Airport Master Early Access Public v. 0.2.3a RELEASED!

Airport Master Early Access Public v. 0.2.3a RELEASED!

Changelog follows:

Game workflow

• New mechanics for flight scheduling for all non-regular flights operators: when a new non-regular flight is scheduled, it's now scheduled as VFR if when the following conditions are met: 1) an aircraft can use general aviation ground parking stands (i.e. wingspan < 14m) and 2) flight arrival time is between 0800Z and 1700Z (daytime) and 3) meteorology conditions at the time of arrival are expected to be VMC; otherwise - flights are scheduled as IFR. For the return-flight, it is scheduled as VFR when the following conditions are met: 1) the arrival flight had been filed as VFR and 2) time of return flight departure falls between 0800Z and 1700Z (daytime) and 3) meteorology conditions at the time of departure are expected to be VMC; In all other cases IFR flight plan is filed (even if initial request by aircraft operator has been for VFR return flight). Note: in future versions government, law enforcement and Airforce Academy flights will be scheduled as SVFR if need arises to file VFR flight plan at night (still with regard to VMC meteorology conditions).
• Airforce Academy (airline code: ARF) can now operate both as regular and non-regular flights airline; this concerns both weekly and daily scheduling procedures;
• New game startup states now include VFR flights; changed
• Now flight scheduling and actual flight taking place are more distinguished: a flight plan filed to flight planning system does not necessarily mean a flight would happen as well as it does not mean that if the flight does not happen, it will result in rating change consequences for Player: a whole host of situations are now taken into account as to flight planning and actual flying: a) a flight has been scheduled but been canceled on operator's behalf (no rating change); b) a flight has been scheduled but Player canceled it (standard rating change as per airline master contract); c) a flight has been delayed but not canceled due to weather conditions prohibiting flight to take place on time (no rating change); d) a flight has been delayed by operator (no rating change); e) a flight has been delayed by Player (rating change due to this behavior of Player to be implemented in future versions); f) a flight has been scheduled but for some reason failed to comply with arrival\departure min\max time shift margins (e.g. an operator used that same aircraft to schedule a flight to some other airport than Player's and there it got delayed for any reason) - no rating change; e) flight scheduling on either Player's side or Operator's side ran into some obscure logical condition (e.g. a new arrival for the same physical aircraft but under other Flight Number somehow (bugs or erratic or intentionally interruptive behavior of a Player) got approved to be put on flight planning system while the aircraft is still physically in Player's airport (pending departure + flight time + whatever associated times of service) - no rating change, silent removal of conflicting 'rogue' flight data from flight planning system upon first regular check; added
• Changed how IFR departures and arrivals are handled internally: previously an operator was bound to request an IFR arrival\departure point and ATC was bound to provide routing to\from that point; from now on when filing a flight plan, an operator simply specifies To\From Airport and desired routing prior to or after operations in Player Airport TMA - that is fully sufficient for flight planning; on actual operation start ATC may elect to issue clearances to other routing points or vectors for IFR departure\arrival - this is a very important step towards future expansion of routes and airports and especially important for implementing real-world style operations of larger airliners; changed
• Changed how Non-Regular Flights flight plan filing works, from now on: no new flight plans will be filed starting 2200Z and until 0800Z time (during night hours), since the majority of private general aviation flights would now prefer VFR, and in accordance with common sense and realism, this is an obvious choice (note: a flight plan filed say at 2150Z for arrival at 0300Z and back flight at 0430Z will, of course, be processed and proposed to the Player for approval or denial; if approved it will be filed as night time IFR according to new mechanics); this change only affects new flight plans filed during night hours - there will be none, making night a less burdened, quieter time of day for Airport Manager; changed
• Raised precision of all Meter-to-Feet-to-Meter calculations for altitudes and flight levels - this becomes more important as variety of VFR traffics co-use terminal maneuvering area airspace; changed
• Added Heliport facility to the Airport - currently available at the start of new game but will become an upgrade item (requiring certain amount of funds, achievements and City Mayor's rating to be purchased). Heliport is added as a predicate of Helo operations coming in future versions;
• Added heliport lighting equipment (approach and pad lights, light masts) and configured them in accordance with standards;
• Added VFR arrivals and departures (full-scale VFR flights are now possible); Smaller aircraft scheduling flights to\from nearby airports will prefer VFR over IFR when visibility permits, thou some IFR flight plans by smaller aircraft will still be filed once in a while; helicopters (coming in future versions) will file VFR (and SVFR) flight plans;
• Changed: aircraft now take a little more time (from 3 to 7 seconds on average) to start taxing after receiving taxi clearance, making it look more natural as it takes time to check visually 'clear on left side' \ 'clear on right side' and release the parking brake; changed
• Fixed runway border lights used same rules for turning on and off as taxiway lights - changed to correct set of rules; fixed
• Fixed time-gap between 0700Z and 0800Z when under IMC, incorrect set of rules applied to runway and taxiway lights; changed to correct set of rules; fixed
• Fixed departures (smaller aircraft that don't require full ground service) not displaying pilot and pax thou those are onboard and reported to statistics module correctly; fixed

