I would like to point out that we certainly believe AFCAD, AI and Approaches are important but, AS ALWAYS in scenery developement, everything is made of choices and compromises and trying to figuring out what would accomodate most of the users.
Many times, doing one thing "right", breaks something else. Since everybody have a personal view about how Flight Sim should be used, there are a lot of often incompatible things that we need to keep together, and ultimately the only judge is, I'm afraid, the market.
So, for example, let's recall the long threads about the infamous "bridged taxiways". We are strongly opposed to that, even if we are perfectly capable of creating it, but that would have a far too big impact on the behaviour of the airport because other designers that made them, had to delete the taxiways in the AFCAD, in order not to create a mess with AI, which wouldn't go over the bridged taxiways anyway, impacting probably even the whole airport operation, the choice of runways (a runway that has a bridged taxiway as the only connection with the rest of the airport, would probably been cut off forever).
In this case, we made a choice in favor of the "invisible" airport, at the expense of the "visible". Functionality in this case has to win over eye-candy. Of course, here and there, I get emails or PM or even public message by users not agreeing with this choice, with the reasoning that "nobody on VATSIM use AI anyway"...so there's a part of user obviously not interested at all with anything related with AI, AFCAD, Approaches, etc. They only fly online, they have human controllers, they use their own charts and couldn't care less if an airport has an AFCAD in the first place, let alone one that works well.
Jim Vile rightly says that the default textured runway placement has an impact over the AI/ATC behaviour. Ok, we agree. This means we need to place a default runway, which is something that many users hates in a payware scenery. They expect a payware scenery not having any *visible* default element. So, in Zurich we had fully customized runways without default textures, which looked brilliant and close to the real one, but of course had other side effects, like problems with AI models made for FS9 when used in FSX. We favored the visual aspect here. Was it a good choice ? Lookin at sales, yes... and the customer is always right, they say.
At O'Hare and JFK, we went back trying to create a more compliant airport, but then we need to take a lot of steps because, in order to make both visualists and behaviourists happy, we need to put default runways to make the AFCAD (and AI engine, and ATC) happier, satisfying the behaviourists, but trying to *conceal* those runway textures, to make the visualists happy, because they scream each time they see something that looks like default.
About the approaches at JFK. The approach file is made using correct real world positions and headings. It might be probably tweaked but, right now, real world positions and headings are there, waypoints needed for the approach are there, and it draws correctly on the gps. Further tweaks are probably either to be done in the main AFCAD.
A LOT of AI I have tested are perfectly able to perform the Canarsie approach without any problems and land exactly on the centerline. Some of them fails, yes. The default 737 fails, for example. Again, a matter of identifying user demographics. How many users still fly with default AI in FS9 ? I don't know exactly, but probably not many of our users. Should we worry if the default 737 can't perform the Canarsie approach ? OR, should we worry about the approach file (or the main AFCAD) being wrong but then, why many AI don't exhibit the problem ? We should ideally try to tweak the file to be able to perform with the maximum number of AI models as possible but, I'm sure will never find a way to make it right for everyone.
For example, the suggestion about the start positions looks interesting. I don't know who started it, but there's a new trend for scenery designers to put starting positions for a runway over the hold short zones. Which is convenient for the user, if you think about it, but since FS used the runway numbers (more or less) as starting positions since FS1, perhaps it's not a good idea to deviate from this assumption...
Without forgetting, as I've said before, that a good percentage of users (online flyers) couldn't care less of what we are talking about here, and might instead prefer we'd relase another scenery quickly, instead of focusing too much on the AI/ATC engine issue. And they are customers too...
If you want my *personal* opinion, I would like to have the AI/ATC done right, because I never fly online, I like the default ATC regardless of how many defects it has, and I like watching AI, because I woulnd't have too much time for flying anyway...so, you can be sure I'm listening to these issues.
