Chicago Midway Airport (KMDW) – USA v1.5

Chicago Midway Airport (KMDW) – USA v1.5

Chicago Midway airport is the second largest airport serving the Chicago area, in the state of illinois, USA. Originally named Chicago Air Park, it was originally built in 1923. In July 1949, the airport was renamed after the battle of Midway.
Midway airport covers one square mile ( one whole city block) and has five runways. Midway is tightly surrounded by buildings and other mainly residential development, so the landing thresholds of the runways are displaced to provide obstacle clearance. The FAA and the airlines ensure safety by adhering to calculated load limits and various weather minimums. Because of the displaced landing thresholds, the runways have shorter distances available for landings than for takeoffs. 13C/31C, the longest runway, only has an available landing distance of 6,059 feet (1,847 m) in the southeast direction, and 5,826 feet (1,776 m) to the northwest.
It is a big midwestern hub for Southwest Airlines.

Default MSFS 2020 only showed this as a very drab, generic airport, even though this is the second busiest airport in Chicago, and is great fun to fly out of and land into, because it is locked into residential areas on all 4 sides. It requires a precision approach, and also approach from the east or northeast can take you over the city of Chicago’s beautiful downtown.
I have used the SDK to edit the default airport and really bring it to life. Even though i do not know how to make 3D buildings in blender yet, I have used the default SDK buildings and scenery tools to recreate all the hangars and buildings of Midway airport.

Main features :
1. Properly named and numbered Terminals and Gates. Pilots, tarmac workers at various locations working around the airport add to a sense of incredible realism.
2. Hand created aprons / taxiways, runway textures, with textures specially matched to actual photographs of the airport. new , properly scaled control tower and also, the boundary wall around the airport has been added in.
3. The roads around the airport and the city blocks have also added , moving buses and cars, and lighting to re-create what it feels like to come in to land and to take off from this airport , locked in between dense city blocks.
4. New night lighting for all terminal amd apron buildings; atmospheric and true to real life.
5. Added accurate night lighting for taxiway edges and paths / centerlines .
6. All taxiways have their original names, as in real life.
7. All the buildings , parking areas that are a part of the airport or around the periphery are recreated with incredible, time-staking detail, with working street lamps, parking areas, parking gates, airport vehicles, airport service roads, trees, cars, boundary fences/ walls/ gates.
8. AIRPORT RUNWAY DIAGRAM for KMDW included, so you can Taxi around the airport more easily.
9. Incredibly small file size, since this uses all stock, default SDK library objects for the redesign of KMDW. (No new 3d objects that take up precious HDD space)

Limitations :
1.The exact building designs are not included, as i do not yet know how to use blender to make custom 3d buildings. But very similar looking buildings for the most part. All buildings are stock buildings from the SDK scenery library
2.The actual airlines that fly out of Midway Airport cannot be shown yet ( Mainly southwest airlines), because i do not think MSFS2020 is set up to show actual aircraft livery yet)
3. Some taxiway assist lines direct you to the extra pavement part of the runway, rather than the Runway Threshold itself.

INSTALLATION :
Drop the ‘CHICAGO-MIDWAY’ folder into your MSFS2020 Community folder. Thats it!

I spent a huge number of days and weeks on perfecting this airport as much as i could, to the quality level of the bigger studios ; and if you like it, i would greatly appreciate you donating $9 to my paypal account. If you feel that is too much, any amount will be much appreciated:
Adnan ArifPh (216) 832 2988

Thank you !
Adnan Arif

GPS Coordinates: 41.786767, -87.754024