Aircraft

• Added new aircraft Zeccna Z205 Estateair (real-world prototype Cessna C206 Stationair) - single piston-engine prop, very popular as small cargo and charter airlines workhorse, featuring seating of six (or roomy cargo-space) and signature double-door to ease up loading. The following liveries are added: N1217P, DE-AFG, EC-ORM, RH-JWL, FE-VKX, N881L, LE-RCK (all privately owned);
• Tweaked pilot's taxi visual precision for VE58 type of aircraft for smoother following of taxi routes; tweak

ATC

• Added 3 new Airports: Suntown Regional (JASU/STR), Sharkole County Municipal (JKSC/SHR), Culfer Airfield (JACL/CUL); all three located to the North or North-East of Player's airport and use IFR SIDs\STARs via PAROM intersection and VFR point PT-N for TMA entry\exit;
• Added visual departure routes to VFR-traffic exit points: PN-N, PT-NE, PT-W, PT-SW, PT-E;
• Added visual arrival routes from VFR-traffic entry points: PN-N, PT-NE, PT-W, PT-SW, PT-E;
• Fixed ATC issuing incorrect altitude clearance for STARs\SIDs via MONET, LINTA and PAROM intersections (ATC neglected westbound\eastbound odd\even Flight Level rules); from now on: PAROM and LINTA clearances are: departures - FL110\FL130; arrivals - FL120/FL100; MONET clearances are: departures - FL100\FL120; arrivals - FL130/FL110; fixed
• Fully implemented ATC handoffs from APP to CTR on any of 4 conditions: a) aircraft reached designated point of standard instrument departure procedure (SID); b) aircraft reached VFR departure route point (or reported leaving TMA); c) aircraft reached maximum radar-control-distance; d) aircraft reached assigned Flight Level while flying a SID - in any of these cases, Approach controller hands the aircraft off to the Control\Center controller;
• Fixed aircraft not reading back taxi instructions to GND controller in some cases; fixed
• Fixed GND issuing taxi clearance from holding point HC3 to holding point HM2 via taxiway Charlie (now correctly via taxiways Charlie & Delta); fixed
• Fixed ATC phraseology when clearing an Aircraft for ILS approach (both APP and TWR); fixed
• Fixed ATC phraseology when being called on DEL frequency, Delivery responded with TWR callsign; fixed
• Fixed ATC not giving next frequency when transferring aircraft from DEL to GND; fixed
• Radar flight following mark now displays only TMA entry\exit point (instead of visual route name) for VFR arrivals and departures; changed
• Fixed Cleared altitude or FL not displayed on a flight strip after loading a saved game; fixed
• Changed default time on visual orbit left or right from 30 seconds to 1 minute for more realistic traffic separation on visual circuits and VFR arrivals entering downwind leg; note: IFR arrivals if assigned an Orbit on ILS maneuver by ATC - by default, still orbit for 30 seconds; changed
• Fixed Landing Clearance issued by Tower sometimes not appearing in Comm-Box; fixed
• Fixed (hopefully!) the rare occurrences of ground stand scheduling for Flight School aircraft when a Player could cause any other parking stand assignment than G7 & G8, which in turn caused pesky bug with completed time table operation by a Flight School aircraft to stay persistently on Flight Schedule Management screen; hopefully fixed
• Added differentiation between clearing VFR arrivals for visual circuit altitude (1000ft) and issuing a 'maintain 1000 ft' resolution to aircraft currently already on visual circuit (local training flights and VFR go-arounds); added

Visual enhancements

• Added 3 new types of 5-storey houses to the city;
• Added 3 new advertising posters to Pax Terminal automatic ad-changer displays;
• Added new detail layers to MTMLBs covering airport area, mostly grass underlay details, occasional dirt and nature details;
• Added new set of MTMLBs covering area next to existing runway, where a new runway (purchasable as mid-game upgrade) will be situated; two other sets of MTMLBs (one covering Second Pax Terminal area and the other one, covering city-side area were tested but not included in this update as both require more compatibility work with regard to coming auto-generated (autogen) blocks and streets of buildings, trees and other non-systematic detail objects);
• Added new experimental shader for MTMLBs - depending on GPU load it may use double pass to render ground details MTMLBs in order to eliminate z-buffer flicker; added; experimental
• Terrain shader has been modified to work seamlessly with experimental MTMLBs shader both in single-pass mode and double-pass mode; changed; experimental

