KLGA Released for Tower

[VenturaGuy101]

4 hours ago, FeelThere said:

This is something we fully agree. However the schedules are made based on real world ICAO and IATA codes. Do you have any suggestion how could we separate them for future releases?

 

Vic

 

I am not sure how your internal code works but you could add a numerical value after the ICAO and IATA codes that helps identify the livery and terminal.  Example below are changes to current RT and RC files.

airlines.txt file:

RPA, RW, BRICKYARD, Republic Airlines, United States (American Airlines Carrier)
RPA_0, RW_0, BRICKYARD, Republic Airlines, United States (Delta Shuttle Carrier)

terminal.txt file:  Ties the alternate Republic to terminal A for Delta Shuttle

Terminal_A: RPA_0
Terminal_C_W: DAL,EDV,JIA,RPA

Schedule.txt:

DCA, LGA, E70, RW, 4742, 06:46, 12:00, 1, RW
DCA, LGA, E70, RW_0, 6132, 06:48, 12:00, 1, RW_0
 

So the two Republic flights above (from RT): flight 4742 would go to terminal_C_W and flight 6132 would go to the Marine Terminal (Terminal_A)

airplanes_texpack9.manifest:

- Assets/Resources/airplanes/Textures/E170_rw.jpg             <-- American Airlines Livery
- Assets/Resources/airplanes/Textures/E170_rw_0.jpg        <-- Delta Airlines Livery

You are still using the real world ICAO and IATA but with a modifier to distinguish between the airlines.  I am not sure how the internal code will handle the double "BRICKYARD" speech but I believe it connects it to the flight number so it may not be an issue but would need to be tested.  Also I do not know if you have a limitation on the number of characters for the ICAO and IATA codes so that would need to be checked also.

Thanks Vic for this consideration.

[crbascott]

25 minutes ago, VenturaGuy101 said:

I am not sure how your internal code works but you could add a numerical value after the ICAO and IATA codes that helps identify the livery and terminal.  Example below are changes to current RT and RC files. 

....

The big question is what data source tells you Republic/AAL, Republic/DAL, Skywest/ASA, Skywest/UAL, etc. that can be easily automated/merged/manipulated from a data management standpoint?  

Assuming FeelThere (or Nyerges) can get past that major hurdle, I think the schedule format can be used asis. The last column in the schedule is labelled codeshare that could be used as the livery. Is a Republic E70 for AA different than a Compass E70 for AA. I've got a feeling it's not from a Tower perspective. 

Using your example, the schedule could look something like this: 

DCA, LGA, E70, RW, 4742, 06:46, 12:00, 1, AA
DCA, LGA, E70, RW, 6132, 06:48, 12:00, 1, DL 

The problem is the terminal file would need some tweaking, maybe something like RPA_DL where the first node is the airline and the second node is the livery. 

But again, I think all the file structure and naming stuff is secondary to getting the data. And, if we're talking next version, maybe the file formats are totally revamped. Personally, I think the mix of ICAO and IATA is difficult to manage and keep in synch.  

Craig

PS - The standard ICAO airline code is 3 characters and two characters for IATA. Also, in the current version there is not an issue with duplicate callsigns. 

 

 

[VenturaGuy101]

Well I did some testing to see if I could separate the Republic (Brickyard) flight at KLGA into separated into American and Delta flights.  I created two airlines entries in airlines:

RPAA, RW, BRICKYARD, Republic Airlines, United States (American Airlines Carrier)
RPAD, RW_D, BRICKYARD, Republic Airlines, United States (Delta Shuttle Carrier)

I then changed the Delta Shuttle Flights in the schedule:

LGA, BNA, E70, RW_D, 5991, 12:00, 06:54, 1, RW_D

Finally I changed the Terminal File:

Terminal_A: RPAD
Terminal_C_W: DAL,EDV,JIA,RPAA
Terminal_D: ASQ,DAL,EDV,RPAA,WJA

I changed the RPA to RPAD for Delta Flights and RPA to RPAA for the American Eagle Flights.

