LSZH Zurich parking stands discrepancy

[flyingfudge 1]

Hi. I've just purchased the above airport via Orbx Central. This states that this is "a brand new version for xPlane" and has "updated taxiways and parking positions"

As can be seen from my attachments this is obviously not the case as the area highlighted bares little resemblance to the actual parking stand numbers on the current Jeppesen plate.

It would appear that stands that don't exist are included and some that do exist are excluded. 

Someone on the Orbx forum commented that this might be a compounded error from when Aerosoft made the original scenery in 2016 but I've checked an old Jeppesen plate dated 13th May 2016 and the parking positions don't match that either.

I'd appreciate your comments as I purchased this on the assumption that it would perfectly match the current airport layout which it obviously doesn't.

Thanks ...... Don.

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[FlyAgi 396]

The LSZH ground layout is not completely up to date, that's right.

 

[flyingfudge 1]

@FlyAgi   That's not stipulated on the Orbx site that it's not up to date, otherwise I wouldn't have purchased it.

On the contrary it's promoted as "updated taxiways & parking positions" so in my opinion that's false representation of the product at the point of sale.

[FlyAgi 396]

This is a very common issue with airports still changing in real life. When the airport is made it's up to date and this is praised as a feature on release. Then, as the years go by, the real world airport changes and the simulated one is no longer up to date but the product description doesn't change. Therefore I think it's best to add the date the airport is created to the description instead of using terms like "it's up to date".

 

In fact, this term "up to date" used in product descriptions is heavily missleading, especially for older products like LSZH. This aiport was origininally made for FSX/P3D and ported over to XP in 2016 or maybe 2017. There have been updates to the P3D version not too long ago, these changes where transferred to the XP version some time later but at the time the XP version was updated some stuff already changed again in the real world airport so the product again was not really up to date.

 

Of course, for the customer this is dissapointing as he excepts the airport to be accurate to the real world counterparts if he reads "up to date" in the description. On the other hand this is an issue hardly to overcome for the developers because updates need work and time and it's not possible to keep up with real world changes for all the airports over time, there will always be situations like this depending on the age of a scenery and the age of the latest updates. Even if the scenery was perfectly accurate right now it would be possibly be outdated in a year or so depending on changes made to the real world airport.

 

I think the creation date should always be added to all product desciptions so the "up to date" phrase transforms into useful information for the customer.

 

 

 

 

[flyingfudge 1]

@FlyAgi  I agree that including the creation date would be a step in the right direction.

However the inclusion of the words "a brand new version for xplane" and the release date of 1st Sept 2021 stipulated on the Orbx site gives the impression that this product is fully up to date and is, at best, misleading for the customer.

Obviously I voiced my concern on the Orbx site but their reply was "We are provided the marketing material and promotional screenshots that are published on the pages here, and I trust that the information provided to us is valid."

In other words they're taking at face value the information provided to them by Aerosoft without properly carrying out a quality control check to confirm the correctness of that statement.

This leaves the customer in "no-man's land" as the laws concerning digital downloads preclude refunds after purchase.

Aerosoft are wrong to pass incorrect information to Orbx & Orbx are wrong to publish incorrect information on a digital product at the point of sale.

That said the scenery itself is of a very high quality. As a commercial pilot I've flown into Zurich on a multitude of occasions over the years but when flying on Vatsim I hope ATC don't ask me to park on stands India 1 - 5 as they don't exist!

 

 

[FlyAgi 396]

Vor 1 Stunde, flyingfudge sagte:

This leaves the customer in "no-man's land" as the laws concerning digital downloads preclude refunds after purchase.

 

Sadly, this is exactly the point here.

 

I think this can be solved for the future by rethinking product descriptions overall and maybe not use phrases like 'brand new' or 'up to date' at all. At least it should become standard and clearly highlightet on all purchase sites which date an airport scenery was released or better, which year the virtual airport actually resembles.

 

Anyway, this is something for Aerosoft and Orbx (and others) sales staff to finally do, communication in this regard needs to be optimized. Maybe @Mathijs Kok or @Raphael Jakob could have a look at this kind of issue and find a solution for the future on the Aerosoft side. In my theory this only needs some clear rules for product descriptions so certain crucial information is always present and clearly visible to the user.