As we said in December last year, we did investigate converting our airports for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
We still feel the same way we did back in September 2020 when we originally released this article and that is that the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 was premature, and that Microsoft should have waited until the package has been fully tested instead of releasing it early and now trying to fix it with patch after patch. In short developing scenery for an ever-changing platform like this is probably ill-conceived, but we need to give the public what they want.
Now that we have that out of the way, you must understand that any airports we bring out will not be on the same level as those for Microsoft Flight Simulator X and Prepar3D. The scenery engines of both Flight Simulator X and Prepar3D are thoroughly mapped, and we can do things in those simulators that are just not possible in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. At least not yet.
The tools that are available for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 to design scenery with or to convert objects with are all in Alpha Development. To explain what that means; when a program is in Alpha, it means that the program is still begin developed. There will be bugs and some of the functions may not work. A program in Beta means that development has stopped and now the developer is just testing it, fixing bugs, and making sure that it all works. The fact that the tools we use are still in Alpha, means that we are severely limited to what we can do in terms of scenery designing, but we can manage with the basic stuff and that is why we will be doing the smaller airports first before attempting the larger ones.
We took our Zebula Golf Estate and Spa package, and we tested our skills on converting it for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. We figured that because the airport is small with a few buildings it would be the perfect training platform for us. After two weeks of fiddling around with an SDK (Scenery Developers Kit) that tells you where you need to go, but not how to get there, we managed to convert the airport! As we said before, we would have LOVED to do so much more with the airport, but what we have now is pretty much all we can do with the tools at our disposal.
How many of our airports we will be able to do in this manner, we do not know. We will start with the smaller airports and move our way up. We will be making the converted packages available to you only if the conversion is viable and at a high enough standard.
Please be aware that scenery for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 will require a manual install into the simulators Community Folder. You will need to know how to do that yourself as we cannot be of assistance in that regard.
Zebula Golf Estate and Spa for Flight Simulator 2020 is available now and we are offering upgrade discounts for clients who own any previous package of Zebula Golf Estate and Spa. You can view the airport package on the button below.