Well the interesting thing is this works sort of.  The flights are distinguished and working.  I have both the Delta and American flights working with both responding to the "Brickyard" call.  You can see it on the flight strips and the ADIRS Display.  The same 4 letter code shows up in the command line when calling or clicking on the plane.

The only problem is how Tower!3D handles the terminals.  It appears that the terminals are shorted to just 3 letters.  It appears that both the ICAO codes from the terminal file (RPAD and RPAA) are both shortened to RPA.  Also the ICAO code for each of the flights are also shortened to 3 even though the Airlines file used 4 characters.

Also the Livery for the changed Delta flights are white planes indicating that it is missing.  I tried Craig,s suggestion above to change the last column IATA code to other E170 liveries.  I Tried CP (Compass), KV (Maple) and RW (Brickyard).  None of these worked.  It appears that the last column does nothing.  None of my changes affected the liveries as the Delta Flights remained white.  It also looks like nothing else changed.
 

[crbascott]

My suggestion was based on the assumption that the sim engine would need to be modified.

You're close and you can make this work today if you're ok with creating/using dummy 3 character ICAO  and 2 character IATA codes and don't mind white liveries.

Using Republic as an example. add an entry to the airlines file for the Delta Connection operation:
RP@, R@, BRICKYARD, Republic Airlines/Delta, United States.

Note: I thought I'd test if a special character works, and it does. Cool!

Modify the schedule and change the appropriate flights from RW to R@.

Modify the terminal file to allocate RPA (American) and RP@ (Delta) to the correct terminals. 

You're good to go. 

Again this works, but you'll have funky flight numbers and white liveries for the Republic/Delta flights.

[VenturaGuy101]

The interesting thing is the IATA codes appear to not be limited by 2 digits in my test.  The only limitation with the ICAO is in terminal assignments.  It appears that the simulation can handle 4 and five ICAO codes like my PRAD or RPA_D but only terminal assignments are truncated to 3 when matching aircraft to terminals.  I guess my question for Vic is if the limitation of truncating the terminal matching to 3 can be removed and just use the code as is in the terminal and airline files?  If that small modification is changed this could work in the current version of Tower!3D.  The displayed flight numbers could easily be fixed by truncating the ICAO code to 3 before adding on the flight number.

[crbascott]

What about the liveries?

 

[VenturaGuy101]

Well that one is even more difficult to test.  I checked the log file to see if I could find where it tried to find the livery but it only list the loaded ones in the manifest files.  The texture packs are encoded so I have not found a way to create a dummy test file.  It would be interesting to see if a test file could be created to see if it worked.  Maybe Gabor or Vic could shed some light if a the following texture was available would it load if the IATA code was RW_D?

- Assets/Resources/airplanes/Textures/E170_rw_d.jpg

[crbascott]

I'm 100% confident that FeelThere/Nyerges can come up with a solution in spite of or because of our suggestions. However, we have strayed from the purity of using "real world ICAO and IATA codes" and haven't addressed the issue of being able to separate the regional airlines and who they operate for at a data source level.  

I use FlightAware for my schedules as do others and I'm pretty sure Nyerges does too. I've attached a screenshot of KLGA arrivals from FlightAware. Not sure how others do it, but I've automated a process to download a days worth of flights in this format. How do we know at this level who the regional airlines fly for?

Some are simple because it is a 1-1 relationship. But what about the others?

Craig

PS - I've figured out a way. But, I'm hoping someone can come up with a better solution that requires less time and effort.

[VenturaGuy101]

I totally agree with you Craig.  I was looking up Delta flights and seeing if it said "operating as Republic Airlines" to identify Republic flights flying as Delta Shuttle.  Unfortunately, there is nothing on the Republic flight that says ""operating as Delta Shuttle" or something similar.  I saw that the flight numbers in the high 5K to low 6K were all delta flights so I just assumed that all flights in this range were Delta Shuttles.  I am also curious on why there is the 2nd IATA code in the schedule file since changing it does not seem to affect anything.

