tools Tower!3D Pro Tools

[fredehorn]

As it happens I'm an airline pilot in real life and especially at busier airports it is very common that tower controllers issue speed restrictions all the time such as, "maintain XXX kts (or greater) until 5 miles final" or "reduce minimum speed" or whatever speed is needed to ensure seperation. But thank you for making clear that it is not possible to add to this game.

Edited February 21, 2021 by fredehorn

[fredehorn]

Does anyone then maybe know if it's somehow possible to change the separation at which new aircraft are coming in for landing instead?

Edited February 21, 2021 by fredehorn

[crbascott]

57 minutes ago, fredehorn said:

As it happens I'm an airline pilot in real life and especially at busier airports it is very common that tower controllers issue speed restrictions all the time such as, "maintain XXX kts (or greater) until 5 miles final" or "reduce minimum speed" or whatever speed is needed to ensure seperation. But thank you for making clear that it is not possible to add to this game.

Yep, most likely a difference between Europe and US controlled airports. In the US and at the airports of the size in the game, separation is normally handled by final approach controllers (using commands similar to what you describe above) and not by the tower controllers.

1 hour ago, fredehorn said:

Does anyone then maybe know if it's somehow possible to change the separation at which new aircraft are coming in for landing instead?

The only sure way to do this is to create a custom schedule that spaces out arrivals. @EliGrim's schedule builder tool can be used for that or you can learn to create custom schedules yourself.

[Ripskin]

On 2/21/2021 at 5:17 PM, fredehorn said:

As it happens I'm an airline pilot in real life and especially at busier airports it is very common that tower controllers issue speed restrictions all the time such as, "maintain XXX kts (or greater) until 5 miles final" or "reduce minimum speed" or whatever speed is needed to ensure seperation. But thank you for making clear that it is not possible to add to this game.

That is something I think I requested for the next version.  Not necessarily that we are able to issue those commands as ATC would handle most of that before handing over to the Tower but in this game all planes arrive lined up 20 + miles away from the airport when in reality there are waypoints and flight paths you all are taking to come in and getting on when leaving so having planes coming in like that would be nice as an option if we are going to take some of approach control away from ATC.  

Would make multiplayer a little more dynamic giving the other guy something to do on departure vs simply clearing them to contact departure having to get them on their path and approve altitude changes and such out of the airports airspace. 

As crbascott said though the only real way to change their arrival separation is to edit the schedule file or create your own.  Depending on the plane the speed and rate of reduction will impact spacing more than others.  Larger airports not as big of a deal but GA and such will really hit hard if a jet comes barreling down on them. 

[FeelThere_Vic]

Quote

 

That is something I think I requested for the next version.  Not necessarily that we are able to issue those commands as ATC would handle most of that before handing over to the Tower but in this game all planes arrive lined up 20 + miles away from the airport when in reality there are waypoints and flight paths you all are taking to come in and getting on when leaving so having planes coming in like that would be nice as an option if we are going to take some of approach control away from ATC.  

Would make multiplayer a little more dynamic giving the other guy something to do on departure vs simply clearing them to contact departure having to get them on their path and approve altitude changes and such out of the airports airspace. 

 

What you describe here is the job of the approach/departure controller. This is (and lots of more) is available in our Tracon! 2012 simulator.

Vic

[Ripskin]

9 hours ago, FeelThere said:

What you describe here is the job of the approach/departure controller. This is (and lots of more) is available in our Tracon! 2012 simulator.

Vic

Exactly, I've played some games like that and it is a ton of fun but with Tower / 3D the planes arriving on perfect approach 20 to 30 miles out is not quite right.  We have no real options to put them in patterns (I dont count the downwind runway one which leads to separation problems for landing / departing planes) or anything stacking altitudes or to really guide them in so we are responsible for separation errors on things we cannot properly manage with the limitations 🙂.  At best we send them off to departure again for them to route in later or we manually turn them to another runway or try to slide them in between traffic and hope they slow down in time to flow with the others.  

If we can see them on our scope and as a pending aircraft scheduled to arrive but grayed out until it is handed over to us flying in on the path in turning into approach with other planes it may be a lot more hectic and fun to deal with and being able to ask planes to slow down more or speed up / change altitude to hold would give us some options.  Not sure of how much of a pain that would be to code / build but would make us feel more like tower with options and things to do vs just ground controllers.  In multi player (even with ai?) it would be a lot more fun for the two now having proper things to do in the air to guide them to their pathway out / hand off and bringing them in / guiding the different planes while the other manages the ground or splitting sides of the airport.   Everyone has their wish lists and you cant do it all 🙂

[crbascott]

To be honest, the things you are asking for (speed up/slow down/altitude changes) are not typically done by Tower controllers in the US for the size of airports we see in the game. I’m not sure what part of Texas you’re in, but the changes on your wishlist are done by Final Approach controllers at KDFW. By the time the plane is handed off to the Tower controller (usually 7-10nm out) speed and altitude have already been handled. The Final Approach controller has already cleared them for the Visual/ILS approach and issued a final speed requirement for separation.
 

