ATTN: SCHEDULE CREATORS - WE NEED INPUT

[FeelThere_Vic]

Dear Folks,

This IS the time 🙂
During the Tower!XX wishlist we received so many requests for changing the schedule editor.
Currently we are thinking about something like this:
type/callsign/subcolor

It means you could set the type, the airline who flies it and a special livery. Would it be OK? Would it be useful for the regional airlines flying for many airlines? The subcolor could be a cargo livery as well. Please note the callsign would remain the same but you could add any number of liveries this way under the same airline.

When you set up the terminal instead of assigning an airline you could assign any livery into any terminal (so you could create for example international or domestic "liveries" by copy paste and send them to domestic, international or cargo terminals)

Please give us your input, this is the time when we can make changes. Please get your answer short and clean and with some examples.

 

Thank you

 

Vic

[VenturaGuy101]

I think this is a great idea.  I know in the past getting the information for cargo specific or contract carrier can be difficult but I think it gives the most flexibility for creating schedules going forward and that information can be added as it becomes available. It would be appreciated if you could give some specific examples of terminal and schedules for some of the multiple livery companies or for example commuter terminal vs the larger terminal and how those would be separated.

I do hope you are also adding a way to switch between official and custom schedules without having to copy and replace files is also in the works.

[crbascott]

@FeelThere 

Vic, thanks for the opportunity for input. In the wishlist topic I have already provided two posts with fairly detailed thoughts, a conceptual design, and examples. Among other things the main thoughts are to be able to differentiate cargo/commercial flights, implement regional carriers with multiple liveries, allow for special liveries, and expand terminal assignments to the gate level. My posts don't address domestic/international assignments but I would very much like to see this incorporated. Thanks! 

 

[DeltaVII]

My proposal was splitting the schedule up into an airlines file/table, a liveries file/table, and the schedule.

The airlines table/file would contain an ID, the IATA and ICAO codes, callsign, name, and country.
The liveries table/file would contain an ID, the airline table/file ID as key, the aircraft type (either IATA or ICAO code), and a comment (for the kind of livery, like company, special livery etc.).
The schedule table/file would contain ETA, ETD, the airline ID for the flight (from the airlines table/flight), the flight number, the aircraft type ID (from the aircraft table/file), the origin/destination IATA code, and the livery ID (from the liveries table/file).

That way, you could allow different liveries for the same aircraft type on the same carrier, like Republic, SkyWest and so on, and even special liveries (like the former Eurowings Europa Park livery for the A320) without having to put it for every single aircraft of the same carrier. (If you're really, REALLY, REALLY good, you could make a special ID for the livery in the schedule table/file - like "-1" or "0" -, so that upon loading the schedule the game engine randomly picks a livery from the available liveries for that particular aircraft and that particular carrier in case that you have multiple liveries for that configuration...)

You would only have to make sure that third-party developers for extensions each get a certain range of IDs so that one doesn't overwrite other entries. Doing it dynamically during the installation process would be a bad idea, because one schedule creator would very likely have different aircraft/liveries/airlines records under the same IDs.

[MJKERR]

17 hours ago, DeltaVII said:

My proposal was splitting the schedule up into an airlines file/table, a liveries file/table, and the schedule

I agree, this would probably be easier, and applied as required
Some of this already exists, so just separates out the liveries

Schedule format : 
GVA,LHR,320,BA,725,11:00,11:00,0,BA
Origin, Destination, Aircraft, Airline livery, Flight number, Arrival time, Departure time, Unknown, Airline

In my modified version of 2011 EGLL
I can allocate this flight to any stand or range of stands, as the terminal file has all the stand numbers
I can also apply any regional livery, if required as it is the fourth entry
So this can become :
GVA,LHR,320,BAE,725,11:00,11:00,0,BAE
This is still a BA725 flight, but now uses British Airways Europe livery and will use a stand allocated BAE

Another example
LAX,LHR,388,BAU,269,11:00,11:00,0,BAU
This is a BA269 flight, using British Airways A380 livery and will use a stand at Terminal 5B or 5C, suitable for a A380

