I want to use "Aircraft Range"

junho2813 · **Joined:** Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:15 am **Posts:** 14

Where's 'Aircraft Range' function?

I can't find this function in any GRF.

I can found it Aircraft sorts only.

I'm sorry that My english skill is very low.

Supercheese · **Posted:** Wed Dec 14, 2011 3:57 am

No aircraft sets currently feature the "Range" feature - including the default vehicle set. You'll have to wait for GRF authors to add it to their sets.

PikkaBird · **Posted:** Wed Dec 14, 2011 5:15 am

Soon (tm). This is ruining my plans to finish off pj1k though.

Supercheese · **Posted:** Wed Dec 14, 2011 5:31 am

PikkaBird wrote:

Soon (tm). This is ruining my plans to finish off pj1k though.

I know, so many snazzy new features hitting trunk within such a short time! (And even outside of OTTD, tons of cool new games flooding the market!) Truly a legendary Christmas!

Terkhen · **Posted:** Wed Dec 14, 2011 6:47 am

You need to give NewGRF developers some time to implement new features in their sets. 30 hours is not enough time to think about how ranges should be done in a given set, and which range should each aircraft get

Kogut · **Posted:** Wed Dec 14, 2011 7:52 am

Terkhen wrote:

You need to give NewGRF developers some time to implement new features in their sets. 30 hours is not enough time to think about how ranges should be done in a given set, and which range should each aircraft get

I hope they will need more time, as I am puzzled how my AI should handle this evil feature

FooBar · **Posted:** Wed Dec 14, 2011 9:44 am

Kogut wrote:

I hope they will need more time, as I am puzzled how my AI should handle this evil feature

Assuming you have access to all necessary information:
- get distance between each hop in schedule
- take max of that
- compare to range of aircraft
- if within range, aircraft is suitable, if not you need a different one.

So the info you need
- individual entries of schedule
- function to find distance between two points
- function to find max
- access to range of all aircraft

What may work is figuring out the complete schedule before building an airport, then checking if there are suitable aircraft (use a margin of x tiles because you don't exactly know yet where the airport will be, just the town it will be in). If there are aircraft, try to build the airports. If that worked, purchase the aircraft and set up the route.

Not saying that it should be done that way, but it may give you some ideas to work with.

Michi_cc · **Posted:** Wed Dec 14, 2011 12:07 pm

FooBar wrote:

So the info you need
- individual entries of schedule
- function to find distance between two points
- function to find max
- access to range of all aircraft

All there: http://vcs.openttd.org/git/?p=openttd/trunk.git;a=commitdiff;h=f27995568eb9e06ac28d2729a61591ca88d3b40b#patch8 (captures that ship buoy distance thingy as well). You "just" need to figure out a proper algorithm

-- Michael Lutz

Kalen · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:04 am

I guess it might be a bit obvious that the property must be set by the NewGRF authors, but when the feature was implemented, I actually thought it would magically apply a range value for all my aircraft sets. Of course, it didn't take me long to realise the absurdity of such a thing.

One thing though: I'm hoping NewGRF creators will apply variable range factors - if possible - to their aircraft considering many people play on maps larger than the original or even 2048x. Millionaire profits aside, it wouldn't be very realistic or appeasing gameplay-wise if aircraft were the only vehicles that couldn't cross an entire map, considering how they're, well, aircraft. :wink:

bremerjoe · **Joined:** Tue May 24, 2011 9:01 pm **Posts:** 94

Kalen wrote:

One thing though: I'm hoping NewGRF creators will apply variable range factors - if possible - to their aircraft considering many people play on maps larger than the original or even 2048x. Millionaire profits aside, it wouldn't be very realistic or appeasing gameplay-wise if aircraft were the only vehicles that couldn't cross an entire map, considering how they're, well, aircraft. :wink:

I hope for a variable range factor or even an on/off switch too. Although I fully understand that an Airbus 380 happens to have a slightly longer range than an old Boeing 737 in real life also. :lol:

PikkaBird · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2011 3:42 am

Kalen wrote:

One thing though: I'm hoping NewGRF creators will apply variable range factors - if possible - to their aircraft considering many people play on maps larger than the original or even 2048x. Millionaire profits aside, it wouldn't be very realistic or appeasing gameplay-wise if aircraft were the only vehicles that couldn't cross an entire map, considering how they're, well, aircraft. :wink:

I thought I would do this, but it turns out that the ranges don't scale very well without being silly.

I knocked up some numbers and put them on the wiki here, what do you think?

MinchinWeb · **Joined:** Tue Feb 01, 2011 12:41 pm **Posts:** 186

Having ranges on planes shouldn't be too bad; you just might have to build airports like Gander, Newfoundland. There was a time when to fly from the States to Europe involved a stop in Newfoundland and one in Ireland.

Supercheese · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:18 am

PikkaBird wrote:

I thought I would do this, but it turns out that the ranges don't scale very well without being silly.

I knocked up some numbers and put them on the wiki here, what do you think?

Minor point: the default Lockheed Constellation has the same range as its upgraded versions. Shouldn't it start lower and increase, since the newer models had larger fuel tanks? Edit: already changed.

