Airports & Airplanes

Hello respected community!

Finally, airports and aircrafts landed into our game! It has been a ride, but although there are still some isseues toaddress in upcoming days, I'm happy to welcome all of you aboard!

Please keep in mind, that this is only first pack of planes available, more will come hopefully soon (for later eras).

Here is a changelog:

Airplanes & Airports

• Added new transport vehicle type - Airplanes
• Added ground infrastructure - old and new airport facilities

Airplanes

• There are currently 17 planes in the game (more will come later)
• You can transport limited cargo types by airplanes (passengers, mail, goods and food)
• It is quite expensive way to transport passengers / cargo, but it can be extremly fast
• Planes can smartly plan their path from one airport to another, and on the airport itself
• You can manage airports in routelist, add air waypoints or even use specific runway's / taxiway's tiles waypoints
• Planes reserve a runway 5 tiles before landing, and can cancel landing maneuver anytime and circle around airport instead
• They can wait on the last taxiway junction before occupied airport stands or stop and go through hangars if they get stuck
• They can even change altitude while circling the airport, when they need to avoid obstacles
• Each plane requires different runway length and may require modern runway type, and each can have different fly altitude
• Added new visualization of obstacles around airports (terrain, buildings or even trees can prevent plane takeoff / landing)
• Planes can be controlled from pilot perspective, althought it is very difficult when flying :)
• Planes use fuel only when flying

Airports

• You can design your own airport by placing runway tiles one by one, taxiways, junctions, airport stands, airport buildings and hangar
• You can also create, share or use airport stamps of interesting airport designs, making their reusing easier
• Minimalistic airport needs runway and airport stand, which is 2x1 tiles, but the actual building part can be overlapped with another airport stand building. This allows for even more unique airport designs
• There are several basic airport stamps included for your inspiration
• Airport has several automatic signals to smartly control movement of planes, while maintaining maximum airport throughput. Runway has signals on both ends reacting to incomming plane reservation. Runway and stand have also entry signal and stand and hangar have exit signal. There are several single plane only areas: airport stands, hangar and runways. On the other hand, airport taxiways allow multiple planes lined up on them, so there is buffer for planes waiting between loading/unloading at the stand and landing/taking off on the runway.
• Airport runways have huge 4 tiles pollution distance, so it can be better to place airports away from the town.
• Airports can be naturally combined with other transport types and act as a transport hub when using passenger destinations feature
• There could be railway or road tunnels under the airport, making combinations even easier
• Old airports can be easily upgraded to a new one when the upgrade becomes unclocked reaching specific era
• Taxiways are one way only and warning icons show you if there is missing entry/exit or unusable road
• Each runway has its own number shown on the runway ends. The number is also shown in routelist when runway is used as a waypoint.

UI & gameplay

• Planes can be managed in a similar way as other transport types, duplicated, replaced by newer type, driven manually, etc.
• Icons for planes are bigger, so hangar window and all lists have been updated accordingly
• Planes cannot be stopped or turned around while in the air or while performing landing / takeoff maneuver
• There is a new dynamic parameter in plane info window. I call it "runway accumulation" and it shows how many tiles the plane needs for accelerating / decelerating on the runway and if it affects the possibility to take off, stop or even turn from runway to taxiway. This is also helpful to watch when piloting your plane by yourself.
• Airport has also key bindings shortcuts that help you to build airport faster
• There are error messages when plane is unable to reach destination, when it requires different type or length of a runway etc.

Quests

• There are several new plane-related quests you can jump in and enjoy
• Some other quests can be finished by using planes now as well

Graphics

• Aside from new visualization overlay for flight obstacles, there are many improvements because of planes
• Every vehicle part can be animated independently now (used for independent spinning of wheels and propelers)
• Vehicle innertia is divided to ground innertia (default) and air innertia, and planes can smoothly transition between them when taking off / landing
• Multiple particle generators on each vehicle
• Different rotation of plane parts when moving on the ground and when flying (rear wheels touch the ground only when plane doesn't have enough speed to take off. This can also help to see if "runway accumulation" is enough for takeoff when piloting a plane by yourself)
• Animation can be driven by power instead of speed (used also for propelers)
• Rotating propelers can switch to blurry version when power set above 50%
• AI driven vehicles increase power smoothly now, so propelers' spin speed increases gradually
• Vehicle path plan visualization has "shadows" in construction mode now, so you can easily see the altitude
• It is possible to turn the vehicle path plan visualization on even in realistic camera mode now to help you pilot your plane easily
• Crashed planes fall to the ground

Fixes

• Fixed onboard cameras for flipped vehicle
• Fixed weight of vehicle speed when planning passenger destinations
• Improved stamp setup window (now each infrastructure type can be selected independently)
• Properly flipped engine's/vagon's icons in replacement list
• Fixed placing one way curve onto the same tile as diagonal track
• Fixed garbage tutorial Czech text endlines
• Fixed typo in caption when placing signals
• Fixed crash in path finder in some rare circumstances
• Added colors into routelists
• Fixed skybox flickering

Enjoy the flight! :)

Best regards,
Jan

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