After a period of silence from product announcements, X-Codr returned, spurred by the pivotal change in flight simulation history with the announcement of the new Microsoft Flight Simulation last year. "My priorities had to change."

The update post started with an explaination noting that the update was meant to be pushed late last year, and was something that the developer is very happy to release free of charge. The good news from the hiatus from public announcements is that in the time, the original update that was slated for release last year has grew to incoperate more features, as the developer made significant improvements in his skills and work - many of which wouldnt be integrated into the scenery update if it was published as originally intended.

The new update for Denver Airport introduces major new features and visual improvements, namely a wholly retextured interior modelling - increasing the resolution of the texturing while harnessing the use of X-Plane's built in SSAO while keeping the texture file count as before. One of the more more prominent additions to functionality is the introducion of SAM jetways, finally bringing the scenery to using the latest technologies in animated airbridges. The SAM implementation is taken a step further, with the jetways being a completely custom 3d model, modelled to look just like the real life counterpart - double jetway connectivity is also supported, to which the developer encourages users to park a 747 into one of the gates and see two jetways connect to the aircraft.

Going back to the interior, the update adds more life to the scene, bringing 3d people standing and sitting across the terminal. On the topic of texturing, the developer also has completely redeveloped the night lighting textures to look more realistic.

The update also reduces file size, saving over 300MB in the process through using better texture compression, theoretically also improving performance when flying around the area. The orthoimagery were better compressed while recoloured to better match the sattelite imagery from other products.

Lastly, Denver Airport now utilises the in-house library, the X-Codr Designs Library. Complimenting the newly compressed textures and further reducing the file size overall with the use of common assets, most of which are developed more recently with higher quality modelling and texturing.

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The major inclusions of the aforementioned features are wrapped up with a series of smaller changes including more weathering to the groundwork and bug fixes throughout the scenery. As a footnote, the developer recommends users to update their copy of X-Codr Library to harness the newly improved objects and assets, which would benefit Denver and Evansville Regional Airport.

Read the full announcement here on the original forum thread.