Zeppelins and Other New Aircraft

[krtaylor]

I think ideally what you would have wanted would be for zeppelins to land and take off like airplanes at airports, except somehow without the taxiing, but be able to take off and land like helicopters at helipads. That would kind of be the equivalent of city-center mooring masts, such as the Empire State Building was designed to be.
I'm not really sure if there's any graphic development ongoing anymore, haven't seen anything in years. Seems like OTTD is still around, which is pretty impressive considering how old the basic game is.

[kamnet]

I think ideally what you would have wanted would be for zeppelins to land and take off like airplanes at airports, except somehow without the taxiing, but be able to take off and land like helicopters at helipads. That would kind of be the equivalent of city-center mooring masts, such as the Empire State Building was designed to be.

Truly, though, the thought of using the Empire State Building as a mooring mast was an infeasible plan, winds at that height and within urban areas are just too unstable to permit such operations, which is why no other urban building utilized them. And there's also the fact that it was pretty much only the British that attempted to work with stationary high mooring masts. The Cardington system was developed by the British Empire Airship services to work with the R-100 and R-101. Only 4 were built, and only the ones in Cardington and Montreal were ever tested before the whole system was scrapped. Germans did use masts, but they were fixed at the same height as the nose cone of the Zeppelins parked on the ground, and were accompanied by a carriage on a track which allowed the airship to rotate with the wind to keep it protected. Naval ships also provided some mooring masts, but here, too, these were operations near the water and just high enough for the airship to dock without landing in the water.

Nearly all airships, however, took off with a run, nose-up to gain altitude and lift, and landed on a run, nose-down, to descend enough for ground crews to grab onto lines and haul the ships down and secure them. The only time you would see an airship take off vertically like a helicopter is if it had a significant amount of lifting capacity after it as loaded (which was rare, because gas was expensive) and descend vertically if it was venting gas (again, rare, because it's not only expensive to vent helium, but with hydrogen it was extremely dangerous).

Still for the purposes of OpenTTD, taking off and landing as helicopters is fine. It doesn't feel unrealistic, and given the lack of helicopters in general it makes good use. If one were inclined, though, it would be quite possible to build nice small airship stations with short runways (2-3 tiles long, 1-3 tiles wide) exclusively for airships to operate like airplanes.

I'm not really sure if there's any graphic development ongoing anymore, haven't seen anything in years. Seems like OTTD is still around, which is pretty impressive considering how old the basic game is.

WAS is still getting regular updates, mostly new liveries for existing planes. AV8 is done, there may be some future development in AV9 but it probably won't be as encompassing as AV8 was. There have been some other aircraft updates in the last few years, most notably VACE which features VTOL aircraft. I try to inspire people to dream, draw and experiment where I can.