Question about dev of airplane behaviour

[weeknie]

Hi everyone,

I was looking at what features are going to be implemented in new versions of openTTD, and I have seen a little about improved behaviour for airplanes.
But it wasn't exactly clear what they're planning to change, so my question is, does anyone here know?

Thanks in advance

[planetmaker]

Airplane behaviour most probable won't change significantly. Maybe there are here and there some small additions under the hood for newgrf developers. With a bit of luck we might see improved and / or custom airports, though.

The best place to get to know what's going on is hanging around in the IRC channel and reading the commit logs. None will give you a sure hint of what will happen - as no one knows, predictions about the future are usually prone to error.

[weeknie]

Well, just in case a lot of people agree with me and think it would be worth it to post this in the suggestions forum, I'll put my idea here and see what you guys think about it.

The change I was hoping for was a far more realistic way of planes being handled at the airports, in terms of landing and taking off.
In the real world (so to speak), planes wait in a queue, by flying around in circles and decending a level in the column every time the plane in front of the queue lands.
Of course, it isn't possible to make the planes decend a level in openTTD, but the rest of the mechanism still works.
Let the planes fly around in circles in front of the landing strip (and not around the whole airport), and let the plane that's in front of the queue land first (and not the lucky plane that's the closest to the landing strip).
If this is implemented the right way, airports will be able to handle a lot more airplanes than they can now, especially the small ones. I've had numerous times that there were 8 planes circling around the airport (yes it was a little overcrowded but still), the strip was empty, but just because none were in the right position to approach, none would land, and by the time they got to the right position, the plane at the airport was ready for take off and thus took off, making all 8 planes go around another time.

For multi-strip airports you will obviously create multiple queues, with the airplanes getting neatly distributed between the queues.

Actually, now that I'm writing this, I might even want to implement this myself, though the problem is I don't have a clue as to how to do that (nor do I really know anything about C++, if I'm correct in thinking that's the language openTTD is written in)
So in case any openTTD dev were to read this and wouldn't mind helping me learn C++ and then help me understand the way openTTD works, please send me a message:)

Anyway, thanks for your reply planetmaker, I'll go pay a visit to the IRC channel, let's hope them pesky airporst get improved soon:P

[PikkaBird]

Of course, it isn't possible to make the planes decend a level in openTTD

Yes it is, or at least it will be with newgrf airports. So will all your other suggestions.

[weeknie]

Ah, that's the topic I was searching for

Thanks a lot:)