9.551691; 47.486933, 9.552491; 47.487213, 9.553220; 47.487483, 9.553573; 47.487339, 9.554933; and more to be SLIM_RED and surrounded them with white (see three of these white-red-white lines: https://youtu.be/UIF6fJoPw7o?t=483 )
  7. Added the three “MAX SPAN” boxes to the taxiways (see note #11)
  8. Shortened PaintedLine at 47.487196, 9.550746 and added a TaxiwayPath

Ramp:

  1. Added helipad on top of PARKING-1-NONE (and also fixed up the line drawn there to make it a better circle) (see note #5)
  2. Altered PARKING-2-NONE and PARKING-3-NONE so they are approached from other direction and increased PARKING-2’s radius from 11 m to 15 m (see note #6)
  3. Removed existing fuel parking and created a new one at 47.487562, 9.551774, near where the fuel really is ( see https://youtu.be/dZCj9nUzJiA?t=536 and note #9)
  4. Moved PARKING-10-NONE, -12, and -14 so that they were next to each other, made them all 6 m, and renamed them PARKING-13-NONE, -14, and -15
  5. Created PARKING-16-NONE and PARKING-17-NONE
  6. Added four parking spots (PARKING-18-NONE through -21-NONE) next to grass runway (vicinity of 47.485691, 9.567551, see note #8)
  7. Extended taxi path from PARKING-13-NONE, -14, -15 to taxiway M
  8. Changed taxiway N at 47.487239, 9.554283 from 25 m to 24 m, taxiway N at 47.487113, 9.555593 from 25 m to 18 m, and taxiway M to 14 m per the “MAX SPAN” signs posted on the ground
  9. Changed PaintedLines at 47.487069, 9.551163 and 47.487870, 9.556505 from WIDE_RED to DEFAULT

Notes:

  1. As far as I can tell, Bing’s aerial is up to date for this airport. However, I did notice that a particular spot in Bing did not have the precise same coordinates as its aerial counterpart. In other words, the aerial in MSFS and the aerial in Bing do not completely line up. So, the choice was either to redo the entire airport using Bing coordinates, or just place things according to the aerial and forget Bing coordinates. I chose to do the latter.
  2. Some of the airport is shifted over by maybe a meter or so. I don’t feel like changing up the whole airport, so I left it as is and moved some items a little bit so they fit what was on the ground.
  3. There is no SDK option for the actual approach lighting on runway 10. So I copied what the bespoke LSZR used, which looks to be RAIL. However, unlike their version, I did not put any lights on the displaced threshold, and I put the correct number of lights (6) past the threshold (the bespoke LSZR uses 5, which is wrong…you can count them in the Bing aerial).
  4. The PAPI spacing for runway 28 is less than 6 m, but you can only adjust it down to 6 m.
  5. I did not delete PARKING-1-NONE because in this video, you can clearly see a jet parked on top of the helipad: https://youtu.be/cz52iBx7R0M?t=115
  6. It does not look like large aircraft should park in PARKING-2-NONE, however if you look at Bing (47.487155, 9.552537), you will see an aircraft with a 25 m wingspan parked there. In this video, you can see the tail end of a large jet in that parking space: https://youtu.be/dZCj9nUzJiA?t=500 . I made the spot 22 m wide to give other aircraft a chance to park in spots 1 and 3.
  7. The numbered spaces 3, 2, and 1 are not even with the white line just above it. That is deliberate. If you look at the Bing aerial (47.487180, 9.552542), you will see that they do not line up there, either.
  8. I would love for grass parking spaces to be a lot larger, as I can see two gliders sitting on the spots in the Bing aerial. However, I’m afraid that if I make wide radii for the spots in order to accommodate gliders, the sim is going to put A320s in those spots, which would not be good.
  9. The fuel pumps are actually underneath the overhang of the building: https://youtu.be/AvME5HeZ8BU?t=124 Ideally, I would like to push the parking space into the building, but I assume that that is not allowed.
  10. The sign at 47.486337, 9.553621 (d< N|< A >) is real. It’s non-standard, but that’s what’s actually at the airfield: https://youtu.be/9pc749i23Ik?t=2005
  11. Only the MAX SPAN boxes were added, not the actual text, as that is not supported right now in the World Hub SDK.

Pictures used for reference:
https://flighttraining.ch/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/lszr_bodenkarte_detail.png (Contrary to the URL, the chart is from June 2022)

Videos used for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIF6fJoPw7o&t=333s (Dec 15, 2023 – Runway 20, taxiway A, S, N)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azZabBSisKw (Dec 12, 2023 – Taxiway N; play it in 0.25 speed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pc749i23Ik&t=1884s (Sep 5, 2023 – Taxiway N, A, S)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEPpCORRaPY&&t=117s (Nov 15, 2021 – Used only for taxiway sign pointing to taxiway A (“<A”))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLOdsxlsPjY (May 28, 2020 – Helicopter taking off near helipad at 47.487152, 9.562229)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmDw9H_Uu4E (Feb 13, 2018 – Used only to determine that there are no center lights on the taxiways)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXNdbXnuVgg (May 3, 2016 – White, red, white lines)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0Oo6c_kKcW0 (Jan 3, 2016 – Used only for approach lighting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRScP-E7YTs (Nov 15, 2015 – Used only for approach lighting)

In some ways, this is more accurate than the bespoke LSZR, which is why I did it. (Same thing for LECO.)

I take a lot of pride in the airports that I do, and it feels like any changes I would take away from the realism.

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