Terrain-related aircraft crash risk

[Baldy's Boss]

This came up on another board here...

If the terrain surrounding an airport has no effect on the risk of crashes for aircraft taking off and landing...it should.

[Pilot]

If the terrain surrounding an airport has no effect on the risk of crashes for aircraft taking off and landing.

As far as I'm aware no.

it should.

Now this should depend on the setting you have for slope steepness. Your average aircraft approach is about 3 degrees, which works out at about 3.5% slope steepness, so anything 3% or below will have no impact on the aircrafts approach in the real world. Somewhere like London City with a 5.5 degree approach could handle a 9.5% Slope! This gives a guide as to the Degrees to percentage conversion.

When climbing, most Aircrafts autopilots default to 1800fpm, however, most departures are higher than that value, sometimes twice as high, and done at around 180knots (roughly 3miles/minute). The OpenTTD slope steepness' highest setting is 10%, or 528 feet every mile. Your aircrafts default climb rate would clear that. The only way it would be an issue on the departure would be if there was an engine failure.

[FLHerne]

What should maybe be a factor is tall buildings off the end of the runway - with some NewGRFs, I've seen planes fly through skyscrapers on takeoff!

SimCity 2000 used to measure that and cause extra crashes as a result.

[Alberth]

I sometimes buy a tile at the end of the runway to avoid that problem. If you use airports more regularly, or if you care more about realism, I could see you'd want to buy more tiles.
At least ISA has made a strip of landing/take-off lights that have the same effect, except with nicer graphics. Likely there are similar objects in other newgrfs, but I don't know.

[Baldy's Boss]

What should maybe be a factor is tall buildings off the end of the runway - with some NewGRFs, I've seen planes fly through skyscrapers on takeoff!

SimCity 2000 used to measure that and cause extra crashes as a result.

Indeed,there should be notice taken of building height.If a plane hits a building the damage should be shown and be reflected in population figures.Property values & land use should be affected by station proximities.

[Alberth]

Collisions are just optical illusions, except in a the rare cases of two trains or a train and a road vehicle.

[Eddi]

What should maybe be a factor is tall buildings off the end of the runway - with some NewGRFs, I've seen planes fly through skyscrapers on takeoff!

SimCity 2000 used to measure that and cause extra crashes as a result.

Indeed,there should be notice taken of building height.If a plane hits a building the damage should be shown and be reflected in population figures.Property values & land use should be affected by station proximities.

maybe you should play a different game then.

this is NOT a city development simulation. there is no such thing as "land value"

[kamnet]

Why can't there be?

[Baldy's Boss]

What should maybe be a factor is tall buildings off the end of the runway - with some NewGRFs, I've seen planes fly through skyscrapers on takeoff!

SimCity 2000 used to measure that and cause extra crashes as a result.

Indeed,there should be notice taken of building height.If a plane hits a building the damage should be shown and be reflected in population figures.Property values & land use should be affected by station proximities.

maybe you should play a different game then.

this is NOT a city development simulation. there is no such thing as "land value"

Then what do you call "cost to clear"?
Adding more features,whether or not players make use of them,is always an improvement.

[andythenorth]

Adding more features,whether or not players make use of them,is always an improvement.

I'm confident that's a fallacy. I can't prove it with any kind of science or words.

Adding features is possibly the most damaging action that developers can perform.

[Pyoro]

Too true, but while I'm not particularly enthusiastic about this airport thing (OTTD proportions aren't realistic* anyway), the land value idea certainly has merit: if land were notably more expensive around cities (and maybe industries), even on clear tiles, it'd add another dimension to the gameplay; balancing making short routes near cities and building around them for cheaper build cost. Besides, it's realistic*. I like it.

*yeah yeah, it's a game, I know, I know.

[TERdON]

Too true, but while I'm not particularly enthusiastic about this airport thing (OTTD proportions aren't realistic* anyway), the land value idea certainly has merit: if land were notably more expensive around cities (and maybe industries), even on clear tiles, it'd add another dimension to the gameplay; balancing making short routes near cities and building around them for cheaper build cost. Besides, it's realistic*. I like it.

*yeah yeah, it's a game, I know, I know.

There actually already is a patch somewhere that does roughly that. viewtopic.php?t=32942

[Baldy's Boss]

Real estate use & values could do with some more sophistication.proximity to transportation routes and amenities should affect cost-to-clear and just what gets built.Aircraft noise can affect town ratings,perhaps urges to build larger airports farther from town.
And how about monorail links of the airport kind?

[Pilot]

Aircraft noise can affect town ratings,perhaps urges to build larger airports farther from town.
And how about monorail links of the airport kind?

If you use the "Airport Noise... " setting (I forget the full name and don't have the ability to check it right now), you will see that the noise caused by each airport actually changes depending on how far away you build the airport from the City. I've built the Intercontinental Airport in some Cities, and only had it produce 1 Noise Pollution, due to it being so far away.

Monorails to Airports... You can build that yourself using either the default Monorails, or a NewGRF monorail.

[adf88]

the land value idea certainly has merit: if land were notably more expensive around cities (and maybe industries), even on clear tiles, it'd add another dimension to the gameplay

Isn't the "Local authority" mechanism meant for this? Besides, money is usually not a problem.

[Pyoro]

Well, money is usually not a problem because there's so few money sinks, I'd claim. Building a local, intra-city train line through/around a metropolis could be one such thing

dunno about local authorities. I always thought it's just there to be annoying (very realistic, but does it improve gameplay?). But perhaps one could interact with the other? Good local opinion: increase of building cost isn't quite so high. Bad local authority: very high increase of building cost. Get rid of the "can't build at all" thing, "just" make it so expensive that you normally shouldn't if it can be avoided.

Just a thought. I'd guess that it'd be rather complicated to actually implement ^^;

[leifbk]

Well, money is usually not a problem because there's so few money sinks, I'd claim. Building a local, intra-city train line through/around a metropolis could be one such thing

dunno about local authorities. I always thought it's just there to be annoying (very realistic, but does it improve gameplay?). But perhaps one could interact with the other? Good local opinion: increase of building cost isn't quite so high. Bad local authority: very high increase of building cost. Get rid of the "can't build at all" thing, "just" make it so expensive that you normally shouldn't if it can be avoided.

Just a thought. I'd guess that it'd be rather complicated to actually implement ^^;

It's an interesting idea, and I don't think that it's very hard to implement. It could probably be done with a grf or a gamescript. The Local authority rating is a numeric value varying between -1000 (Atrocious) and +1000 (Outstanding). (See the Wiki entry on Game mechanics.) Rescaled to a variable between say 1 and 10, it could be used as a divisor on construction, demolition and landscaping costs inside a town's jurisdiction, making it far more expensive to act when the rating is atrocious than when it's outstanding. In my opinion, this would be a lot more realistic (and far less of a cheat) than bribing the town council members.

[YNM]

If you use the "Airport Noise... " setting (I forget the full name and don't have the ability to check it right now), you will see that the noise caused by each airport actually changes depending on how far away you build the airport from the City. I've built the Intercontinental Airport in some Cities, and only had it produce 1 Noise Pollution, due to it being so far away.

Weirdly, I've build an international airport on "no man's (cities ?) land", which somehow weirdly after a while one of the cities which isn't the closest took the whole noise effect. Is that a bug ? Also, the noise doesn't go away with distance.

On-topic : Given that now we can have massive land height, wouldn't this be an interesting thing ? Say, a missed approach due to gusts at height or so ?