As Vic said, these features are available with Tracon!2012. However, as you can tell by the title, it is old and shows it’s age worse than T!3DP. Having a new Tracon version that interfaced with the new version of Tower would be the ultimate wish, but I’m not holding my breath for that one.

[Ripskin]

2 hours ago, crbascott said:

To be honest, the things you are asking for (speed up/slow down/altitude changes) are not typically done by Tower controllers in the US for the size of airports we see in the game. I’m not sure what part of Texas you’re in, but the changes on your wishlist are done by Final Approach controllers at KDFW. By the time the plane is handed off to the Tower controller (usually 7-10nm out) speed and altitude have already been handled. The Final Approach controller has already cleared them for the Visual/ILS approach and issued a final speed requirement for separation.
 

As Vic said, these features are available with Tracon!2012. However, as you can tell by the title, it is old and shows it’s age worse than T!3DP. Having a new Tracon version that interfaced with the new version of Tower would be the ultimate wish, but I’m not holding my breath for that one.

Yup, like I said I am aware of that and have played a number of proper ATC games to manage that.  But the point is the game currently routes planes in a fashion that is not in line with what you posted.  So in that set up we can receive error's for jets flying up behind prop's etc.  If we are receiving aircraft well ahead of when we typically would if this was "real" then give us some options to deal with it.  Otherwise we don't need to worry about all of that and cut it out of the game.  May not be quite as fun doing that though so giving some options to handle aircraft may be a decent compromise to balance it out. 

[crbascott]

3 hours ago, Ripskin said:

Yup, like I said I am aware of that and have played a number of proper ATC games to manage that.  But the point is the game currently routes planes in a fashion that is not in line with what you posted.  So in that set up we can receive error's for jets flying up behind prop's etc.  If we are receiving aircraft well ahead of when we typically would if this was "real" then give us some options to deal with it.  Otherwise we don't need to worry about all of that and cut it out of the game.  May not be quite as fun doing that though so giving some options to handle aircraft may be a decent compromise to balance it out. 

The new version is supposed to take things to the next level and It should be done “right”. If the new version is going to be called a tower sim it should simulate the true actions/responsibilities/etc of a tower controller. If it is going to emulate a tower/approach scenario (what we have now theoretically), then I agree we should have all the tools necessary to perform the required actions/responsibilities.

But again, whatever we get hopefully it won’t be treated as a compromise or workaround. And, most importantly, it won’t be like T!3DP where there was next version wishlist talk even before it was released.

[Ron C]

On 2/21/2021 at 4:49 PM, crbascott said:

Yep, most likely a difference between Europe and US controlled airports. In the US and at the airports of the size in the game, separation is normally handled by final approach controllers (using commands similar to what you describe above) and not by the tower controllers.

23 hours ago, crbascott said:

To be honest, the things you are asking for (speed up/slow down/altitude changes) are not typically done by Tower controllers in the US for the size of airports we see in the game. I’m not sure what part of Texas you’re in, but the changes on your wishlist are done by Final Approach controllers at KDFW. By the time the plane is handed off to the Tower controller (usually 7-10nm out) speed and altitude have already been handled. The Final Approach controller has already cleared them for the Visual/ILS approach and issued a final speed requirement for separation.

On 2/25/2021 at 2:13 AM, FeelThere said:

What you describe here is the job of the approach/departure controller. This is (and lots of more) is available in our Tracon! 2012 simulator.

Thought I’d put my two cents worth in this conversation (hopefully without hi-jacking this thread too much).  Based on my experience as a previous military air traffic controller with both tower and radar approach control experience I can agree with all the above.  As an approach controller I wanted to make sure there was going to be adequate separation between IFR arrivals to help the tower out but also so I wouldn’t get the arrival back again if it had to go around because of inadequate runway separation (I didn’t want to have to work/sequence the same arrival twice, especially if busy).  I believe the game would be more realistic if the arrivals were handed-off to the tower closer in rather than being handed-off lined up 20 miles out.  However, I also believe (within the confines of my very limited programming knowledge) that for this to work effectively the T!3DP successor’s game engine (AI) would have to be able to ensure that adequate runway landing separation would be established prior to the hand-off to the tower (like a RW TRACON).  Without this I think you could have situations where there may not be enough time for the tower controller to increase the separation by using speed control that close in to the runway, especially since the aircraft should be already reducing to, close to, or at its final approach/landing speed.   

