One of the biggest complaints of the original, V1, of your KORD scenery was that runways opened after the release of your product were not modelled
That's because we released it somewhere in March 2008, and new runways opened in November. But we then released a free update for it so, it was current to the airport situation for some years.
Then, at the end of 2014 other runways changed, and at the end of 2015 there were other changes and in 2018 a new taxiway opened and the airport is changing again
while we speak. We decided to "froze" it at the March 2018 situation, otherwise we'll never be able to release it...
Am I right in thinking that creating the new runways and signs shouldn't take much time?
You don't just create runway and signs. When a new runway opens, it usually changes lots of taxiways around it, which affects:
- the background textures
- the hold short signs
- the horizontal and vertical signs, which we custom model in 3d
- the taxiway lights on the edges and centerlines, which we custom model in 3d
- the flashing hold short lights, which we custom model in 3d
- the approach procedures in the AFCAD
When the next runways will open in 2020, lots of buildings around the current runway will be demolished, and a WHOLE NEW TERMINAL will open! So, it's not just "runway and signs", but it might be quite a bit of work.
However, we are rebuilding KORD from scratch, not because a new runway opened but, because the old scenery LOOKS OLD now so, it wasn't worth doing "just" a runway update, because it would still look old, since it was designed in 2008/2009, for FS9 and FSX.
We hope that, in 2020, we'll be able to release an update based on this new 2018 version.