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Tower 2011 Arrival spacing decrease


tyljiang

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Hi, 

So I was looking around and creating my own schedule, and I noticed that some flights were being skipped over for arrival and plugged in at a later time. I'm just wondering if it is possible to increase the number of arrivals at an airport by either decreasing the distance between arriving aircraft or decreasing the time between aircraft arriving at an airport. An example is how airplanes will land every minute at PHL during peak, but in the game, it will limit arrivals to around two minutes between landings. 

Also, it seems like the game seems to like to skip over small airplanes on arrival, such as Dash 8, ERJ-135, and CRJ-700. Is that normal, or is there something weird going on with the system?

Thanks!

Edited by tyljiang
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Despite the fact we can edit the schedules, it appears the game limits the number of arrivals. I've seen around 40/hour quoted several times on the forum. Regarding the skipping of smaller airplanes, I personally have not noticed it but I haven't really looked for that issue either..

We'll have to wait and see what Tower 3D delivers regarding arrival capacity.

 

Craig

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There may be no limit put in the game by developers, but i notice if i was to select 6L and 25R at LAX (oposit direction arrivals) i get twice as many arrivals over the hour as i would with 24L and 25R, so it says to me there must be a certain didstance between each arriving a/c that the system calculates to avoid the CA alerts, the slower aircraft will still get overtaken by faster traffic when shooting the ILS but on initial contact the seperation is sufficiant.

 

I hope 3D tower has allowences for arriving aircraft to fly similtanious ILS approach when more than one landing runway is selected.

 

Fingers crossed.

 

Gareth

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FeelThere,

There may not be a specific number limit but the software definitely has a algorithm that limits arrivals based on something - possibly initial separation. And the fact that it doesn't appear to handle simultaneous arrivals on different runways is also a primary factor. I can put together a schedule at DFW with aircraft arriving every minute for 60 minutes and open up the 3 arrival runways and I'm pretty sure it will take an 1 1/2 to two hours for all 60 planes to eventually report to the tower. If I do that I'll report back my results.

 

Craig   

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1 hour ago, crbascott said:

FeelThere,

There may not be a specific number limit but the software definitely has a algorithm that limits arrivals based on something - possibly initial separation. And the fact that it doesn't appear to handle simultaneous arrivals on different runways is also a primary factor. I can put together a schedule at DFW with aircraft arriving every minute for 60 minutes and open up the 3 arrival runways and I'm pretty sure it will take an 1 1/2 to two hours for all 60 planes to eventually report to the tower. If I do that I'll report back my results.

 

Craig   

Please do share your results! I've noticed that the game tends to space aircraft on approach by 5nm, or about 1min 30sec before the next arrival is generated. The passed over aircraft do eventually show up during breaks, but it would be nice to have that back to back landing feel. 

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OK, here are the results of my test. DFW Airport - the normal runways (18R, 17C, 17L) setup for arrivals. The schedule.txt file consisted of 60 arrivals starting at 17:00 (UTC 22:00) spaced 1 minute apart. There were no departures.

I started the game at UTC 21:00 just in case any arrivals would show up early. They did not. The first arrival appeared on the DBRITE at 22:00 and contacted the tower at 22:00:34. The second arrival contacted tower at 22:02:05, the third at 22:03:30, the fourth at 22:05:03, the 30th at 22:40, and the 40th at 23:00. The 60th and final arrival made contact 23:28:50.

It was very obvious that the arrivals were always separated by 5nm (I've attached a DBRITE screenshot that clearly shows this) and roughly 90 seconds as mentioned above. So, unless the 5nm separation can be adjusted by aircraft type or simultaneous arrivals become a new feature, then there is definitely an arrival "limit" of 40ish per hour.