And if I am not really off topic already, should the arrival time in the schedule be 15-35 minutes earlier than the Flight Aware times since that time is used to spawn the aircraft for final 20NM from the runway?  The aircraft has to make it to the runway, land, taxi to the game before considered "arrived".  Maybe in the next version we can have additional stats like how many flights that arrived or departed close to on-time.

[crbascott]

Below is from the Tower!2011 manual  regarding the last field in the schedule file: 

codeshare airline ID = when a flight is being flown by a codeshare airline here is where you enter the mainline airline's IATA identifier. Codeshare flights use the callsign of the
airline owning the plane, not the airline booking the flight. If the flight is serviced by the mainline carrier insert the same ID as was entered for 'airline ID'. 

The IATA code listed at the end of the description is where the aircraft be parked at the departure and arrival airports. See Airfield editor for information on how airline
parking is assigned.

Despite the manual description, the last field as we have discovered is not being used. If it worked as described in the manual, we probably could see the regional airlines with multiple liveries but the terminal parking wouldn't be quite as flexible as desired. 

Actually, as it turns out, this topic has been around a while. http://forum.simflight.com/topic/82270-lax-terminals/

[VenturaGuy101]

Thanks Craig for the information and insight.  I did not discover this game until a couple of months ago so I am not aware of all of the historical context.  I was just surprised that the regional jets codeshare and liveries could almost work in the current version with the three exceptions.  

   1) Using more than 3 letters for ICAO code (i.e. RPAD for Republic/Delta Shuttle) results with only the first 3 letters being used for the terminal assignment so it places it in the terminal RPA.  Terminal file also only loads the first 3 letters of each assigned ICAO code.

2) Assigning the livery remain unresolved.  It is unknown if extended IATA code (RW_D) would work with the assets if they existed.  Alternately the second IATA code in the schedule file could be used to load different livery (using CP would load the Compass livery instead of the existing RW Americal livery.  It appears that the 2nd IATA code is currently not used.

3) This technique moves away from the pure ICAO/IATA code in the current files.  Unfortunately there is really no easy way to distinguish between livery/codeshare carrier from the regional airline without significant research.  Using extended code ICAO + Livery Id (i.e. RPAD) is a little closer to real codes than RP@ but at least RP@ will put the planes in a different terminal.

It now up to FeelThere to decide if some changes are worth the trouble in the current version or look to the next version.  I hope they consider some changes that would allow for multiple livery/terminal assignments but since the issue is more complex, they most likely will wait for the next version but that is up to them.

[winsaudi]

Great work by crbascott & VenturaGuy101, this is so close to being a big step towards airline realism that I hope FeelThere & Nyerges Design can get this fixed in the forthcoming SP. How about it Vic & Gabor?

Wayne

[coyotedelmar]

The biggest issue, well imo, is the terminal file since it uses ICAO. If it was IATA, you could get the game to take it fairly well, just use a different IATA code for the different codeshares (e.g. Brickyard Delta flights could use RW, American use YX, etc.). in 2011 used that after someone mentioned it on the forums here, to take AirTran and US Airways flights in SC and turn them into Southwest/American. 

 

Of course, no idea how it works with the liveries though, and how much of a rewrite it'd take to change terminal assignments to using IATA instead of ICAO. 

[FeelThere_Vic]

Unfortunately we have the same problem; by looking at the schedule it's almost impossible to figure out the codeshare

[crbascott]

9 hours ago, coyotedelmar said:

The biggest issue, well imo, is the terminal file since it uses ICAO. If it was IATA, you could get the game to take it fairly well, just use a different IATA code for the different codeshares (e.g. Brickyard Delta flights could use RW, American use YX, etc.). in 2011 used that after someone mentioned it on the forums here, to take AirTran and US Airways flights in SC and turn them into Southwest/American. 

 

Of course, no idea how it works with the liveries though, and how much of a rewrite it'd take to change terminal assignments to using IATA instead of ICAO. 

Using IATA doesn't really buy you anything because each regional airline online has only one IATA code.  Although Real Traffic is using RW for Republic, it is is actually an obsolete code with YX now being the correct current value.  