Airline or livery :
XXz
The Airline codes stay the same, XX
The second component, z, allows 35 combinations, A-Z plus 0-9

[cHabu]

On 10/31/2020 at 1:20 PM, MJKERR said:

In my modified version of 2011 EGLL
I can allocate this flight to any stand or range of stands, as the terminal file has all the stand numbers
I can also apply any regional livery, if required as it is the fourth entry
So this can become :
GVA,LHR,320,BAE,725,11:00,11:00,0,BAE
This is still a BA725 flight, but now uses British Airways Europe livery and will use a stand allocated BAE
 

But it does not use the BA callsign, correct ?

Rgds, Chris.

[MJKERR]

1 hour ago, cHabu said:

But it does not use the BA callsign, correct ?

BA is normally BAW
An additional letter is added
I use
E Europe Terminal 5
S Europe Terminal 3
W International Terminal 5
T International Terminal 3
I A380 Terminal 5
U A380 Terminal 3

I use a similar techinque for separating out Passenger and Cargo flights and their liveries, and again the stands they should use
One example of this is a restriction on B747 cargo aircraft at Terminal 6 / Cargo

[DeltaVII]

@MJKERR Using the 3-letter-code for airlines in the schedule is a good point, since there are lots of airlines out there which don't have an ICAO, but only an IATA code and don't count as GA.

[ATC AlaskaGuy]

That sounds good to me will be cool to create the liveries on your own as to what the livery is suppose to be.

[MJKERR]

2 hours ago, DeltaVII said:

@MJKERR Using the 3-letter-code for airlines in the schedule is a good point, since there are lots of airlines out there which don't have an ICAO, but only an IATA code and don't count as GA.

The schedule file currently uses the two letter code
Increasing this to three letters gives an optional letter

[MJKERR]

I would like to see an option to add a random aircraft from an airline fleet (type)
Not sure how this could be applied
For example some routes use 
A319 : B737
B777-200 : B777-300 : A380
B767-300 : B777-200
The flights rotate between them

[FeelThere_Vic]

20 hours ago, MJKERR said:

I would like to see an option to add a random aircraft from an airline fleet (type)
Not sure how this could be applied
For example some routes use 
A319 : B737
B777-200 : B777-300 : A380
B767-300 : B777-200
The flights rotate between them

Sorry but it's highly unlikely. It would create more problems than solutions.

[FeelThere_Vic]

Please let me rephrase my question.
Would my proposal of the format would miss any options that you wish to use?
So let me show you an example:
We would have a 
BAW123/A320/BAWRETRO1
BAW234/B777/BAWSTANDARD

and in the terminal file you could set it up this way:

Terminal 1:
BAWRETRO1

Terminal2:
BAWSTANDARD

Vic

[EliGrim]

9 hours ago, FeelThere said:

We would have a 
BAW123/A320/BAWRETRO1
BAW234/B777/BAWSTANDARD

and in the terminal file you could set it up this way:

Terminal 1:
BAWRETRO1

Terminal2:
BAWSTANDARD

We would run into the same problems as we have now just with the option to assign a livery. I would completely do without a terminal file.

My suggestion would be:
(The bold print is only for better readability.)

Airlines (or Database) file:
ID0001;BA;BAW;A320;TERMINAL_1;GATE07,GATE08,GATE09,GATE14;BAW_LIVERY01,BAW_LIVERY03,BAW_LIVERY04;SPEEDBIRD
ID0002;BA;BAW;B777;TERMINAL_1;GATE06,GATE11;BAW_LIVERY02,BAW_LIVERY05;SPEEDBIRD

Schedule file:
0630;EGKK;123;ID0001;0715;EGLL;456
1217;EGKK;222;ID0002;1305;EGKK;333

Flight one would arrive at the airport at 6:30am, coming from EGKK as BAW123 and would depart at 7:15am going to EGLL as BAW456.
This Flight would be an A320 with BAW_LIVERY01, 03 or 04 and would use a free gate of the defined ID0001 gates at Terminal 1.