 

Craig 

 

PS: This was a really boring test - not much variety in handling 60 straight arrivals. It was obvious after about 5 arrivals what the pattern was, but I figured I had to stick it out. Interestingly, for the first hour only 18R and 17C were assigned. Finally at 23:02 17L was assigned and then it was assigned for every remaining arrival. Also, when contacted by the final arrival I still had 4 planes in the air and 11 taxiing. I probably still had another 30 minutes to go to clear my strip. DFW is big and it takes aircraft a while to begin and complete taxiing.

 

 

 

 

DBRITE_5nm.JPG

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Out of iterest, would you consider running a test change all your schedule to the same aircraft type and then edit that aircraft speed in the aircraft editor, to a max tower speed of say 180knots, maybe that may affect the distance between them....

 

Gareth

(I will do it myself, i just wont get on the game till the weekend to see the results)

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Aircraft type doesn't make a difference on initial separation. In my first test, the screen shot reflects an E70 followed by CR7, M80, ER4, and 319.

As a follow up, I did a quick test using 388 and DH8. According to the airplane editor, the 388 has a landing speed of 151 knots and the DH8 is 95 knots. All aircraft regardless of type begin the arrival flying 219 knots with an altitude of 3600 feet and an initial separation of 5nm. They stay at that speed and altitude until roughly 11 miles out, then the aircraft begin to slow down to land. That's really the only difference. Attached are two more screenshots.of the DBRITE for your viewing pleasure.

 

Craig  

 

DBRITE_DH8.JPG

DBRITE_388.JPG

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do you get the same 5nm seperation with 17L and 13R only? that would be the two furthest points for initial call up.

My thinking is the system waits for the proceeding a/c to be 5nm away before introducting the next, so if on is on app to 17L and the next calls for 13R, there should be more than 5nm on initial call so in theory should call strainht after each other....  maybe

 

Gareth

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2 hours ago, FeelThere said:

For Tower! Pro the simultanious runway system will be rewritten from scratch. In Tower!2011 we used a middle ground for it, but !Pro will be written in parallel aproaches in mind.

That means that the "non pro version" doesn't have those new features ????

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13 hours ago, mc16v said:

Out of iterest, would you consider running a test change all your schedule to the same aircraft type and then edit that aircraft speed in the aircraft editor, to a max tower speed of say 180knots, maybe that may affect the distance between them....

 

Gareth

(I will do it myself, i just wont get on the game till the weekend to see the results)

I actually thought about the speed change and made all of my aircraft types 250 average, but it didn't change it from 219 from approach, so its still that 5nm spacing. 

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11 hours ago, mc16v said:

do you get the same 5nm seperation with 17L and 13R only? that would be the two furthest points for initial call up.

My thinking is the system waits for the proceeding a/c to be 5nm away before introducting the next, so if on is on app to 17L and the next calls for 13R, there should be more than 5nm on initial call so in theory should call strainht after each other....  maybe

 

Gareth

I didn't expect much difference, but was actually surprised by the result. For the first 13R arrival, it waited until the 17L arrival was at the 10 mile marker on the DBRITE. So, there was a an even larger separation (see screenshot).As a result, the minimum separation we will see is 5nm  - which is based on the distance from airport and not distance from the previous aircraft (with aircraft type being irrelevant in determining separation).

Bottom line - although there is not a programmed arrival limit, it does appear an arrival capacity of 42ish does exist due to separation and no parallel approaches. 

We'll have to wait and see what Tower! Pro has to offer regarding arrival capacity and parallel approaches (among other exciting new features).  

Craig

 

  

DBRITE_13R.JPG

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Well, hope for better result, get worse....

I hope 3D Tower have addressed this issue, (its quite a big issue!), not t90o fussed re the seperation distance, its fine, but when multiple runways open, the seperation should only be relevent for aircraft preceeding on the same runway.

 

Gareth

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1 hour ago, FeelThere said:

Gareth,

Please read my previous reply. Tower!3DPro will have a fully overhauled runway system.It will even consider the gate for the arriving plane and will try to land on the closest runway.

 

Vic

 

Thanks Vic, thats good news! sorry missed your post, went straight to the last message without looking!

Gareth

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