9月 11 日

Airport Master v. 0.2.2a RELEASED!

• Changed how flight scheduling works: from now on: Regular Flights (Airlines) add flight plans to flight schedule as per agreed Airline Master Contract; Non-Regular flights add flight plans only via Player's input (each new proposed flight is to be accommodated and approved by Player); each and every flight (regardless, regular or non-regular) that upon being filed interfere with currently allocated time slots (and\or ground parking stands allocation) requires Player's input to resolve the conflicting slots. Note: essentially Airline Master Contract penalties apply here in case that Player elects to resolve conflicting slots by moving regular flight's slot from previously agreed allocation; if the opposite way to resolve conflicting slots is elected by Player (e.g. move non-regular flight's slot and preserve the regular flight's one) in most cases, this will result in no penalties (other than cases when non-regular flight's slot is moved too far away from initially requested). For such cases, Player may elect to disapprove a planned flight of non-regular operator taking standard rating penalty. Also note: no Time Skip operations are possible if there is at least one non-allocated flight waiting approval\disapproval of a filed flight plan at any given moment.
  
• Changed how initial startup state templates work; now more elegant implementation compatible with new flight scheduling system is used;
  
• Added new (4-th) initial startup state template;
  
• Added Airport Maintenance Center (and waste processing facility) buildings and equipment to the airport;
  
• Changed mechanics of waste removal from aircraft: now upon requesting cleaning & maintenance, a maintenance vehicle arrives to stand of aircraft being serviced, removes the waste in batches of 8 units (this refers to liters of liquid waste, used food trays, etc), performs interior cleaning (as a separate operation), completes servicing at stand, proceeds to Airport Maintenance Center, unloads waste at the waste processing area, replenishes cleaning supplies, then proceeds back via security checkpoint to service vehicles parking; the UI for Maintenance Center will become available in future versions;
  
• Changed mechanics of catering delivery onboard aircraft: now upon requesting catering, a catering vehicle arrives to stand of aircraft being serviced, delivers food rations onboard, proceeds to AeroDelish Catering Building, replenishes food rations supply, then proceeds back to service vehicles parking; the UI for managing Catering Facility will become available in future versions;
  
• Added 3 new solar-panel blocks: 2 x 2kW roof diagonal blocks added to Airport Maintenance Center roof, 1 x 2kW PVB added to Fire and Rescue Station building roof;
  
• Added and configured power consumption to Airport Maintenance Center;
  
• Increased minimum interval for scheduling of non-regular flights from 10 minutes (since last scheduled) to 35 minutes - a temporary measure to ease workload on Players who do not purchase 'Fuel Transfer Rate' FBO upgrade early in game and get jam-locked airport due to high frequency of non-regular flights; this feature will still be available as a late gameplay upgrade (hiring a schedule manager) and will not affect the manual scheduling of flights performed by Player using the new scheduling system; changed;
  
• Reduced sale probability for all Vending Machines, especially not upgraded, especially after the machine has recently performed a sale - the resulting re-balance should render about 30% less frequent sales by each Vending Machine; upgrades improve this stat by a percent of the corrected re-balanced value; changed;
  
• Fixed Departures on Airport Time Table not updating; fixed
  
• Changed how Airlines' Rating of Player's Airport changes: instead of legacy system, which re-calculated Airlines' ratings once a game day, the new system is 100% dynamic, and displays updated ratings as they change; a notification is also displayed; Changed
  
• Fixed very rarely manifesting bug with Flight School student taking theory class under some circumstances being reported by Flight School both as taking theory class and as flying a training flight - this bug caused an exception breaking further play; We express our gratitude to Airport Master player - maxmilan76 for catching this bug and sending us his save-file along with very detailed description of circumstances under which it manifested itself. Thank you!; fixed
  
• Flight School students initial capacity increased from 10 to 13, theory class capacity increased from 6 to 8; in future versions this will become an upgradeable option; changed
  
• Fixed Time Skip mechanics bug resulting in Time Skip control becoming visible under certain rare conditions when ATC first reported that it has no actually executing operations and then once Time Skip control became visible a new ATC op became active. This allowed for mixups with actual and scheduled times for operations. Currently Time Skip control will become disabled (if it was enabled but a new ATC op began at that moment); fixed
  
• Added Aircraft Atlas, a centralized aircraft data repository, significantly optimizing the way various aircraft data (including physics-engine parameters, UI data, data used in intermediate processing etc.) being processed by the game engine - instead of storing aircraft related data in a variety of localized data spots, it is now centralized, has its own high-priority processing thread which leads to overall performance increase with any element of the game world depending on getting aircraft data;
  
