Why isn’t Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) 3D in yet?
CVG is a global cargo powerhouse, serving as a major hub for Amazon Air and DHL Express. It’s currently the 5th busiest cargo airport in the United States and among the largest cargo airports in the world, making it one of the most important logistics airports on the planet.
The airport offers 55+ nonstop destinations on 14 airlines, with more routes continuing to be added.
CVG is located in a prime spot, within a one-hour flight or 500 miles of roughly 60% of the U.S. population, making it an ideal hub for both passengers and cargo.
CVG is also a former Delta Megahub those who love retro flying can recreate the late 1990s and 2000s when CVG was Delta Air Lines’ second-largest hub.
With its growing passenger traffic, world-class cargo operations, strategic location, and importance to U.S. aviation, I feel like CVG is a strong candidate for a 3D airport in Infinite Flight.
The Infinite Flight Airport Editing Team are volunteers, and are free to choose what airports they want to do (within reason). The eventual aim is for all airports to be 3D so Cincinnati will be 3D eventually, the key thing is patience.
There’s no rush at all I was just curious if the airport was in the loop for a possible 3D makeover. Now I understand that’s not how it works I was completely unaware The Infinite Flight Airport Editing Team are volunteers.
Yup. We all work on the airports on our own time. Sometimes that’s hard, and we can’t finish or make a lot of progress on our airports due to other priorities (because sadly there isn’t a lot in life that takes a lower priority than editing a basic 3D airport for a mobile flight simulator game). I know that PANC has been receiving active work for years, but hasn’t gotten done due to time constraints and changing satellite imagery.
TL;DR there are many different factors that go into editing an airport, and any one of these factors, if not multiple, could be at play for CVG. At the moment, patience is all we have because the only person making CVG 3D is an editor who voluntarily chooses to do so. Sometimes the cards just aren’t in our favor, but we gotta play them anyways.
Has IF publicly shared if they would ever consider an alternative to the existing IFAET process? Either by employing a dedicated cohort exclusively to airport design, or out-sourcing airport design?
Surely there has to be a more efficient process that benefits the whole community
That would likely mean the subscription cost would need to increase or to the detriment of something else being worked on.
Plus giving users the ability to edit adds another facet to the game in my opinion.
Edit: now that more editors have been taken on, the amount of airports being released should start to increase but will take time as people gain experience and are able to take on additional tasks such as peer and official reviews of other people’s airports.
To answer your question directly: no, they haven’t ever shared that idea. And there’s probably a reason. As mentioned by @MPH258 above, the sub price would most definitely go up to account for the cost of editors. And then there’s the fact that by keeping it open, they ensure that the community in general is choosing which airports to make 3D, and not someone or a group of people located in a certain place with certain biases. This also ensures that the number of editors remains high. Right now the review queue is backed up because of how many airports are getting released.
In short, the method we have now works because we can maintain high output without the staff giving high input, because this would require higher input from us in return.
I’ll add that the devs do have a “favorite” or “request” list that can give ideas to editors of what airports the staff notices get traffic but aren’t 3D yet, or need a significant rework. However, who puts the airports on that list and why those airports are on there instead of others, is not actually shared, and in the end we are not forced to make them. We are all just volunteers!
I don’t think outsourcing or creating a dedicated team to airport/scenery design is a net negative on the whole, but I also understand sub pricing and scenery region bias are important considerations.
Perhaps some form of process improvement that uses the existing volunteer system could be helpful in the future. For example, I’m thinking of some kind of revalidation cycle for older airports (even just flagging scenery as “needs review” after X years), or a way to reassign a scenery/project to another if an editor goes inactive for an extended period.
Not saying any of this is easy, but I suspect there may be some better alternative that’s worth exploring
CVG is a global cargo powerhouse, serving as a major hub for Amazon Air and DHL Express. It’s currently the 5th busiest cargo airport in the United States and among the largest cargo airports in the world, making it one of the most important logistics airports on the planet.
The airport offers 55+ nonstop destinations on 14 airlines, with more routes continuing to be added.
CVG is located in a prime spot, within a one-hour flight or 500 miles of roughly 60% of the U.S. population, making it an ideal hub for both passengers and cargo.
CVG is also a former Delta Megahub those who love retro flying can recreate the late 1990s and 2000s when CVG was Delta Air Lines’ second-largest hub.
