Airship High Mooring Mast

[kamnet]

Several months ago there was a discussion about implementing earlier dates for heliports, and making them more suitable for airships. I drew a mock-up at the time, worked on some tiles for a bit, then abandoned it.

The mooring mast is available from 1918 (earliest date I could find for erected masts) to 1960 (last year of operation for a commercial mast at an airport). The upper deck on the mast displays company colors.

Tonight I'm just going to put out there what I've done, and I'll let somebody else pick up any of the sprite or code development. I'm not putting this in the release thread for several reasons:

1) It's a bit of a hack. It replaces the single-tile heliport, but to make it look right with airships, the graphic overhangs another tile. If you're not careful, other graphics will lay over it and cause considerable glitches.
2) Alignment issues - there may not be a perfect "sweet spot" to put the mast in regards to the nose of the various airships.
3) Pixels lack proper shading, too lazy to fix it.
4) Not climate aware
5) Could use some more ground objects such as a nice period-appropriate building under the mast, maintenance buildings, maybe a windsock...

Anyhow, feel free to take this and adapt it to your needs. if you'd like to update it here, I'll be more than happy to edit this post to update to newer versions. Released under Public Domain, based on some code from RobC's heliport.

screenshot.png (22.71 KiB) Viewed 10709 times

[planetmaker]

Hm... this might make sense as alternate heliport in ogfx+airports

[Supercheese]

Brilliant! I was thinking about making an airship mast myself, but it seems you've beaten me too it.

Hm... this might make sense as alternate heliport in ogfx+airports

That would be quite cool, IMO.

[kamnet]

Hm... this might make sense as alternate heliport in ogfx+airports

Yep, it could! Won't even have to do all that much work to rotate the direction! Bonus: it gets to use my windsock I drew for ogfx+a!

Brilliant! I was thinking about making an airship mast myself, but it seems you've beaten me too it.

No, please, try for yourself! This thing sucks! I just like putting the ideas out there.

[kamnet]

I'd like to see this finished off and submitted to OpenGFX+ Airports. Don't have the time to draw it, though.

Ideally I'd love for it to look like the tower at St. Hubert, Ontario, Canada as part of the Imperial Airport Scheme. Of the three international towers that were built, it was the most majestic of all.

st-hubert-ontario-mooring-mast.jpg (25.38 KiB) Viewed 9041 times

[oftcrash]

Ooh, cool idea!

[kamnet]

Of course, just because it looks cool doesn't make it realistic.

The reality is that these types of masts were almost never used. Aside from the Imperial scheme, it wasn't widely popular in the UK, where the standard procedure was to use teams of people to haul the ships in and then attach them to a shorter mobile mast, and then use a tractor to drag the ship around. In Germany the masts were considered too dangerous, and they exclusively used ground crews. In the US they used both, depending on the country of origin of the airship. And outside of US, UK and Germany, the only other nations that experimented with airships extensively were Italy, France and Russia.

But, in OpenTTD, what else are you going to do until helicopters come along starting in 1936? Helicopters parked on rooftops didn't start becoming a norm until the 1960s, and by that time this NewGRF will disable itself and regular helicopter towers will be playable.

[oftcrash]

The other option would be a building like the Empire State Building, which had at one point there was talk about a mooring at the top.

Here's a famous fake photo of what it might have looked like.

dirigiblemooring.jpg (124.78 KiB) Viewed 9015 times

[kamnet]

They actually did attempt it once. It took over 30 minutes for workers on the building to finally catch a line to bring it in, and due to high velocity winds it could only stay moored for a few minutes. Because of the weather patterns and the way the buildings were already laid out, it made the task highly hazardous. It still so hazardous today that rooftop helipads are banned.

Of course, considering that they were literally flaming bags of hydrogen (due to very limited global stock, almost all of it owned by the US, and none of it allowed to be exported), you probably don't want that floating over major urban areas.