If you would start the game at 6:00am, flight one is an arrival and departure.
If you would start the game at 7:00am, flight one would be a departure only.

Text files would serve their purpose, an appropriate editor would of course be more user-friendly. In an additional file or integrated in the editor, the player would have to be informed about the terminal and gate identifiers.

Edit:
I do not know who reacted with the confused emoji?!? The player or schedule creator would have full control over the gates or a/c stands, as well as the liveries. If only one gate or livery for an ID is set, the game is forced to use it. If more than one is given, the game can decide for itself. For me this is a clean solution that is easy to implement for the developer.

Edit2:
And another confused user...
Folks don't just hit that emoji. Let me know what you don't understand so I can explain it to you!

Edited November 3, 2020 by EliGrim

[crbascott]

@FeelThere the proposed approach seems simple (possibly not the most efficient and clean design) but to directly answer your question I think it should allow us to:
~ eliminate the need of bogus IATA/ICAO codes
~ differentiate cargo/commercial
~ implement regional carriers and multiple liveries
~ allow for special liveries
~ distinguish domestic/international flights for parking purposes.

That checks most boxes for me. However, hopefully the terminal file will be much more granular (gate level is a MUST have item for me) than the example you provided. 

 

[ashman99]

9 hours ago, crbascott said:

@FeelThere the proposed approach seems simple (possibly not the most efficient and clean design) but to directly answer your question I think it should allow us to:
~ eliminate the need of bogus IATA/ICAO codes
~ differentiate cargo/commercial
~ implement regional carriers and multiple liveries
~ allow for special liveries
~ distinguish domestic/international flights for parking purposes.

That checks most boxes for me. However, hopefully the terminal file will be much more granular (gate level is a MUST have item for me) than the example you provided. 

 

I second that! Gate level seems like a must for most on the wishlist. I know not every item on the list will be used but Gate level not being added in would be a big let down especially since it sounds like ideas are trying to be implemented.

[FeelThere_Vic]

The new gate editor will allow you renaming any stands or gates. We are working on the SDKs already and even for ourselves it's amazing how far we can go by customizing it.

[MJKERR]

8 minutes ago, FeelThere said:

The new gate editor will allow you renaming any stands or gates. We are working on the SDKs already and even for ourselves it's amazing how far we can go by customizing it.

Excellent, that is great news
What about graded stands based on aircraft type?

For example at heathrow (not sure if this applies elsewhere)
L,R, so two aircraft can use
A single large aircraft then occupies the entire stand (central)

[FeelThere_Vic]

That's a topic for another conversation 🙂 We needed your input about the schedule making at this time 🙂 
Thank you everyone for the input, I hope you will like our new editor.

 

Vic

[MJKERR]

3 hours ago, FeelThere said:

That's a topic for another conversation
We needed your input about the schedule making at this time

It looks like you missed the third part I had included, although I probably did not elaborate and explain it very well
In my own 2011 Schedule I have split out
European aircraft (usually A320, B737 type aircraft), callsign up to Medium
International aircraft (usually B777, B747 type aircraft), callsign Heavy
A380 aircraft, callsign Super

[Braf123456]

How would it work by putting the registration number in 

[Braf123456]

Lhr,jfk,77w,aa,n719an,105,12:00,12:00,1,aa

[FeelThere_Vic]

On 11/6/2020 at 8:11 PM, Braf123456 said:

How would it work by putting the registration number in 

I think that would be unreasonable. There is no point for that and imagine a worldwide traffic where you need to add all reg codes.

Thank you

 

Vic

[Pdubya]

I think as long as the coding allows for the basic flexibility we talked about things should be fine. Nice to see it all coming along Vic, kudos and keep up the good work!

[FeelThere_Vic]

12 hours ago, Pdubya said:

I think as long as the coding allows for the basic flexibility we talked about things should be fine. Nice to see it all coming along Vic, kudos and keep up the good work!

Thank you. We plan to have a proper SDK for the next Tower version for sure 🙂 

Thank you all for the feedback.

 

Vic