The end of this week brings exciting news of more development efforts in Asia. Bucking the trend on developing western-centric destinations, a couple of developers who made freeware Chinese airports in the past has grouped together to form a development team called AMJ Studio. They've approached us amongst other news teams to introduce themselves to the community.

With the primary purpose of developing more detailed airports and liveries for both X-Plane and MSFS2020, the name AMJ is an abbreviation of the initials of the three founding developers: Adam, shaneMontoya and zzzJ. Their first product(s) will be a rendition of Shanghai city, and the metropolis's main serving airports: Pudong and Hongqiao. The Shanghai project is in the works for over 2 years which will be released in seperate packages" through mainstream online vendors.

The Shanghai project consists of three parts: the Shanghai City scenery; ZSPD Shanghai Pudong Int’l airport, and ZSSS Shanghai Hongqiao Int’l airport. The first of the bunch to be released will be the Shanghai City scenery within this month, followed by ZSPD before the end of this year and ZSSS next year.‍

Shanghai City:

• Accurate road and building position with latest info from Chinese mapservices
• Orthophoto layout covering the whole municipality of Shanghai, includingthe third biggest island in China – Chongming island
• Hundreds of custom made buildings with night lighting effects, includingfamous places of interests like Shanghai Tower, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower,EXPO park, Shanghai TV station and several bridges across the Huangpu river
• Longhua Heliport located next to the EXPO park (and more heliports ontop of famous hotels and hospitals waiting X-Planers to discover)
• Shanghai style road signs and traffic

ZSPD Shanghai Pudong Int’l Airport:

• Built and expanded on an existing product but will receive significant redevelopments across the board.
• Newly introduced Satellite concourse and surrounding aprons and taxiways
• Newly constructed fifth runway for Pudong 15/33 (however there is still no taxiway information, as it’s not been used yet)
• COMAC headquarters, south of ZSPD with the connected taxiway
• Redeveloped Terminal 1, Terminal 2 and surrounding buildings, made from scratch
• SAM integration
• *Tunnels which connects Terminals and Concourses are still being developed, and may not be included in the first release.

As for ZSSS Shanghai Hongqiao Int’l Airport, the development is a collaboration with a renowned ESP based development team which will cover the latest developments and expansions in the airport. The development has slowly begun and work has reached a stage where the scenery is useable, but requires more tuning.

The Shanghai Project at its current stage are in the final stages for Shanghai City and release is expected to be within this month. Post release will bring forth Pudong Airport, followed by Hongqiao.

Microsoft Flight Simulator:

The team also has plans to bring the Shanghai Project over to MSFS. Development is already underway with over 70% of the Shanghai City model ported into MSFS, including buildings in The Bund (Lujiazui CBD area) with more buildings coming in the official release, terminals at Pudong Airport have also been imported.

The team doesn't have any socials yet, but we'll be sure to follow their developments. Check this space for further news!