KDEN has come a long way since its release for X-Plane in 2018, and its release for MSFS in 2024, but there have always been a few areas that I wasn't entirely satisfied with, areas that could have been a bit more polished, but just never quite bubbled to the top of the priority list.

Well today I'm happy to go beyond the intermittent teasers some of you have been seeing on Discord, and officially take a moment to share with you what I've been working on lately: KDEN - Denver International Airport V2.5! This update focuses on refining some of these rougher areas - the elements that have started to showed their age, or were overlooked for the sake of time, and it overhauls them to bring KDEN up to the level of my newer sceneries!

Jetways

KDEN's current jetways models were developed back in 2022, and while good for the time, they're starting to show their age. At first glance, you might not notice a huge difference, but when side by side, the difference is night and day.

From the shiny new jetways to the old ones with rust leaks, and even the short ones on the east side of B, every jetway at Denver has been upgraded with brand new models, all using the latest techniques. Best of all, thanks to more efficient texture usage and aggressive LODs, the VRAM usage and performance is comparable to the prior models, despite the dramatic increase in detail.

Ramp Detail

While upgrading the jetways, I realized the higher level of detail didn't quite fit with the level of detail on the ramp. While it's populated with equipment, it was rather, consistent. Real airports have drains, manhole covers with concrete pads that break up the repetition, they have both large GSE, and small equipment like ladders, tools, bins, and apparently in Denver's case, even tables on the ramp (yes they really are there!).

This update adds just this type of clutter, more ladders, more bins, more tools, more concrete barriers protecting jetway supports, more random stuff laying around that you'd actually find at a real airport. This increase in clutter provides a more varied, busy, lived-in feel, and it makes every asset, jetways, buildings, GSE, feel more grounded, like they actually belong.

Landside

KDEN has traditionally relied on orthoimagery for landside ground textures, with cars placed on top, and it looked fair. But after working on several parking lots, most recently Telluride, Denver's just felt... lacking. It didn't have the rich, full, busy look brought about by hundreds of signs, barriers, crisp pavement, endless markings.

KDEN V2.5 changes all of that. From parking aisle signs, to bus stops, to every "left turn only" arrow - Denver's entire landside is being revamped, bringing the level of detail you'd expect from a small GA airport to one of the world's largest!

Misc Improvements

As an update focused on refining, this update also contains a lot of small upgrades. Interiors will have substantially more signage and ads (advertisement boards like the real airport, not ads trying to sell you stuff haha), various gate inaccuracies on the new extensions will be fixed (huge thanks to @imranasyraff from Discord for catching a lot of these!), and I'm moving to a modular asset approach on the interior, as described in more detail in the KTEX post that discussed new modelling techniques. The modular asset restructuring primarily is taking place on the terminal interiors. While there's still around 30 new assets needed, here's a quick preview of the new modular chairs for the expansions vs the old models.

The difference in detail enabled by modular assets is undeniable. But I can probably guess what you're thinking - "cool, but this is inside, I'm almost never going to see the difference". And you'd be right, except for one small detail: As a modular asset there is a single copy of the seats that lives in memory, whereas the traditional method of one giant model (or a few big models) means there are thousands of copies of seats in memory. In practice, this shift to modular assets will save several hundred MB in VRAM, with the side bonus of being a whole lot more detailed!

Ground Textures

Last but not least is ground textures. Jetways may be the first change you'll see, but ground textures are by far the biggest. This update will feature my newest iteration of grunge textures, and pavement textures. I'm also focusing on adding a lot more markings that have been removed, offering a glimpse into the history of this ever-evolving airport on every flight.

KDEN 2.5 also include one big change I'm very excited about, and one I know many of you are too since you've asked about it - a full realignment of the concrete UVs. This means there's no longer a slight misalignment compared to the markings.

This bug has persisted since the original version of KDEN back in 2018, and was never fixed simply due to the fact a fix meant re-aligning every single piece of pavement in the whole airport. But it's time, I finally bit the bullet and made the change.

During this process however, I realized something - the concrete tiles at Denver are not a single consistent size, in fact, there are many changes in the size throughout the airport! These changes in scale, presumably done to fit with existing pavement, will now be accurately reflected in KDEN's ground textures!

None of these features are new, none are drastically different, but they further refine the current scenery to create a more immersive experience.

What is new though is for MSFS users: Detail textures! X-Plane users have enjoyed these for years, but thanks to bugs in MSFS 2024's projected mesh system, us devs that use projected meshes (the standard, cross platform way of doing ground textures) had been stuck in a compatibility mode that forced on us 2020's traditional asphalt detail texture.

But at long last the bugs are fixed and you MSFS users will finally be able to enjoy crisp pavement detail textures! Want to see a preview?

Coming Soon

Wait... that's not Denver!

No, no it isn't. I am happy to share that now that the projected mesh detail textures are working in MSFS 2024, I am finally beginning development of new MSFS products, and of (free) updates for 2024 native versions of existing products - starting with two new ports from X-Plane! Stay tuned for more details ;).

Arrival Time

Development of KDEN is progressing well, and I can't wait for you all to be able to enjoy these refinements! There is still quite a bit of work left to do before release, so I don't have an estimated release date, but as development progresses I'll be sharing more posts here, as well as teasers on Discord, so stay tuned! As always, thank you all for your support and enthusiasm, and happy flying!