Cameras

• Changed the way Selected Object Camera treats minimum and maximum distances for each object type: instead of old uniform formula for all types of aircraft (wingspan/2+5m for MIN and MIN+35m for MAX values), which was uniform alright but did influence the fact that the larger aircraft gets, the more it's subjective scale in Player's eyes would seem distorted); the new formula takes wingspan groups into account allowing for better perceived MIN and MAX distances; changed
• Tweaked MIN and MAX distance for vehicle object type when Player selects Object Camera; tweaked
• Fixed the location of Object Camera Reference Point on all aircraft of type D170; as a configuration error, the reference point was shifted too far front, making the rotation of Object Camera uneven; fixed; Thanks go to Mathew Ellison for noticing this bug and reporting it!

User Interface

• Changed how Flight Schedule gets updated when an operation completes: previously Flight Schedule window was updating in sync with Airport Time Table Displays, so when a flight arrived at the stand or left TMA, the actual update of both would happen with regular 5 minute intervals - thou this behavior is realistic for Airport Time Table Displays it is not for Flight Schedule - so now: once an operation completes the data of arrived\departed flight stays on Time Table Displays for 5 minutes, but gets instantly removed from Flight Schedule; changed
• Added new flight phase descriptions displayed in InfoWindow for VFR arrivals and departures; added
• Changed flight phase descriptions displayed in InfoWindow for IFR departures and arrivals to display actual STAR\SID instead of associated intersection; changed
• Added current balance display to all management UI windows, where purchases are possible, namely: Airport Administration, FBO, Flight School, Electric Power Management, Meteorology Office, Vending Machines Management, Cafeteria, as per multiple Player requests; added
• Changed balance display format: leading zeroes display is now optional; grouping by thousands digits added;
• Added option to display or hide leading zeros in balance display to settings window;
• Fixed Flight Schedule Management Screen information update performance issue caused by non-optimal 'Update Slot' calls; this may have resulted in some slots that has already been updated to receive a command to update data another time - thou not critical and rarely encountered, this bug could have caused a slowdown when updating Flight Scheduling Screen; fixed
• Added two options, 'Display Airline Rating increase notifications' and 'Display Airline Rating decrease notifications' to Airlines Relations Management tab of Airport Administration Screen: if checked - each time a corresponding Airline Rating change occurs (increase or decrease) a notification is displayed, clicking it switches Player to Airlines Relations Management screen; this way each Player can decide whether they want such notifications displayed or not; added
• Fixed Airlines Ratings numbers roundup to one digit (one tenth of a per cent) in all screens displaying Airlines Ratings; fixed
• Changed layout of Flight School student view bar for better readability; changed
• Added %% of completion of Theoretical, Practical and Solo Flying courses with color coding of completion progress; added
• Fixed actual flight hours of a Flight School student were displayed incorrectly (multiple digits after comma), now fixed to standard e.g. 13.1h; fixed
• Fixed some notifications not switching to corresponding tab in Airport Administration UI when Player clicked notification, thou opening the Admin UI itself, no tab change happened; fixed
• Added new game main menu backgrounds;
• Added game main menu animations;
• Added animation to STICLI Games logo; clicking the logo now opens our website
• Changed scrolling credits view screen to close and return to game main menu on any key or mouse button press, not just -key (as it was before); changed
• New color coding of ATC Flight Strips now distinguishes IFR and VFR departures and arrivals (with VFR ops being slightly dimmer colors of IFR counterparts); also changed Missed Approach flight strip to brighter 'pale-red' color; also changed ground ops and ground service flight strip colors to define commonality of ground ops; changed
• Changed Help Screen #3 to reflect new color-coding of ATC Flight Strips; changed

Sound

• Added new engine sounds for Z205 aircraft, recorded from a real Lycoming TSIO-540 engine; thanks Tony!
• Changed engine sounds for V28A aircraft, previously it used generic PT-6 sounds making sound clearly unlike the real-world counterpart, but now that we've got a possibility to record live sounds from vintage hangar-stored Archer with Lycoming O-360 engine, VE28 finally gets its real-world engine sounds; changed
• Changed engine sounds for ZN17 aircraft - recorded from Lycoming O-360-A4 engine after restoring - one can hear the definite difference of later two; thanks Tony!
• Tweaked audibility zones ranges of all nature ambient sounds for better sound blending of overlapping ambient sounds; tweak
• Crickets and cicadas ambient sounds zones located in Heliport area are now only working when Heliport upgrade is not yet purchased by Player; once Heliport upgrade is purchased, cricets and cicadas move further out to the east; changed