[Tpinks]

Hello everyone.

 

I have not bought the game yet, but I have been watching videos non-stop on youtube as I have been looking for a game like this to play. In fact, I recently asked about LGA as I thought it would be a fun airport for me to get into the game, so im glad to see it finally out... I'm a pilot at heart, but I always loved playing as an ATC in FSX hence why I am drawn to this game. I am an airline pilot who flies for Republic Airline. So I have flown into and out of LGA many times... Hopefully this info will help some.

Our operations at LGA include flights being operated for American Airlines, Delta Airlines AND United Airlines. We fly for all three, not just AA and DL at LGA. To complicate things, as it has been discussed in this thread, American and Delta use different terminals. Not only do we use different terminals, but both AA and DL flights arrive at two terminals each currently

 

We have specific gates that we operate out of for every carrier from every terminal. Unless the game uses actual gate numbers, here are the general piers we use.

Terminal A: These are the Delta Marine Air Terminal Gates. These gates are strictly used for Delta's "Delta Shuttle" flights between LGA-DCA and LGA-ORD. Republic is the only operating carrier for these two shuttle routes, so we are the sole occupant of the MAT. Sometimes they will tug some overflow aircraft here for the night, but there are never any operating flights that go into the MAT other than those two Delta shuttle destinations. Delta's shuttle flights to BOS use terminal C.

Terminal B: Concourse D and Concourse C are used by Republic for American Airlines. Concourse C is also used for our United flights into LGA.

Terminal C: Gates C35 thru C44 are all former USAirways gates and are used by AA and as a result of that Republic as well. C43 and C44 are hard stand gates that use mobile stairs, these are regional aircraft only. These are located in the general area of where the two hangars are shown in the game between terminals B and C, but they are right off of C. The two hangars are no longer there nor is taxiway ZA. That area is under construction and has the first of the two island piers for the new B terminal being built there. Gates C34 thru C15 are controlled by Delta.

Terminal D: Delta Airlines plus Westjet which operates out of D7 I believe. 

Now, come December 9th, the previously posted link applies. 

 

Now as far as how to tell flights apart to go to one terminal or the other... At republic, you can tell them apart by the flight numbers. A general rule would be UA's flights start with 3's, AA's with 4's and DL's with 5's or 6's. Below are our specific associated flight numbers and their operating partner. These were effective November. The ranges provided for the DL shuttle flights include the numbers for both directions on the route.

UA 3400-3759

AA 4385-4774

DL 5959-5986 (ORD Shuttles),  6046-6079 (BOS shuttles), 6131-6158 (DCA Shuttles), ALL other 5000 or 6000 series flight number is a normal Delta flight. There is a small subset of 4000 numbers for Delta, but they are JFK only so would not be applicable here since they would never touch LGA.

 

Writing this makes me want to go buy the game, but I am waiting to see if they reduce it at all for black Friday since they posted that they are having a sale then...

[winsaudi]

Welcome Tpinks,

Great info buddy!

Wayne

[Avwriter]

14 hours ago, Tpinks said:

Writing this makes me want to go buy the game, but I am waiting to see if they reduce it at all for black Friday since they posted that they are having a sale then...

Smart move.  I doubt that KLGA will be discounted much, if any, simply because it is so new, but I would expect that Tower3D and Tower3D Pro will likely be discounted later in the week, along with some of the earlier add-ons.  I can see that KLAS has already been discounted on one of the 3rd party sites, and I am waiting to see if FeelThere will beet them, and also perhaps discount KBOS.  Time will tell :-)

Andrew

[coyotedelmar]

On 11/20/2017 at 8:37 AM, crbascott said:

Using IATA doesn't really buy you anything because each regional airline online has only one IATA code.  Although Real Traffic is using RW for Republic, it is is actually an obsolete code with YX now being the correct current value.  

You can basically create two Republic's though in the airline files e.g.