17 hours ago, crbascott said:

The new version is supposed to take things to the next level and It should be done “right”. If the new version is going to be called a tower sim it should simulate the true actions/responsibilities/etc of a tower controller. If it is going to emulate a tower/approach scenario (what we have now theoretically), then I agree we should have all the tools necessary to perform the required actions/responsibilities.

Agree.  If the arrival is going to be handed-off to the tower closer in and/or from different arrival routes, the separation (speed, distance and altitude) should already have been established by the radar approach controller at the time of handoff (that’s their job).  It looks like to me that it comes down to whether you want T!3DP’s successor to be based more on RW realism (i.e., a control tower that only handles the actual control tower responsibilities with an AI based TRACON) or a more non-realistic control tower simulation game where the tower shares/performs some of the TRACON’s responsibilities.  I personally vote for realism as much as possible.

As a side note, Tracon! 2012 may be old with many limitations, but I feel it does provide some good insight into what approach controllers actually have to do in order to ensure that the required separation between IFR aircraft is maintained until they have either landed or departed the approach control’s airspace.

PS. @EliGrim Thank you for your tools and the work you put in them.  Schedule Builder, Schedule Graph and Timetable are very useful and I'm using them a lot.

[EliGrim]

Here's my 2 cents, at the risk of being wrong, since I'm not and was no ATC in real life:

If speed adjustments are needed for seperation even after approach clearance, ATC (tower included) can issue these. It should not be done inside 5 miles or if inside the final approach point (or FAF in the US), whichever is closer to the runway, as the pilot is expected to make his own adjustments to complete approach.

Since the tower's airspace usually is a 5nm radius there's no need for tower to do so - but if tower gets the flight prior reaching this radius, the controller (we in this case) should be able to issue commands for seperation on approach.

About TRACON:

I tested LAX with the information from Mark Hargrove's tutorials. That was quite fun. Then I tried to find corresponding, detailed information about the airspaces/sectors for other airports... I did not succeed, neither in the manuals provided by FeelThere nor on the Internet - at least not in a format comprehensible to the "regular human being" (meaning non-ATC or pilot etc.).

Sending flights, without any sense or reason, from A to B, I found not very satisfying and so my Tracon!2012:SE adventure ended before it even started.

[Ron C]

 

On 2/27/2021 at 12:24 PM, EliGrim said:

Here's my 2 cents, at the risk of being wrong, since I'm not and was no ATC in real life:

I believe you are pretty much correct in what you said.  I wasn’t saying that tower controllers shouldn’t or don’t use speed adjustments only that if the approach controllers are doing their jobs correctly the tower controller shouldn’t have to use them that often.  I also think the capability for tower controller initiated speed adjustments should be included as part of a control tower simulation/game.  I wouldn’t think that it would be that hard to incorporate that capability into the new tower version since speed adjustments are already being used in Tracon! 2012 and appear to work pretty well (at least for me).

 

On 2/27/2021 at 12:24 PM, EliGrim said:

About TRACON:

I guess I should have realized that when I said to get some good insight into how complex a radar approach controller’s job can be using Tracon! 2012 was based on my own previous (maybe now somewhat dated) radar approach control experience and knowledge that not many forum members probably have on this particular subject.  You are correct though in that one would have to get some Tracon! 2012 training and game time experience to gain the “insight” I was referring to. 

[EliGrim]

Link to Schedule Creator added to first post.

[MJKERR]

On 1/15/2020 at 5:32 AM, EliGrim said:

TOWER3D.REC MOD

Modified version with enhanced commands.

I searched for this list of phrases to use, but all I find is this same partial list that ends and fades out at number 22
Could you please provide this listing within the ZIP file?

[EliGrim]

10 minutes ago, MJKERR said:

I searched for this list of phrases to use, but all I find is this same partial list that ends and fades out at number 22
Could you please provide this listing within the ZIP file?

I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean.
The tower3d.rec file is included in the ZIP and can be opened with any text editor. In addition, there is the Voice Commands Reference Card as PDF in the starting post, which includes all the commands contained in the rec file.