[oftcrash]

Of course, considering that they were literally flaming bags of hydrogen (due to very limited global stock, almost all of it owned by the US, and none of it allowed to be exported), you probably don't want that floating over major urban areas.

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

[kamnet]

Of course, considering that they were literally flaming bags of hydrogen (due to very limited global stock, almost all of it owned by the US, and none of it allowed to be exported), you probably don't want that floating over major urban areas.

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

[Supercheese]

Of course, there was also the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, which was filled with the same flammable hydrogen, and it flew more than one million miles, spending nearly two years ( ) flight time aloft in the sky (of its ≈9-year career), circumnavigated the world, and carried more than 13,000 passengers during its career, all without a single injury-causing accident.

[kamnet]

Of course, there was also the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, which was filled with the same flammable hydrogen, and it flew more than one million miles, spending nearly two years ( ) flight time aloft in the sky (of its ≈9-year career), circumnavigated the world, and carried more than 13,000 passengers during its career, all without a single injury-causing accident.

Very true. And there were lots of others that didn't, either. But, then again, but this time airship operators had learned enough about operating flying bags of hydrogen that it's best to keep them out of urban areas and that for safety's sake it was best to land in large fields. It's why today we don't try to fly large jumbo jets into the middle of a city, either, we move airports out into spaces away from places where many innocent people can be killed in the event of an accident.

But now we're just messing up my neat discussion topic! Somebody draw me a mast, already!!

[kamnet]

So after starting this thing seven years ago, in a fit of insomnia I decided to try to better my airmast. I've got a small start. Spent most of the day redrawing from a better source. I'm liking it a lot more now!

[Trond]

Me too =) Looks awesome!

Spent most of the day redrawing from a better source. I'm liking it a lot more now!

[kamnet]

A little bit more refinement. I'm not certain if I want to try to make a 2x or 4x zoom version of this. I am working for more detailed, larger graphics, and converting it down to a 1x zoom level loses a lot of detail. This looks pretty OK at 1x, but at 2x and 4x you're going to see how shoddy my work is.

[SimYouLater]

A little bit more refinement. I'm not certain if I want to try to make a 2x or 4x zoom version of this. I am working for more detailed, larger graphics, and converting it down to a 1x zoom level loses a lot of detail. This looks pretty OK at 1x, but at 2x and 4x you're going to see how shoddy my work is.

Ooh, nice!

[PikkaBird]

I'm not certain if I want to try to make a 2x or 4x zoom version of this.

My experience with UKRS3 is that working in 32bpp 2x is really nice. It's still chunky enough for pixel drawing (and there's only 4x the pixels), but it's enough resolution to pick out details, and airbrush shading complex shapes is so much easier than trying to pick between coloured pixels of the 8-bit palette.

[kamnet]

I'm not certain if I want to try to make a 2x or 4x zoom version of this.

My experience with UKRS3 is that working in 32bpp 2x is really nice. It's still chunky enough for pixel drawing (and there's only 4x the pixels), but it's enough resolution to pick out details, and airbrush shading complex shapes is so much easier than trying to pick between coloured pixels of the 8-bit palette.

The more I keep working on it, the more I feel like I'm screwing up on the fine details, or the fine details look really cheap and I know I'm probably not going to get better. A lot of this gets covered up because the fine resolution disappears at 1x scale, but overall the final product looks much nicer than I could have hoped for or drawn at 1x.

But, being as I'm releasing this into Public Domain, maybe somebody else decides that they want to try to do better? I certainly won't mind. I already have one offer on the table for a volunteer to code this in NML, which works for me too!

I did some more tinkering. This mast is designed after the famous one that was erected at St. Hubert Airport in Montreal. I initially trimmed off all the vestibules because I wanted something simple, clean, and easy to work with and fit on the screen, but I think I do want at least one vestibule which faces into the empty tile where the original heliport usually sits. I also threw in a little more color for variation. All of the colors sit on different layers, so it's easy for me to decide to remove them or alter them for 2CC down the road.

[Diesel Power]

Looks excellent Kamnet, great work!