I thought it would be good to consolidate a wish list of placeable objects that are commonly seen at airports and applicable to general World Hub design, but are not in the sim. Adding these basic objects would enhance the look of an airport, but also improve the workflow instead of forcing workarounds and covering up items when they exist in real life and have no analogue in the SDK. Some ideas may apply beyond the World hub to the overall SDK.
Note: these are enhancements/additions, not fixes for items that are produced incorrectly (for which another thread will be made). The list is open for discussion and addition.
Fences
Taxiway designators painted on the pavement
Option for taxiway edge reflectors (poles/stakes) instead of lights
More colors for light strings - amber, white, red, green
More choices for windsock objects - set color, set sock length, set pole length - all independent of one another
Other wind device objects - tees (with optional lights), tetrahedrons
Fuel tank objects
Self-service fuel station objects (independent of parking spot)
AWOS station objects
Dual-sided taxiway signs
Runway distance remaining signs
Poles - light poles for illuminating ramps and communication masts with aviation beacons
Hangars - a few basic types, square, tee, quonset, with option to set height, width, length, and color without having to scale
Placeable parking tees (selectable color and option to place scalable number), independent of whether taxi parking lanes have centerline markings selected. And/or outright independent of parking spots.
Runway guard lights - both the alternating amber above-ground light units and in-pavement lights across hold short lines
Airport beacons - a few basic frames/poles with selectable colors and height
More options for helipads, including lighting, pavement selection/orientation, and independent shape and designator markings (numbers, letters other than “H”)
Small FBO/terminal buildings. Just your average square, L, or T-shaped building
More approach light pole options - selectable color, in-pavement or individual poles instead of crossarm barettes within stopways, blast pads, and safety areas.
Alphanumeric options for parking spots (C1, A2, etc)
Independent runway markings by primary/secondary end, including demarcation bars (regardless of displaced threshold/stopway, etc), precision/non-precision markings, and restricted “R” as a designator (with or without a runway number).
My list is a little shorter, but I will add some of the following (some of these may already be covered above):
Four additional taxiway sign options, in descending order of my personal priority (two of these appear on the backsides of taxiway signs, so double-sided taxiway signs are at the top of my list):
Runway boundary signs (illustration). These appear at nearly every airport that I do.
ILS critical area boundary signs (illustration). These appear at many airports that I do.
No entry signs (illustration). These usually appear when there’s a road for ground vehicles that aircraft should not enter.
VOR and NDB antennas (I once asked a question on the developer stream why we don’t have default 3D VOR models, and the response I got back was because there are different models. But we don’t have multiple windsock and beacon options to choose from, either, so I don’t understand that.)
Options for black housing on taxiway signs. Most taxiway signs I’ve encountered at airports are black on the back. I’ve only rarely ever encountered taxiway signs with yellow housings.
I’m not sure if this was covered under “airport beacons,” but specifically localizer and glideslope antennas, which are incredibly common sights, along with the orange and white checkerboard sheds next to the glideslope antennas.
Ability to choose between yellow-on-black and black-on-yellow for the numbered parking markings on the ground. Nearly every airport I’ve ever seen has had yellow on black, but the only choice we have is black on yellow.
Ability to add runway threshold markings (“piano keys”) to only one side of the runway. I have seen this come up a few times in my World Hub airports.
Runway cones (usually seen on grass runways)
Ability to write letters on pavement (beyond directions on taxiways, a lot of smaller airports will write the name of the airport in the pavement so pilots could positively identify the airport from the air)
I don’t know what you call these, but you see them at every airport in Australia, and I’ve seen them occasionally in Europe and around grass runways. They look like white extruded triangles. (6:22 in this video)
Crosswalks (PaintedHatchedAreas without borders)
APAP panels (These are like PAPI or VASI lights, except they are large panels that you have to line up with. I have only seen them at one airport (look to the left of the runway), so they are not a high priority, but I would still like to have the option so that I could make airports as realistic as possible.)
Also, while I support the full list, I definitely want to second these on the list, which are my personal priorities:
Double-sided taxiway signs. This is by far my biggest priority. For me, this would be #1 through #10 on my list. Working around this is a huge pain point.
Runway guard lights. This is #2 on my priority list (or #11, if double-sided taxiway signs are #1-10). They’re there for safety to mitigate runway incursions. In the sim, they would also add life to staric airports.
Lighted windsocks (there is already a flag in the XML for this…we just need the model)
Solid orange and solid white options for windsocks
Runway distance remaining signs
Fuel tank objects. They’re in nearly every airport I’ve seen with fuel.
I agree with your entire list. Expanding on a few:
100% this - I worked around runway boundary signs using dashes, but you’re spot on
I agree - I kind of covered this with independent precision and non-precision markings, but it should go deeper. In a perfect world, we’d have a checkbox to mirror runway ends, that when disabled would split the menu and give us independent marking options for either end.
Okay, that’s funny - I literally wrote this up in the comments for an airport I submitted last night (O54), but didn’t put it on the wish list because I figured it’d be too complex (and rare). They’re actually in the VASI menu but they just show up as a four box VASI.
I’d go as far as to say the numbered parking needs a full rework (including being resizable), but that there should be independent, full color selection of the number, the background (including transparent) and the border. I’ve seen red and blue ones in real life as well.
Should I edit my list to add yours, or just keep them rolling in-line to the thread?