RPA, RW, BRICKYARD, Republic Airlines (American)

RPA, YX, BRICKYARD, Republic Airlines (Delta)

 

Since the terminal file only takes ICAO, it makes it useless for placement though. But it was the way to quick fix for mergers without having to change every flight in every schedule (meant I used to have SWA flying 717s and such sometimes but still =p). 

[Tpinks]

51 minutes ago, coyotedelmar said:

You can basically create two Republic's though in the airline files e.g.

RPA, RW, BRICKYARD, Republic Airlines (American)

RPA, YX, BRICKYARD, Republic Airlines (Delta)

 

Since the terminal file only takes ICAO, it makes it useless for placement though. But it was the way to quick fix for mergers without having to change every flight in every schedule (meant I used to have SWA flying 717s and such sometimes but still =p). 

Dont forget about United.

YX is republic's current code

RW is old republic code

S5 is the old Shuttle America code. Shuttle was the delta side of Republic, but it flew some United as well.

 

If anything, I would suggest YX being AA, RW for United and S5 for Delta if you are making individual airlines using the various codes.

[Tpinks]

3 hours ago, Avwriter said:

Smart move.  I doubt that KLGA will be discounted much, if any, simply because it is so new, but I would expect that Tower3D and Tower3D Pro will likely be discounted later in the week, along with some of the earlier add-ons.  I can see that KLAS has already been discounted on one of the 3rd party sites, and I am waiting to see if FeelThere will beet them, and also perhaps discount KBOS.  Time will tell :-)

Andrew

I just saw they are doing 30%, do they adjust the percentage at all leading up to BLack Friday or is this pretty much the entire sale discount?

[crbascott]

18 hours ago, Tpinks said:

As far as how to tell flights apart to go to one terminal or the other... At republic, you can tell them apart by the flight numbers. A general rule would be UA's flights start with 3's, AA's with 4's and DL's with 5's or 6's. Below are our specific associated flight numbers and their operating partner. These were effective November. The ranges provided for the DL shuttle flights include the numbers for both directions on the route.

UA 3400-3759

AA 4385-4774

DL 5959-5986 (ORD Shuttles),  6046-6079 (BOS shuttles), 6131-6158 (DCA Shuttles), ALL other 5000 or 6000 series flight number is a normal Delta flight. There is a small subset of 4000 numbers for Delta, but they are JFK only so would not be applicable here since they would never touch LGA.

 

I was working on a overall level regional airline decoder ring the other day and Republic does play nicely when using flight numbers.  Unfortunately, this doesn't work so well for Skywest and a few others as they have flight numbers starting with the same number for multiple airlines even at the same airport. As a result, any decoder ring developed will at best have to be at an airport level and in some cases it almost will have to be flight by flight researched.

[Avwriter]

1 hour ago, Tpinks said:

I just saw they are doing 30%, do they adjust the percentage at all leading up to BLack Friday or is this pretty much the entire sale discount?

Who is "doing 30%" ?  A couple of 3rd party sites have discounted some (not all) Tower3D products by 30%.  So far, FeelThere has not discounted any Tower3D products in their sale, but they likely will later in the week and it those deals may or may not beat the deals on the 3rd party sites.   We will just have to wait and see.

 

Andrew

[crbascott]

1 hour ago, Tpinks said:

Dont forget about United.

YX is republic's current code

RW is old republic code

S5 is the old Shuttle America code. Shuttle was the delta side of Republic, but it flew some United as well.

 

If anything, I would suggest YX being AA, RW for United and S5 for Delta if you are making individual airlines using the various codes.

And don't forget about the other regionals and airports  Skywest flies for Delta, American, United and Alaska. Express Jet flies for Delta, American and United. Compass flies for Delta and American. And there are a few others that fly for multiple airlines.

What IATA's do we use for these guys? Additionally, I was under the impression FeelThere wanted to stick with real life codes.

Again, I feel confident FeelThere can solution this. However, it will require an SP and/or changes to RT/RC. So, then it becomes a matter of priority in this or the next version of Pro. 

[Tpinks]

Nevermind, I found a more appropriate thread to post my question in...