Further discussions on modular airports

[tigerface]

Yes, I know this comes up every week and as such I have done searches and have also given this some thought past the "plz make modular airports 4 me plz" stage.

Now that YAPP is in trunk, would it be possible to slightly adapt it to use as a pathfinder for taxi-ing aircraft? I did some tinkering and came up with this:

airport.png

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I'm going to explain my idea as a train analogy as best I can..

I would assign every runway as either Take-Off-Only, Landing-Only, or Dual-Use. TOO-runways would have a "station" at the point where the aircraft enters the runway, LO-runways would have a "station" at the point where the aircraft clears, and DU-runways would have one at either end to determine the "clearing" end and the "entering" end. (Now that I think about it you could possibly have a dual-use "station" to use at the end of the runway at small airports.)

Unlike in the picture, each gate would be a different "station". On landing (reaching the "clearing station"), the aircraft could look for the route to the closest available "gate station", much like the pathfinder for a train does. It heads up the taxiway, reserving its' path ahead if needs be. When it enters the "station"/gate, it's reserved path would be freed much like trains currently do under YAPP. When it has done its loading, it looks for a route to the closest "entering station" and reserves it's route when possible and heads off again. I can smell a performance-hit with all this extra pathfinding, but I think it would be fairly insignificant compared with the performance requirements for the pathfinding on a large train network.

Graphically, not much work would need to be done, IMHO. Break up all the current parts of airports, and draw a yellow line across the taxiway where the "traintracks" are. Players could put down a runway according to what length and direction they want, lay down some tarmac, and start drawing yellow lines over it in much the same way they do with traintracks now.

Thinking hard about it, airports would be less efficient. Maybe leave the option to have the current high-effiency airports in, as sort of pre-made templates that dont allow planes to reserve paths. (This sounds difficult to me.)

What do people make of this suggestion?

[DaleStan]

How much trouble do you have designing rail networks that are jam-proof?

Have you ever attempted to prove that your rail networks are jam-proof?

Now, prove that whatever the user builds, it will be jam-proof. Because if ever an airport is not jam-proof, it will jam, and it will be reported as a bug.

[dihedral]

and "jam lasts forever"

[tigerface]

How much trouble do you have designing rail networks that are jam-proof?

Lots But that to me is part of the fun of the game - designing networks that work and work well.

Since YAPP went to trunk, there haven't been that many topics on jams being reported as bugs, even though it required that for an efficient network you build in a way completely different to that which you would have had to have built before.
Edit: In fact only 9 "bugs" have been reported since YAPP made it into trunk at r13926.
I find that YAPF is quite logical and that when there is a jam, it's fairly obvious what the route cause is. OTOH, there is always the wiki to offer advice on "good practice" when it comes to airport building. I'm sure a few enthusiastic testers would not spend long finding setups where jams are likely, and "avoid this sort of thing" or "this is efficient" entries could go on the wiki.

BTW, I left the "airport" in the picture running for ten hours overnight and the traffic is still flowing. There are over 25 "aircraft" using it with differing orders.

and "jam lasts forever"

Not here. I love jam. Had it for breakfast, in fact. Blackberry, my favourite

[Zutty]

How much trouble do you have designing rail networks that are jam-proof?

Have you ever attempted to prove that your rail networks are jam-proof?

Now, prove that whatever the user builds, it will be jam-proof. Because if ever an airport is not jam-proof, it will jam, and it will be reported as a bug.

Errr.... do people report their jammed up rail networks as bugs? When it does happen, is it a big deal to ignore this?

[Eddi]

the difference is that airports are more tightly packed, and there are no ways to untangle such a jam in an airport, where you have slight chances of redirecting trains on a train network.

[tigerface]

Can anyone make a jam? A watched pot never boils and all that..

Edit: just found a problem trying to make a small airport. Sure there is a way to do it though..

Edit2: problem turned out to be either YAPP or YAPF not looking around 90 degree corners. I still see no problem in the feasibility of this.

[Dimme]

Hi thanet-bomber!

Some people may think you are really way off here. But if you look at the thread in my sig, I made an example implementation of modular airports that is working fine. It is actually based on the pbs idea, but with a few major additions to make it free of deadlocks (planes may still be stuck for a while on badly designed airports due to heavy traffic). The proof is quite complicated, but it has been well tested, and all reported bugs are fixed

The problem with using your idea as it is, is that even though it is possible to make consistent airports this way, it is also possible to make airports that jams. Some may say that would be part of the challenge, but there are, as dalestan and eddi said, reasonable objections to that.

Regards
Dimme