Also: In-Flight Refueling upgrade for the Hercules/other military transports?

planetmaker · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:29 am

PikkaBird wrote:

I thought I would do this, but it turns out that the ranges don't scale very well without being silly.

I knocked up some numbers and put them on the wiki here, what do you think?

I would expect that modern airliners like Boing 777 and Airbus A380 could cover the whole map, irrespective of its size. Which means cover a distance > 2048 * sqrt(2) = 2897.
But otoh it's a matter that taking a 2048**2 map as guide will make distance scale nearly pointless already on a 1024**2 map, even more so on a 512**2 map. Thus it's tricky. You *might* consider to scale it by the maximum of the linear map size ( #13 in http://newgrf-specs.tt-wiki.net/wiki/Re ... hVariables ). Range for aircraft is quoted in the purchase menu and available via callback 36, so it should be no technical issue for players to accept that nor to implement it.

PikkaBird · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:39 am

planetmaker wrote:

I would expect that modern airliners like Boing 777 and Airbus A380 could cover the whole map, irrespective of its size.

Well you would expect wrong then.

In any case, I'd rather keep things more interesting for 256* and 512* map sizes than relieve 2048* players of the burden of building an extra airport.

Eddi · **Joined:** Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:14 am **Posts:** 4614

PikkaBird wrote:

planetmaker wrote:

I would expect that modern airliners like Boing 777 and Airbus A380 could cover the whole map, irrespective of its size.

Well you would expect wrong then.

In any case, I'd rather keep things more interesting for 256* and 512* map sizes than relieve 2048* players of the burden of building an extra airport.

i do believe that if you use scaling by map size, then you can cover both cases easily.

planetmaker · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2011 6:41 am

PikkaBird wrote:

planetmaker wrote:

I would expect that modern airliners like Boing 777 and Airbus A380 could cover the whole map, irrespective of its size.

Well you would expect wrong then.

In any case, I'd rather keep things more interesting for 256* and 512* map sizes than relieve 2048* players of the burden of building an extra airport.

My suggestion was geared towards making it interesting for *every* map size (with maybe a minimum range limited to the assumption that 256 is the smallest size):
EDIT: like range = design_range256 * [ 2**(max(0, map_size - 8 )) ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777 wrote:

On November 10, 2005, the first Boing 777−200LR set a record for the longest non-stop flight of a passenger airliner by flying 11,664 nautical miles (21,602 km)[7]

The Earth has a circumference of 40,000km, thus a 777-200LR can reach any point on Earth (neglecting flight corridors). And looking it up, I learnt the A380 indeed only has about 16,000km range.

Michi_cc · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2011 12:23 pm

Scaling the range by map size might be a good idea or might not be, I guess only playtesting will give an answer here. To give a bit more detail about that range stuff, an aircraft can reach all airports whose northern corner is inside a circle with radius "range prop" around the northern corner of the origin airport.

planetmaker wrote:

The Earth has a circumference of 40,000km, thus a 777-200LR can reach any point on Earth (neglecting flight corridors).

And, more importantly, neglecting any payload

The longest route people would actually fly is likely London-Sydney at 9188 nautical miles, but no aircraft ever built so far could do that distance economically viable. That's unlikely to change in the near future.

-- Michael Lutz

Kalen · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:18 pm

PikkaBird wrote:

I thought I would do this, but it turns out that the ranges don't scale very well without being silly.

I knocked up some numbers and put them on the wiki here, what do you think?

I'm no expert in aircraft science, so I can't really say if the ranges are realistic enough, but from a gameplay standpoint, assuming they are described in tiles, they seem quite acceptable, even if only a few cover the whole edge distance of a 2048x map.

Thinking about it, I realise that most aircraft routes in 2048x maps and below shouldn't really be so long as to be hindered by range, unless you use an older aircraft (but that makes sense). Maps above that do worry me, since it will botch some long routes that may actually be realistic in real life (i.e. when using "maps of the world"), and if we're to implement range as a realistic factor, it'd be hypocritical not to accept that such routes would also be realistic just because they make life harder for the range implementation.

At any rate, if a variable value isn't possible or is just too clumsy to implement, then I believe it all should come down to a single value implementation and an on/off switch. That would solve most issues with bigger maps. The reasoning behind this is simple: the values you've input in the quoted link are nice and all, but for smaller maps they hardly make a difference (look at the amount of aircraft models with range equal or above 256). Conversely, if you were to lower them further, they'd be ridiculously hindering for bigger maps. Thus if a variable value is dodgy, I guess a switch is the only viable way - and it does makes it all much simpler if you just have to focus on maps up to 512x.

PikkaBird · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:27 pm

The minimum useful aircraft range is 96 tiles, imo, and that only barely. Thus scaling the ranges down so fewer aircraft can cross smaller map sizes seems silly; of course most airliners should be able to travel more than 3 times the range of the shortest-range aircraft (especially considering this set doesn't think commercial aviation started with the DC-3 :roll:

).

Actually, I don't see this feature changing most OpenTTD players' behaviour at all, since most players just spam the largest aircraft, and those are also the aircraft with the longest range.

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