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Tower 3D: some small suggestions


Avwriter

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After a number of hours of playing, I have a round of small suggestions.  These are not bugs, but simply improvements that would be desirable from a user's perspective:  I will try not to bring up items that have been already repeatedly put forth.  Note these are not demands, but respectful suggestions from a generally pleased user.  I welcome others to chime in here as well.

1. We need more POV options than just the tower view.  This is especially true at larger airports, which in real life have one or more ramp towers, in addition to the main control tower. After all, in the game, the controller is responsible for the ramp controller's job as well as the ground controller.  Better yet would be to add a new camera mode in which the camera position was freely moveable by the user.

2. We need a way to control the volume of nature sounds and aircraft noise separately.  At a major facility like KLAX, whatever nature sounds that exist would be largely drowned out by the sounds of aircraft and cars.

3. It is sometimes impossible to right-click taxiways or send aircraft to intersection takeoffs if aircraft on the map are covering the spot you need to click.

4. We need more weather options.  While downloadable real weather would be great, in the meantime it would at least be nice to be able to select partly cloudy, overcast, light rain, heavy rain, perhaps even snow, depending on the airport location (obviously not KLAX or TIST).

5. While I understand that not all of the commands from Tower2011 could be fit on the mouseclick menus, it would be nice if some or all of the old key combos from that game could have been preserve for those who would still like to use them some of the time. Thus, I could select "Taxi to runway XX" with the mouse commands, and then, if desired, could hit Alt+S for hold short of another runway.

6. Please find a way to make landing lights visible in the air.  I can see them reflected on the ground after landing, but not in the air.  Even in daytime, landing lights are typically visible on approaching aircraft from three 3-5 miles away, and even farther at night.

7. Add a slider to control the traffic level, as could be done in Tower2011.

8. Add and 3rd camera mode in which the auto panning camera when a plane is selected is completely shut off.  This is a very useful feature, but there are times when one might not want the view to flip when issuing instructions to a plane (i.e. you are carefully watching a potential ground conflict, but want to issue a landing/takeoff clearance (based on the radar) without looking away.

9. Reduce the icon size of the ADIRS.

10. Increase the available zoom range, both on the main view and in the ADIRS..

11. Slightly increase the speed at which aircraft taxi.  Right now it is unrealistically slow.

12. Some way to more easily track which aircraft have been waiting the longest at the gate.  Not sure what the best method would be. Perhaps just clicking on the aircraft could bring up the time waiting.  I suppose having the icons change from green to yellow to red would be unrealistic.

13. Expedite departure/expedite vacate runway would be nice, but this is probably only practical for the Pro version.

14. Make it easier to scroll through the flight strips.  Perhaps when an aircraft is clicked the flight strip viewer could automatically scroll the correct strip into view.

15. Make the movable windows (radar screens) darker (less transparent), it can be really hard to see the plane's designations if there is a white background (ground radar is giving me issues.

16. User profiles.

17. The game should automatically remember how you configure the radar screens.

18. Scoring system:    I realize that everyone here has different ideas and preferences regarding the current scoring system.  While it may be hard to come to an agreement, it would at least be nice to have the ability to disable it entirely from the Settings screen.

19. It would be a nice feature to include the option of setting up timed session.  For example the user could chose a time limit (selectable in 15 minute increments), after which a session will automatically end.  I cannot tell you how many times already I have discovered that I had been playing for and hour or more, when I thought it had only been 30 min.  Yes most of use could just set a timer, but having the option integrated into the game would be handy.

20.  Display the number of scheduled ops per hour as the user scrolls through the starting times on the main menu page.

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4 hours ago, Avwriter said:

We need more POV options than just the tower view. 

Maybe this is what you're looking for: While in the game, press F1. Now you can use W,A,S,D to move the camera around, and right mouse button to pan/point the camera.

Edit: it DOES NOT work if the game is paused...

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1) It's a Tower sim and you are right; there are some airports with multiple ramp towers for ramp traffic but the airport control is done from the tower cab (or from the virtual tower on some new facilities but that's another story :) )

2) Noted, we added into our list to check

3) if they get bigger then it will be even harder to click. We tested a lot for the optimal click spot size. We know it's not the perfect, but please believe me this is one of the best. Please try to zoom in and out on the map for better result.

4) If you select random then the system will choose (or mix) from more than 8 weather patterns

5) Hold short for runway should be fixed. The planes should stop before crossing a runway.

 

Thank you

 

Vic

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Maybe Vic can make this a 'sticky'?

Besides the airplane icon size in ADIRS (mentioned in another thread), I like to see the planes move a little faster when taking the runway and/or taking off.  Seems like a student pilot is at the controls and is creeeeeeeping onto the runway and advancing the throttles for takeoff.  All other aircraft speeds (taxi, etc) I think are just perfect.

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5 hours ago, bazvink said:

Maybe this is what you're looking for: While in the game, press F1. Now you can use W,A,S,D to move the camera around, and right mouse button to pan/point the camera.

Edit: it DOES NOT work if the game is paused...

Thank you for that.  It is not ideal, but better than nothing.

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Sorry Folks, but it was a development feature that we forgot to disable and likely will be removed for the SP. Tower!3D was built in usinng it from the tower's point of view like controllers do. The textures, models are optimized for this view and we don't want you to go behind the scenes :)

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8 minutes ago, FeelThere said:

Sorry Folks, but it was a development feature that we forgot to disable and likely will be removed for the SP. Tower!3D was built in usinng it from the tower's point of view like controllers do. The textures, models are optimized for this view and we don't want you to go behind the scenes :)

Tower controllers 'usually' have access to binoculars.  Could one be 'added'?

