but seems like it is finicky because if you start FSX with the KLAS airport and put yourself at gate D12 it does not work.
You cannot say for sure if even the real jetway would work with that plane, on that gate, parked in the same position. The issue is, in the real world, every parking usually have a custom jetway with different measures, and the airplanes don't have so much flexibility how they will park, that's why Docking Systems exists.
Most of the times, they don't even move the jetway manually, not for the most of the movement: the operator just push a button with preset memories depending on the plane, then it switch to manual control only to do the final finer adjustments. That's because, by using a Docking system, the plane position can be very predictable.
In the sim, we might not always the the luxury of multiple jetway models for different parking sizes, for performance reason (it's less costly drawing many copies of the same object, compared to drawing the same number of objects, but all different ), and the airplane position is less predictable, and of course there's no such thing as the "Go To Airport" menu, which will always place the airplane in the same place, which is the center of the parking, which is not appropriate for all airplane models.
When you say you plan to switch to SODE for the pending update is that an update to GSX or the KLAS airport?
An update to KLAS. The jetway used by a scenery it's a feature that concerns the scenery itself. GSX only stays on top of it.
Also, the gates at KLAS like terminal 2 gates 3, 4, & 5 for HEAVY aircraft like the PMDG 747-400 have so much default ground equipment all around that the GSX equipment is driving through and over that stuff, not nice to see.
That's another issue, and it's related to the fact KLAS was designed before GSX. The more recent sceneries, like KDFW, KLAX, CYVR, , KIAH, KMEM have class of objects, like details at the parking, which are explicitly created by giving GSX the permission to remove them as soon as you start GSX. It's possible we might be able to add the same feature in the upcoming KLAS update.