• Fixed Maintenance Vehicles reporting removed 1 unit of waste instead of 1 pack of waste (8 units) both to Aircraft being serviced and to ground vehicles management causing erroneous display of waste removed in Aircraft Info Window and incorrect value in Statistics (thou waste was removed correctly and all charges\costs involved were also calculated correctly); fixed
  
• Maintenance Vehicles now display work progress indicators (0-100%) during all three activities, namely: cleaning airplane (waste removal), maintenance procedure, dumping of waste at maintenance center and refill of cleaning supplies; changed
  
• Added standard work progress indicator (0-100%) to Catering Vehicles, Pax Mini Buses, Baggage Carts, Fuel Trucks; added
  
• Added Follow Me \ Administration vehicles apron operations. Currently implemented: Apron Check (ATC may call for Apron\Taxiways visual checkup by Follow Me car once in a while at own discretion); Personnel Transfer between Control Tower and Admin Building; added
  
• Added Fire & Rescue vehicles apron operations. Currently Emergency Fire Engine at main Apron shift changes take place roughly every 2,5 hours game time during day hours and roughly every 4 hours at night;
  
• Added 37 new ground vehicles routes for Airport Vehicles in Admin\Maintenance area, Fire & Rescue Station area, Apron fire truck emergency parking area, Control Tower area
  
• Added event-driven barrier-gates operation to Security checkpoint located between Apron and Admin Building / Maintenance Center areas: every car passing in and out of Apron now must stop at Security checkpoint, obtain permission to proceed from Airport Security, only after that corresponding barrier-gate opens; added
  
• Changed parking stands assignment for FlightsCool aircraft: now stands G7 and G8 are always reserved for Flight School aircraft; changed
  
• Removed performance analyzer from Passenger Terminal doors; previously a special tool was attached to each of 4 doors to visually demonstrate memory leaks by causing doors to 'run away' from door frames - this has now been replaced by far more sophisticated performance analyzer and reporter tool; changed;
  
• Redesigned Passenger Terminal automatic doors, new optimized open\close routines, dispatch by Pax-bus, dispatch by Passengers arriving to terminal from City; darker glass material; changed;

• Added new aircraft Poggio Davanti D170 E (real-world prototype Piaggio Avanti D180 II) - the fastest commercial twin-turboprop in the World utilizing the unusual pusher-prop (duck) scheme, capable of high-altitude cruise at speeds comparable (and sometimes exceeding) those of business-jets, fuel-efficient, innovative and also the first truly commercially successful pusher-prop aircraft. The following liveries are added: N-210LS, BA-SLT, M-ASZO, GE-RLJ, N-134V (all privately owned);
  
• Implemented 3-section flaps (to be used later on larger aircraft and with D170's front wing coordinated flaps);
  
• Changed aircraft brief description, displayed in Info Window for the following aircraft types: CT55 (fixed typos, shorter description), L20V (fixed typos), PC13 (fixed typos), E30P (shorter description), P05T (shorter description), V28A (shorter description), RJ5X (longer description, fixed typos), ZN17 (longer description), VE58 (shorter description); changed;

• Implemented new FPS-effective Physically-Based Subpixel Lighting Model on some ground surfaces in and around the Airport;
  
• Added new computation maps (used by new PBSLM-lighting model) to various surfaces in and around the Airport;
  
• Implemented new shader pass batching \ caching for use with new PBSLM-lighting model;
  
• Added Player-configurable Details Draw Distance parameter to graphics sub-engine: as most flight environment simulations, our sub-engine relies on draw distances to balance FPS-loads on Player's GPU. Previously, it used single setting optimized at the game design time to fit most GPU configurations, however we think it would be appropriate to allow Players with decent modern GPUs to be able to set Details Draw Distance farther while Players with older graphics cards, integrated video boards or simply running a weak PC configuration may benefit from setting closer Details Draw Distance. Note: this parameter explicitly affects FPS, as we use many detailed objects with draw distances crossing at various possible combinations and we use more and more such objects with each new version - so a sound advice: if you're happy how your game looks - leave this parameter at Normal (Default), you may as well play with it to match your GPU-performance on the go - the slider in Settings menu affects the Details Draw Distance changes immediately;
  
• Added several Wind Generator Farms, consisting of groups of typical modern wind power generators - 5-10mW with rotor diameters of about 110m and total height on towers of about 150m; each wind generator is accurately modeled and all visible wind phenomena are simulated - those 'wind farms' allow for better visual immersion as they slowly rotate into wind, speed up and slow down rotors depending on wind speed etc. - 2 farms are installed in proximity of each runway end's ILS glidepath entry points making a nice live view on final approach, some windfarms are located on mountain ridges and can be visible on IFR departures and arrivals; additionally Wind Farms will become a part of gameplay when Helicopter operations are implemented;
  
