Note the headings. I was under the impression that the World hub would allow more changes than the Alpha allowed. I have usually been able to keep pretty well informed by listening to Dev Updates but I may have missed something. Last I knew, the World Hub introduction has slipped. But will it be limited to changes described in the topics shown? Does anyone know? Hopefully, this is simply what Asobo is able to or chooses to release for now and more will be released later.
When the next developer stream gets announced, I hope everybody asks about it again.
Here’s the publicly available information I’m aware of:
Originally in July 2024, they said they were going to shut down the World Hub because of me, because I went up to Jörg at FlightSimExpo and explained my fears that the big changes before 2024 would revert our changes (as it turns out, that happened in some cases, anyway: 1, 2).
Come March 2025, it was clear that they had not finished unifying the aerials between 2020 and 2024. At the time, they were expecting the job to take somewhere around a month to complete, but there were also privacy issues, particularly with regard to European law. Plus other considerations like, what do you do when someone puts down an individual tree in 2024, but 2020 doesn’t support that? The expectation was that it would reopen in Q3/Q4 2025.
By July 2025, that aerial synchronization was identified as complete, with the reconciled aerials coming out in Sim Update 16. Jörg then indicated that since that was done, they could revisit the World Hub, seemingly implying that additional work had to take place in serial and was somehow blocked by this aerial issue, though I don’t know why that would be. (The question that sparked this answer also asked if any new features were being worked on. Jörg didn’t say.)
I’m not aware of any additional public information beyond this. I pray that it’s because they’re working on a “super duper” World Hub and not that they’re still battling compliance issues.
When it finally does reopen, I really hope it goes into a beta rather than production. This thing really needs more feedback.
Thanks for the summary! I agree and hope it is a “super duper” World Hub and that compliance issues are resolved.It’s been a long wait since the Alpha and yes, I hope the next release is a Beta.
Alas, from today’s dev stream, doesn’t sound like there’s any super duper World Hub in our near-term futures. Also, doesn’t sound like any work is actually being done on it right now, either. At least none that they talked about.
Here’s the transcript:
Jayne - And what’s happening with the World Hub? Why is there a delay on it? And when it comes back, will there be anything different or new about it?
Martial - So, yes, because we have introduced more data in Flight Sim 2024. So if we want to come back with World Hub, World Hub has to support this data. And, as I was saying, so that would mean that World Hub would have to get some new features. And we are focusing on the features that we have, already. So, when we have time to do new things, World Hub will be improved with what’s needed to be on there and put again to public. But I can’t commit to any date so far.
I have to say that Martial’s words scare me a little: “If we want to come back with World Hub…”
Real big miss on their part. I guess they don’t mind all the airports with missing lights, parking spots you can’t use, and trees up to the threshold of the runway.
Hopefully, this more accurately describes the intent for the World Hub. It is discouraging, however, that we had originally heard it would be re-introduced in the third quarter of 2025, only to get delayed more and more.. It does sound to me, however, like it would not have any new capabilities, which is too bad. I think with a few more features, they would get much greater participation than the Alpha and it would really improve things quickly.
I hope they either move on this soon or do a sweeping update of airports on their own, which I realize is unlikely. What gets me is that some of the regional airports (whose real-life footprints haven’t changed in years) are still less accurate than comparable airports we had in FSX. I’ve found a way to manually import the necessary custom data into the SDK from my own, custom, satellite-based FSX airport footprints, and even though that speeds the process, it’s still essentially starting from zero.
