Not with KIAH you are not better than any other big airport
Yes we are, if you test it correctly, that is without fps locked and with same AI settings.
Proper airline codes and parking....Really? Is that why I have Air France, Turkish Airlines, Lion and AeroMexico parking at Terminal A. Then I get Southwest and American at Terminal D.
You seems to confuse here if the scenery has correct parking codes ( it surely has them ), with how the AI will make use of that information. We haven't obviously set those airlines that are not supposed to be there.
Here's the parking codes we set for all Gates at Terminal A:
FFT,SWA,NKS,ACA,DAL,ASA,WJA,AAL,JBU
And here's the ones for the Gates at Terminal D:
AMX,BAW,KLM,AFR,THY,VIV,ANA,VOI,AVA,SIA,SCX,QTR,DLH,UAE,EVA,ETH,UAL
You can see the parking codes in the scenery ARE correct, but they are only an hint to the AI parking system, which will use other criteria as well, like parking usage, availability of parking of the same size/type, distance from the active runway, etc. We can only do our part correctly, but saying the scenery doesn't have correct parking codes just because you saw Air France and Turkish on A or SWA at D, means not taking into account the issues with the AI system, which are in fact very well known.
You are right, I can not argue about the price. I just wish you would have told us that we were going to pay less and get less with KIAH ahead of time. This way we would not have our normal expectation of an FSDT airport.
You are not getting "less", you are getting "more", but the work has been focused on things more important that blind useless "detail" made only for showing off.
But that's not the point. This strategy proved to work multiple times, since our Zurich scenery is the absolute N.1 in sales, and it also an FSX conversion, from even an OLDER product than KIAH ( Zurich for FSX came in 2007, and we never updated ever since, KIAH is from 2014 ), it doesn't even have a completely NEW Terminal made from scratch, and Zurich even needs to face completion from a very good free alternative in the sim.
Yet user appreciated the good performance and the price so we just saw sales, and acted accordingly. Sure KORD is better looking than Zurich, but it's higher price makes it an harder sell so, the choice what to do was clear.
As for the "Hidden Tax", I have never had that issue. I am still running a GTX270 Super and have no issues with FPS or the texture quality... and that is with most features maxed out.
Then you must know something I don't, because my 3090 and my 4090 are struggling to keep fps I consider acceptable on any of the big airport released recently, if used with a complex airplane like the Fenix A320, with lots of AI traffic. KIAH is visibly faster, both from the fps counter but, most importantly, from the feel of way better smoothness.
I understand what you are trying to do with the hotel and terminals, but it (in my opinion) didnt work. Is there a way to dim the brightness of the hotel rooms at night? and the inside of Terminal E look like they are from another airport, not Houston. Here are a few screenshots of what I am talking about....
Please edit your ULRs to be clickable, by using the URL tab, I find it difficult to open them.
I understand that creating a scenery and making everyone happy impossible. I guess I just had higher expectations since it was FSDT that was making KIAH and not some newby that doesnt know what they are doing. I guess I have learned my lesson to not expect consistent high-quality products from FSDT. I would have preferred a better-quality airport at a higher price. I think everyone would have.
Again, you are lacking something we have, and you don't. Actual sales. If what you were saying were true or, at least, shared by the majority of users, we should have sold more KORD than LSZH, which is not the case.
Price matters way more than you think. For airports, most of the sales come from the Marketplace. Marketplace users are VERY different than hard-core users that "wanted to pay more". When there's a sale on the Marketplace, our sales go up like 5x there. We never had that effect when we do a Sale on OUR site, sales increase a bit for a few days, then they go back to normal. The Marketplace is a completely different place, but there's is where most of sales are made, and that drives development choices.
A very optimized and lightweight scenery, considering its size, like KIAH, is also very good for Xbox users. My son it's an Xbox user, and he doesn't want to use MSFS on Xbox anymore, because he said he cannot complete a flight that last more than 2 hours without a CTD, so we need to take into account that.
