For the past two weeks, we have been working on recompiling our airports for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 using the new exporter and SDK.
The first airport we decided to work on was FAWX Zebula Golf Estate and Spa. We chose this airport because it is a small airport and easy to work with when learning the new way of designing scenery for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
It was during our work on this package that we discovered that the exporter included in the SDK has several bugs in it that makes the conversion process more difficult that it needed to be. Night texturing was especially difficult to work with, but we managed to find a fix for this problem while searching on Internet.
The biggest problem we experienced with the exporter is objects which have lights illuminating the ground such as apron spot lights. You can setup the parameters for the lights as you want it to be and save your work, but as soon as you reload your project at a later stage to do editing, all these parameters would be reset to default values. For a small object this is not much of an issue, but if you have a complex building like a terminal with 50 plus lights, then resetting the parameters for every edit quickly becomes a mammoth task!
Microsoft is aware of these issues and they have promised a fix with the next update of the SDK, but unfortunately we do not know when this will happen. In the mean time and until all these issues are fixed, we will continue to update our Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 airports for compatibility with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. We have a number of airports with trees close to the runway and taxiways that needs fixing, so that is what we will be doing while we wait.
These updates are for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, but they will also work on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
We are still committed to convert our airports for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, but we can only do so with working tools which we do not have at the moment. We therefore thank you for your understanding in this manner.