I’m curious if any of the devs played the original Airport Tycoon game created in 2000? One of the things that really made that game successful (compared to all of the successors that failed miserably) is the fact that it focused on things “outside of the terminal”. Most airport tycoon games nowadays focus on terminal/people flow. Having a large terrain map with multiple runways and many gates makes an airport simulator more like an airport simulator.
Since the last time you posted this I am wondering if you can give a better estimate to the number of airplanes that could be present on a map at any given time? Is it 10? 20? 50? Airport Tycoon realized that they couldn’t ‘sim’ all of the passengers realistically so they lowered the ratio of passengers to planes in simulation (much like sim city 4 does). If I only wanted to focus on people flow in terminals there are plenty of games out there that do that and fail to immerse me in a ‘true’ airport simulator.