Hi everyone and welcome to this new episode of the Feature Discovery Series, I am as Sven Mestas, Lead Game Designer at Asobo Studio.
In this episode I'm going to talk about airports in the new Microsoft Flight Simulator.
First I'll begin by presenting how we are covering the various types of airports both geographically and by scale
Then I'll explain the work pipeline to treat each of these airports from Bing aerials to their final state in flight simulator
Finally, I'll present to you airport life and talk about services, ground traffic, and air traffic
The previous version of Microsoft Flight Simulator,
FSX, simulated more than
24,000 airports. The new flight simulator features all the apart in the world including 37,000 manually edited airports
This coverage begins at small countryside bush airstrips all the way to huge international airports
Geographically, you'll find airports all over the world
nestled on small islands
adjacent to major cities, and perched on mountainsides.
North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania are all represented.
Before editing airports
We needed to first create a database.
We started from the FSX collection and decided to add more airports to give better coverage and a larger amount of locations to explore.
After lots of triage and selection we edited
37,000 airports. In order to reach a new level of reality in flight simulation. We needed a new approach.
That's why we decided to innovate by editing airports from real aerials and satellites pictures.
This technique involves editing each airport manually
Which means particular attention to details has been given to every single one of them to bring them a step closer to reality
This work has never been done at this scale. And that's why we needed to create a specific tool for developers to handle airport editing
Now I'll take you through this addition process. This pipeline has been used for every single airport.
Step one is to trace logical elements straight on the Bing Map aerial
We begin by drawing the upper perimeter which refers the building type generation when it will occur
Next we draw the runway with as much accuracy as available by defining into in length and width
Its orientation will determine its numerical markings according to magnetic north
After that, we define taxiways based on the real ones, which will be used for ground traffic, air traffic, ATC, and simmers
We place the parking spots at the exact same place of the existing ones
Finally we reproduce markings on the apron
The second part is defining surfaces
According to the observed material on Bing aerials we read surfaces. It can be grass
Concrete
Dirt, etc.
This process allows us to capture the real identity of the runway and to apply accurate materials on to it
Of course, it leads to different behaviors
impacting the landing gear grip for instance
If there are any visual artifacts on the grass such as planes we draw perimeters to remove them.
The final part is the post-processing these steps are automatically performed by our algorithms
The runway slope is applied for charts references
Materials are applied on generated objects allowing us for instance to see reflections on runways, wet materials, tire marks
Etc. The visual artifacts and concrete are automatically removed
Contrast and colors are adjusted too match real-life
Names are attributed to taxiways and signs are generating along them
Animated wind socks are generated as well. These are even able to follow the wind direction when it changes.
We also improved the light generation by having them spawning along the runways and taxiways
Because some airports deserve more attention
We made a selection of 80 airports based on the most played and busiest ones
We gave these airports more realism by naming the taxiways and signs according to official IDs and
providing them more accurate surface definition
Beyond that in order to take things further. We created a top-level category
We defined a final selection made of iconic airports and dressed them up to reach a new level of realism in flight simulation.
We created and placed unique buildings and props matching reality.
Transcribing the identity and their ambience and we even terraformed some landscapes to nest them in their real environment.
Now let's talk about airport life. Life is supported in every airport of the game according to the size.
As in FSX, we kept the ambient ground traffic in airports, but we've made improvements
We filled airport parking lots with vehicles to provide a more realistic look
We tweaked vehicle behavior they come and go on taxiways, but now they stop at hold shorts even if the runways free.
and they are able to turn on their lights at night. We included workers as well
They move between various points bringing life to the apron
Services are now accessible from the ATC on a specific ground frequency
We kept services which were already set in fsx, but made various improvements
Jetways have new visuals and a more realistic way to attach exit doors fitting more precisely with the fuselage
Pushback vehicles now feature drivers.
The baggage service has workers as well and we set a realistic trail behavior on baggage carts.
Fuel services have been improved as well
When a few trucks arise it plugs itself to the refueling hose it automatically opens the fuel panel
Allowing you to tweak your fuel settings
The same panel is open when you go to the fuel station with your aircraft
We added some services in order to allow you to complete your running link in a more realistic way
You can now call a ground power unit which will be plugged into the aircraft through a cable.
A ramp trunk is now available when you are on the right parking spot type
We added as well an animated catering truck
All of these services are now exposed in XML and are customisable using the SDK tools
It is possible as well to create small scripted behaviors with your own objects and animations and to place them where you want.
As you may have noticed
There are now park planes all over the apron.
This aircrafts are actually part of the traffic
They can be called by the ATC which means that they will perform some ground services on their own to get ready for flight
They will then taxi to the hold short to queue before taking off
We hope you enjoyed this look into Microsoft Flight Simulator Airport features and look forward to having you explore them in the future
On behalf of the whole Airport team. Thank you for watching and see you soon