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1 minute ago, FeelThere said:

We have zoom instead :)

I know.  Kinda 'bulky' but does work but a quick keyboard 'B' for binoculars would be alot better.  Just my opinion.

Can't wait to see all these improvements in this already awesome 'sim'.  Thanks guys  :)

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Not sure it this is an issue with the fake airline schedule included with the default game, or perhaps something that will be added with Real traffic, but there seems to be a very limited number of aircraft types.  I have yet to see a four-engine aircraft of any type.  At LAX we should definitely be seeing A-340s, 747s, and A380s.  Please confirm that the game does support more aircraft types than what we see so far, including four-holers?  Likewise, we desperately need some freighters.  After Tower!2011, I figured you guys would know that your main customer base is obsessed with cargo ops.to a level that most outsiders would consider bizarre   ;-)

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1)Increase the speed of lining up and taking off?
It takes ages for the planes to be ready for take off when giving the lineup command, or taking off after the cleared for takeoff command.
2)Maybe some airplanes could vacate at higher speeds out of the runway using the taxiways designed for these procedures.
3)Let us zoom in more? I don't know if there is a way to zoom in more right now so...
4)Add a separate push back and taxi clearance? That would be awesome!
5)I could be mistaking but the landing lights on aircraft aren't visible when landing and taking off at night
 

But I really love the realism of pushing back and waiting for the aircraft to start taxiing! Good job!

I'm sorry for all my remarks, I love the idea of an ATC game and would definitely buy the pro version if decent updates and features are added.

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 The ability to set up user profiles, as we could in Tower2011, would also be great.  Sometimes after racking up thousands of negative points, one just wants to start over. 

 

Also, in addition to the scoring system we have now, I think it would be very helpful if the game would report the player's average time in each session from gate to runway, and from runway to gate.  This would create a much more realistic sense of how one is doing on a practical level.

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Hey,

Just some thoughts now that we are at it.

1) A bit more zoom would be nice on the larger airports.

2)  Could we have an option to make the movable windows darker (less transparent), it can be really hard to see the plane's designations if there is a white background (ground radar is giving me issues.

3) Would it be possible to add another zoom level to the ground radar, some times there are 3 planes parked right beside each other, and it can be a bit hard to differentiate them.

 

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Will be SP1 multi-screen capable ?

Will be cargo schedules/gates in the real traffic added ?

Sorry guys, but i'm not enjoying these new version as much as I would like to...

Perhaps new improvements will change my perception of this new version.

In fact...I realise that 3D is not that important for me...but it's just me...

Thanks for everything

Paul

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5 minutes ago, achilles1971 said:

Will be SP1 multi-screen capable ?

Will be cargo schedules/gates in the real traffic added ?

Sorry guys, but i'm not enjoying these new version as much as I would like to...

Perhaps new improvements will change my perception of this new version.

In fact...I realise that 3D is not that important for me...but it's just me...

Thanks for everything

Paul

Vic mentioned that the game engine won't allow multi-monitor use.

For the real traffic, Avwriter asked that in an above question and FeelThere replied that Nyerges Design will handle that part.

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15 hours ago, FeelThere said:

Sorry Folks, but it was a development feature that we forgot to disable and likely will be removed for the SP. Tower!3D was built in usinng it from the tower's point of view like controllers do. The textures, models are optimized for this view and we don't want you to go behind the scenes :)

Let me ask you this: is a game trailer supposed to demonstrate the game and what you can do in it? Because the trailer that was released obviously made use of the "F1 camera" in order to produce a dramatic video, but essentially it was false advertising because all those fancy views are (officially) not possible. I think a lot of people  were expecting to be able to look at the scene from multiple angles (and not just the standard "fly-by" that we have today).

from the other hand, I understand why you would not want this feature because indeed it lets the player go behind the scenes and see things you don't want him to, like the fact that at Philadelphia a/c actually taxi across the grass and right next to a tree on their way to runway 17...

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7 hours ago, FeelThere said:

Let's stop this false advertisement attitude. Further comments will be removed without notice. Its a friendly forum and we do our best to help you but there is no place for such a comments.

Yes.  Please guys, let's get back on topic.  This thread is was not intended as a place for complaining, bug catching, or demanding major structural changes to the game (there are plenty of other threads serving these functions, and you can always go start your own).  The idea here was to have a central gathering place for suggested small-scale tweaks that the might improve the overall experience, and which could practically be implemented in the short term.  I'd also really like to keep the environment friendly.

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On 6/2/2016 at 5:03 PM, DragonWin said:

Hey,

Just some thoughts now that we are at it.

1) A bit more zoom would be nice on the larger airports.

2)  Could we have an option to make the movable windows darker (less transparent), it can be really hard to see the plane's designations if there is a white background (ground radar is giving me issues.

3) Would it be possible to add another zoom level to the ground radar, some times there are 3 planes parked right beside each other, and it can be a bit hard to differentiate them.

 

 

Could you please add my option 2 to the list as well. It is often really hard for me to make out an aircraft number or the assigned taxiway when there is white stuff behind the windows (I have to use F1 and look in a different direction to be able to see it, and F1 is going away in SP1).

 

tower3d_hard_to_see.png

Edited by DragonWin
Added screenshot
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42 minutes ago, DragonWin said:

 

Could you please add my option 2 to the list as well. It is often really hard for me to make out an aircraft number or the assigned taxiway when there is white stuff behind the windows (I have to use F1 and look in a different direction to be able to see it, and F1 is going away in SP1).

 

Done.

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