[MJKERR]

2 minutes ago, EliGrim said:

The tower.rec file is included in the zip and can be opened with any text editor

I thought it was Hex encoded and could not be printed out
Just need to edit it for printing

[MJKERR]

On 1/15/2020 at 5:32 AM, EliGrim said:

TIMETABLE TOOL

Generates a list of flight strips from schedules created with the Schedule Builder Tool.

https://timetable.eligrim.de 

Could you update this to include the latest airport releases?
I was going to use it with my EGLL file, but it is not included

[EliGrim]

1 minute ago, MJKERR said:

Could you update this to include the latest airport releases?
I was going to use it with my EGLL file, but it is not included

Unfortunately no. The Timetable Tool is exclusively for the schedules from the Schedule Builder and no new airports are added to the Schedule Builder anymore.

[EliGrim]

Since 3/15/2020, 5,000 schedules have been created using the Schedule Builder. The Schedule Information Tool has also been used more than 5,000 times and the Callsign Tool almost 3,000 times, while the Schedule Creator currently records an average of 96 logins per week, although the latter is not particularly conclusive.

I would like to take this opportunity, this little milestone, to thank you, the community, who enjoy using my little tools/websites.
Thank you very much that all the time I have put into this leisure project has not been in vain.

At the same time, I would also like to inform you about the future of the tools.

Among other things, there is still a bug with FlightAware data in the Creator, which will be fixed, and also the introduction video I still owe you. This should be done by the end of July 2021.
After that I don't intend to work on the tools any further, unless adjustments are necessary to keep the websites running. The websites will be online for at least the next 2 years, longer if traffic is still generated then.

Since I don't plan to make any changes after the end of next month, I'd like to ask you to let me know if you want to see any changes, especially to the Schedule Builder.
There will be no new features nor new airports available, but maybe a concourse/terminal of an airport will open in the foreseeable future where the terminal is currently unused, which should be covered before the end of next month.
For this I would like to receive your requests for changes - or not, should you be happy with the way things are right now.

Either way, thanks again to all who are having fun with the tools and hopefully will for some time to come.

[cwalfy1]

8 hours ago, EliGrim said:

Since 3/15/2020, 5,000 schedules have been created using the Schedule Builder. The Schedule Information Tool has also been used more than 5,000 times and the Callsign Tool almost 3,000 times, while the Schedule Creator currently records an average of 96 logins per week, although the latter is not particularly conclusive.

I would like to take this opportunity, this little milestone, to thank you, the community, who enjoy using my little tools/websites.
Thank you very much that all the time I have put into this leisure project has not been in vain.

At the same time, I would also like to inform you about the future of the tools.

Among other things, there is still a bug with FlightAware data in the Creator, which will be fixed, and also the introduction video I still owe you. This should be done by the end of July 2021.
After that I don't intend to work on the tools any further, unless adjustments are necessary to keep the websites running. The websites will be online for at least the next 2 years, longer if traffic is still generated then.

Since I don't plan to make any changes after the end of next month, I'd like to ask you to let me know if you want to see any changes, especially to the Schedule Builder.
There will be no new features nor new airports available, but maybe a concourse/terminal of an airport will open in the foreseeable future where the terminal is currently unused, which should be covered before the end of next month.
For this I would like to receive your requests for changes - or not, should you be happy with the way things are right now.

Either way, thanks again to all who are having fun with the tools and hopefully will for some time to come.

Thank you Eli.

Charles

[EliGrim]

tower3d.rec Mod  and Voice Commands - Reference Card  have been updated
 

tower3d.rec Mod

3 new "old" commands were found by a wildcarded (<- that a word?) community member for you to use.

• TAXI TO RUNWAY X (instead of just RUNWAY X or CONTINUE TAXI after the pushback)
• TAXI INTO POSITION AND HOLD (uses runway and path [if issued] from pushback command)
• LINE UP AND WAIT (w/o prefixing a runway, uses runway and path [if issued] from pushback command)

Voice Commands - Reference Card v2.03

• updated to reflect the changes in the REC file

[MJKERR]

5 hours ago, EliGrim said:

tower3d.rec Mod  and Voice Commands - Reference Card  have been updated

tower3d.rec Mod

3 new "old" commands were found by a wildcarded (<- that a word?) community member for you to use.

• LINE UP AND WAIT (w/o prefixing a runway, uses runway and path [if issued] from pushback command)

Does not work with EGLL, a departure runway has to be included
Assuming the test was a single runway
"Negative, callsign"

[EliGrim]

41 minutes ago, MJKERR said:

Assuming the test was a single runway

I cannot comment on EGLL, however I have tested the commands under several airports, amongst others with TIST, KLAX, EDDF, KATL, LEBL.

[MJKERR]

Tested again, same response aircraft has pushed back and requests Taxi Ready

[crbascott]

Line up and wait without specifying a runway definitely does not follow FAA standards. Can’t speak to other agencies.