Scenery Problem with bgl airport add-ons

[72westy]

Thanks Saul for the response. That is why I ended it the way I did. Only time will tell how many will offer a recompiling of software.

[WarpD]

Ok... on one hand everyone wants the sim's graphics capability enhanced and memory issues resolved. On the other hand, everyone wants absolutely ever addon they've ever purchased to always, always work.

It really doesn't work that way. That's just not possible.

You're upset with L-M for upgrading and updating the sim's graphics engine... which will require that older methods that aren't compatible with new code get removed. The onus is on developers to correct their ways and ensure they use only the current and latest methods to develop addons. Using a process that was for a 20yr old sim isn't the safest approach.

I'm going to have to stand on L-M side on this one... and I'm a developer. If they make changes that breaks my stuff... and it's intentional to enhance the sim's abilities... I feel it's my responsibility to adapt.

[DukeSan27]

Assuming that this is indeed a case of legacy support being dropped, one would suppose that Developers who want to continue to make their business on P3D platform would adjust their products accordingly?

I think, yes.

Or they could shut shop on P3D?

[lkalam]

Ok... on one hand everyone wants the sim's graphics capability enhanced and memory issues resolved. On the other hand, everyone wants absolutely ever addon they've ever purchased to always, always work.
...
I'm going to have to stand on L-M side on this one... and I'm a developer. If they make changes that breaks my stuff... and it's intentional to enhance the sim's abilities... I feel it's my responsibility to adapt.

Ed,

I will side with LM and with you on this one as well, but with one small caveat: I would have preferred if this were a major version release, rather than a 3.2 to 3.3 one - then the change would be warranted in my mind. Minor version releases are usually bug fixes and this one introduces quite a significant issue for quite a significant amount of developers (not aircraft ones, like us, but I do feel for all the scenery guys and their pain at the moment :) ).

[WarpD]

Yes Lefteris, in a perfect world it would happen that way. However, development doesn't always work out the way we would like. LOL

[stevefocus]

I think LM is in the right here they are constantly improving the sim yet people are moaning about airports breaking when developers are using old methods to build their scenery, in my opinion it's up to the airport developers to use the latest methods to create their scenery. Can't have it both ways.

[downscc]

Not surprising that developers side with LM. As an engineer, I too see both side of the arguments.

Unfortunately, add on airports are upgraded or added to the marketplace at a very slow rate. Therefore, a change that suddenly makes a large segment of available products incompatible means that it will take years not months for compatible available add on airports to come to market. This leaves customers with no choice, we are limited to a few add on airports for the foreseeable future.

If the default airports had any resemblance of fidelity, such as mid-tier add on airports for example, then the impact would be somewhat mitigated. But I find the default airports look much like the FS2002 default airports did with little improvement.

What the developers and engineers need to understand is how important the customer is to their livelihood.

[bazbeaumont]

If the default airports had any resemblance of fidelity, such as mid-tier add on airports for example, then the impact would be somewhat mitigated. But I find the default airports look much like the FS2002 default airports did with little improvement.

What the developers and engineers need to understand is how important the customer is to their livelihood.

I can concur with that. Just look at the P3D native scenery for Heathrow, one of the busiest commercial airports in the world. It is absolutely dreadful/disgraceful and doesn't even have the T5 terminal, new pier 6 for the A380 or new control tower, all of which have been in existence some 8 years or so. It looks like something from the 1984 version of MSFS.
This is also true of most European airports in P3D. They might be alright for the gung-ho military types who just want to shoot the s*&t out of stuff, but if you are trying to run a B737-800 DSTD it isn't so funny.

Rant over - time for a beer.

[regulate]

Besides the UK2000 scenery, is there a list of add-on payware airports that have issues with P3D 3.3?

It would be nice to know before deciding whether or not to install the latest upgrade (which does include a fix I requested and that was implemented so I want to install it), but not at the risk of breaking a bunch of airports. I do not own any licenses for UK2000 airports.

Can anyone advise?

[Adam Breed]

All,

We are working towards a hotfix to resolve this issue. It should be available in the next couple days. Again, we strongly encourage all third parties to continue to update their older scenery to work under Prepar3D's newer designs. While this change was not exactly intentional - it is a result of adding capabilities to support newer functionality. We publicly disclosed that BGL was not going to be supported moving forward (over two years ago - during v2). While BGL still works and we have no intention of disabling it, it is strongly discouraged and at some point shortly we will no longer be able to advance the system while continuing to support it.

Thanks for your understanding and support in solving this issue,
Adam

[Saldo]

Many thnks Adam and LM team !

[regulate]

Great support LM. Thank you Adam and company. I encourage the continued progression of the simulation.

[kand]

excellent, many thanks and keep up the great work

[72westy]

From Fly Tampa:

"Lockheed Martin are working on a hotfix for the issue. It would be very hard to fix our end as there isn't a real robust replacement for the older ASM groundwork."

[troykr]

Hey wait, none of these problem airports affect me. Is re-supporting bad and out dated development techniques from lazy developers going to spoil my performance at all?