• Added Soccer Stadium to the city, visible when watching aircraft on final approach runway 17 or go-around runway 35; in future versions, Stadium will become one of the venues generating passenger ops demand;
  
• Added parking lot in front of Passenger Terminal as a part of city side details enhancement (road traffic - buses and automobiles will be added in future versions);
  
• Added bi-directional x3 lanes road part serving as entry-exit road to Passenger Terminal area from M20 highway (to be added in future versions);
  
• Added bus stops at the airport and several key city locations;
  
• Added benches outside Passenger Terminal at city side;
  
• Added baggage carts inside and outside Passenger terminal;
  
• Added several types of highway and road signs to the roads nearest to the Airport;
  
• Changed asphalt textures of Power Substation and StoreStar Warehouses to new, compatible with subpixel lighting shader; changed

• Added new engine sounds for D170 aircraft, recorded from a real PT-6 engine (from another aircraft) and slightly re-mastered to implement signature 5 blades prop swoosh sounds at low-RPM prop revolutions;

• Added Flight Scheduling UI Screen (available via button on main UI buttons panel or by pressing F5 on keyboard); Each day's Flight Schedule consists of 24 1-hour allocation blocks, each consisting of 12 5-minutes spanned slots (as IRL);
  
• Improved Facilities and Businesses tabs in Airport Administration UI: new large buttons with images corresponding to each manageable item, easily readable large headers and brief description texts added;
  
• Fixed mouse cursor changing to hand-cursor over wrong click-areas due to incorrect order of 3D and UI elements when camera was in the following management screens: Airport Administration, FBO: Fuel, Flight School, Meteorology; fixed
  
• Re-designed in-game Settings window: now it is split into Visual, Audio and Interface sections in a more orderly fashion;
  
• Added Fullscreen\Windowed mode toggle button to in-game Settings window;
  
• Added Details Draw Distance control slider to Visual section of in-game Settings window (read more on how Dynamic Details Draw Distance works in Visual Enhancements section of this changelog); the slider is liked directly to graphics sub-engine, so all changes take effect as Player moves the slider; default and recommended setting is Normal (feel free to play with it to match your GPU performance);
  
• Added three new help screens to Help and Knowledgebase: #5 - definition and explanation of IMC and VMC, IFR, VFR and SVFR; #6 - International Radiotelephony Phraseology and help on ATC comm-box and two-way communications explanations; #7 - flight scheduling principles of operation and tips for efficient Flight Scheduling;
  
• Fixed bug with mouse-clicks going through the in-game menu and settings window overlays if an aircraft is visible right under an overlay; fixed
  
• Redesigned in-game menu overlay for more crisp and volumetric look;
  
• Changed some descriptions of current aircraft states, displayed in Aircraft Info Window during some stages of flight and ground operations; changed
  
• Fixed Average Airlines Rating not updating correctly in GM tab of Airport Administration screen; fixed
  
• Added Average Airlines Rating display + date and timestamp of latest ratings update to Airlines tab of Airport Administration screen;

6月 22 日

Airport Master Early Access Public v. 0.2.1.1a Service Update RELEASED!

• Added computation maps for several surfaces around airport in preparation to adopt the new Physically-Based Subpixel Lighting Model to be introduced in v.0.2.2a
  
• Fixed TimeSkip's dayskip bug that may have caused several critical game lockups with arriving aircraft - this non-regular bug manifested itself as Game Day suddenly changing from 1 to 8 (also Monday, but a week in the future) during a Time Skip operation initiated by Player, which in turn caused the arrivals schedule to break badly on actual day 1 - this has been fixed (hopefully for good!) and a protection against this type of bug's been introduced; fixed; thanks go to Christophe Lemaire for quickly letting us know of this bug in his playthrough and sending us his savegame files for us to analyze!
  
• Fixed bug with Chronometer on aircraft performing 'visual orbit left', 'visual orbit right' and 'orbit on localizer' on ATC request: if the game was saved while aircraft was flying an orbit and then the game was reloaded the pilot's Chronometer would have never been re-started and thus the plane would fly out of game world eventually depleting fuel reserves; fixed; thanks go to Lei Fo Schermimann for catching this one and for providing us with his saved game file for analysis!
  
• Fixed solar panels blocks, installed by Player on Passenger Terminal roof being displaced vertically by 1ft at the moment of installation and thus elements of these PVBs protruding the roof into visible area of passenger lounge; fixed

• Fixed Radar overlay in Main UI looking dim\dark after sundown; fixed
  
• Fixed daily Salaries payout value not shown until Player presses any Department's 'Info' button; fixed