By all means, feel free to maintain the full list on your first post, if you feel up to it! (I actually made my list as bullets because I figured that if I started at 23, the numbering could change.) However, there’s only three of us regularly posting in WorldHub these days. So I don’t know how much longer the list is going to get.
I like that UI idea!
Oh yeah, I saw that “APAP” option and got really excited. And it’s just a couple of lights. I actually don’t know what APAP lights are. I only know the panels.
Yeah, there’s “BALL” in there, too, but it’s just a PVASI. I’m guessing the APAP name got imported from a database, but being as they’re pretty rare (less than a couple dozen installations in the US) nobody knew how to implement them and it got left as a basic VASI.
To add: I’d like color options for the VASI/PAPI boxes as well. Most in the US are aviation orange or red, not yellow.
I agree with both of your lists, but FWIW here’s a list of my priority items, including a couple not yet mentioned:
HIGH USAGE
Placeable parking tees (selectable color and option to place scalable number), independent of whether taxi parking lanes have centerline markings selected
Runway cones for grass runways
Red and white “blocks” that make up segmented circles
ILS critical area boundary signs
Black housing on taxiway signs (option)
Two-sided taxiway signs
No-entry signs
Templates for car parking lines (tool like hatched painted lines with no border)
Diagonal car parking (could be done with hatched painted lines tool with no border)
Optional yellow-on-black or black-on-yellow parking spot ground numbers.
More cars in parking spots for added realism
PRIORITY OBJECTS
Fuel tank objects.
VOR and NDB antennas
Localizer and glideslope antennas and orange and white checkerboard sheds next to the glideslope antennas
Self-service fuel station objects (independent of parking spot)
Airport light poles and other lights
Fences (access to vector tool?)
Hangars - a few basic types, square, tee, quonset, with option to set height, width, length, and color without having to scale
If an airport has flattened buildings, I can go into the airport polygon, expand the buildings dropdown and it will show that “exclude MS” and “exclude detected buildings” or some combination thereof are checked (I actually can’t remember precisely which ones, but I’m not at a computer right now). If I were to uncheck those (to enable them), they won’t actually render until that airport is either loaded in my community folder or until they’re pushed to the sim.
However, I can use a basic (non-“airport”) poly to do the reverse, just check “exclude detected buildings” (or MS, or TIN, or OSM, you get the point) and they should disappear immediately. I’m pretty sure I’ve successfully done this in real time, but now I’ll have to go back and confirm.
I accept that buildings may be a tough row to hoe as far as the World Hub is concerned. Maybe they just need to update the AI to better render hangars, especially T hangars, because at this point the sim has no building that looks like those and they’re ubiquitous (in the US at least*) to the point that without them, it really doesn’t look like an airport. Having them would be a major immersion improvement. And we’re all kind of tired of hangars that are two to three times the actual height. I don’t want to be taxing down hangar alley and it looks like 5th avenue.
*By the way, I fully acknowledge that my ideas and language here are US-centric. I never mean disrespect if it sounds exclusionary - I fully want rest-of-world airports to be correct as well. It’s just that there are so many thousands of airports here and they all share several key features that aren’t currently simulated well (most just don’t have that small-town, US airport “feel”). Besides, it’s my area of knowledge and expertise and I would actually feel uncomfortable working on, say, a European airport, because I don’t know the standards.
I’ve seen those in bespoke airports. So someone already modeled them. We just need someone to stuff them into a limited library of objects we could all access in the World Hub.
And yeah, CharlieFoxtrot00 is correct that you can exclude buildings (and also exclude and add vegetation) with a polygon object. Just create the polygon around the building, then click on it and look at the properties. If I had the sim in front of me, I would take a screenshot, but I won’t be in front of the sim for a few days.
Yes, you are right, we can exclude buildings within a polygon. I’ve done that with vegetation ( and buildings in the full SDK). Apologize for the noise. I’ll edit my statement above.
Gable Markers - very popular in Australia. I made these as an object for a custom scenery once - surprised they weren’t a part of default MSFS (about 5 minutes work and a whopping 6 polygons)
I also remember in one of the developer discussions that they wanted to improve the imagery specifically at airports - this would certainly make editing easier:
In case the World Hub ever comes back, some notes on the building exclusions:
I have removed the exclusions from several of my more recent airports (even resubmitted a few older ones). In all, the buildings do indeed come to life, however there are some issues.
At KAUN, for example:
Some of the detected hangars are backwards (rotated 180° so the hangar doors face the wrong way).
Some of the hangars are about 3-4x their actual height (this is a very common problem at smaller GA airports - not every building is meant for international airports, Asobo). When you enter those hangar alleys, it looks like you’re taxiing down 5th Avenue.
Some of the smaller T hangars are recognized as houses or other non-airport type buildings.
Now, in the majority of the cases, having incorrect buildings is better than having no buildings at all, so it’s an improvement. But we really need some control over this. Further, and here’s the worst part: we cannot see the effect this has until they are pushed into the sim update. So if I turn buildings on, I have no idea what they’re going to look like for weeks, and if it turns out they’re awful-looking, then it’s several more weeks to undo that. Or, if we make a mistake and accidentally uncheck them (or delete the airport poly and add it back incorrectly, which is so easy to do), we’ll know right away.
Two and a half asks here, if it is ever relevant again:
Allow us some type/scale control over the AI detected buildings. Perhaps tie them to the airport size in the polygon. Or…
1.5 Give us direct control of placing generic airport building objects
Please allow changes to render immediately in the SDK so we can decide whether we want to submit it like this for publication.
