iniBuilds Zayed International Update Explanation & Scenery project updates

[mattY]

Thanks for all your patience while we sort out performance issues with AUH. We've now located the main issues and have just released this version to the iniBuilds Store and SimMarket. 

Unfortunately, in the last stages of OMAA development some issues crept in that ultimately created a perfect storm, as it were, for performance bottlenecks for many users.

First off, there was a duplication of the main airport placement file. This file includes pretty much all of the art assets including jetways and animations along with custom nav elements and approach lighting etc. Although the sim is meant to identify duplicated ICAOs being present, whether or not one gets excluded is unknown.  Regardless, this was an error on our part.

Although we've not been able to replicate the issue with GSX or activating aircraft systems, it's most likely that the above is the root cause.

Second, although the terminal exterior, interior and internal detail models are all LODed as they should be, those LODs were ineffective due to the way the models had been exported. The physical, real-world, size of the main terminal is so large that even the highest LOD levels meant all the terminal elements were visible from a good distance away. To make matters worse, the duplicated file mentioned above meant that disabling the detailed interior in the control panel was ineffective, therefore the expected improvement in FPS just didn't happen.

Finally, we've identified an issue with the interior model itself. This is related to instancing of objects within which designed to reduce the impact of large, complex models on the system. Without getting too much into the weeds, instancing simply tells the sim to load and draw the same object once, then repeat it many times to visualise a large model. As opposed to the large model being loaded and drawn in one action which creates a bottleneck, particularly when panning to/from the airport. There's a fine balancing act in getting this right and unfortunately there's little documented guidance and how best to use this for scenery. It's something that we have experimented with since LAX but never managed to quite get right. With AUH now, I'm confident that we've found the right balance. 

Importantly, that same balance can be applied retroactively to our other large sceneries (DXB, HNL, LAX and to a lesser extent JFK).

Avoiding any one of the above issues would have 'fixed' the problem and prevented most of the negative reports we've seen. Combined, they create a situation where no amount of tweaking settings would help in any meaningful way.

Regarding our old products, we're 100% committed to getting all of our large hubs working as well as they possibly can and I can assure you all that we now have a team of developers and testers working full time on fulfilling that commitment. Armed with your feedback, screenshots and videos along with our wealth of knowledge and experience, we will get there. Our team are working hard on LAX and JFK with HNL being tested by internal testers this week.

Zayed International Airport (OMAA) Changelog

v1.0.1 of iniBuilds Zayed International (OMAA) for MSFS has been released. This update addresses some performance issues and should provide a more stable experience for users as well as some general improvements to the terminal areas.

This update can be downloaded via the iniManager.

v1.0.1
- Improvement to performance due to duplicated placement file, corrected LOD ranges for terminal models and interior clutter modified for proper use of instancing 
- Added missing PAPI lights
- Added touchdown lights on runways
- Corrected all apron gaps
- Terminal A  floating issues improved
- Terminal A landside bridge touching perct on the ground improved
- Jetway idle position markings correct
- Terminal 2 issue fixed 
- Added additional taxi signs