NewGRF (Air)ports - general discussion

[Ben_K]

Skidd, thanks mate. That was meant to be a PM to you but I guess I pressed the wrong button. Sorry for polluting the thread Rich - I'll delete the post out now.

...also more realistic to use VORs or other radiobeacons as waypoints.

Now that would be a great idea. Id love to be able to place VORs or NDBs to use as markers. Rich, if thats an idea you fancy, I'll knock up some sprites for them?

[richk67]

Yeah, sounds cool. What I would really like are some of the lighting stands that go along the runway approaches (often in the preceding farmer's field!!). The T-bar shaped ones with 3 lights. If these could be made to blink on the yellow cycle, and have 4 versions (one for each stage of the cycle), then I could arrange them to flash in sequence in either direction.

So request for 8 lighting towers: 4 for NW/SE facing, 4 for NE/SW facing. (Other direction can just be left/right reflection of other). So its really only 4 graphics.

I know its only cosmetic, but its pretty

[Chicago Rail Authority]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approach_Lighting_System

[Topic related reading material]

[Ben_K]

...approach lights...VOR/NDB...

Ok, I'll sort them as soon as I get a chance. I guess we want a single bar set for a visual runway (Maybe the smaller ones) and a full 5 bar for instrument runways. Do you want them on just one tile, as the 5 bar would probably be big enough for 2 or even 3 (Will scale it appropraitely dependant on your request).

[Ben_K]

Ok, Ive been sketching this evening and have knocked up a VOR. I have also added a fence and a hut. I wasn't sure of the extra additions so Ive added them all to this pic and you can choose whatever suits best. Let me know what you think.

NewAirport.png (5.6 KiB) Viewed 7621 times

Edit: I think the hut needs blending into the ground a little better and some more texture. That can be worked on if you want it there.

... lighting ... runway approaches ... flash in sequence in either direction.

Hmmm... having thought about this, in the UK we rarely use flashing lights on approaches. (At Gatwick we have 2 strobes at the threshold of our spare runway when that is in use but only to stop people landing on the main one). I think the Americans use strobe approach lights more than us. As far as Im aware, strobing is only used on visual runways as you need steady high intensity lighting when landing in bad visibility. Hence why most large airports only have steady lighting.
Of course, I can draw them however you like

[richk67]

San Francisco now open for business

[rav]

I have just uploaded the airportsextended.grf using Skidd13's graphics. This is a prototype, and we would appreciate comments on the graphics.

they look great, BUT.... you guys missed a glitchy glitch

[richk67]

Its not a glitch - its just a graphic that doesnt yet have any other rotations.

When I asked for comments, I did mean comments on the graphics we have changed...

[Kahee]

Where can I download these airports ?
And this mod: http://nylon.net/ttd/ott/irregular.png
Please help me !

[XeryusTC]

You can download them when you find the capslock key, or rather, the method to disable them. I'm sure the search function also doesn't like being shouted at.

[m4rek]

Would you mind if I start throwing my airports at you?

[richk67]

LOL. May I duck?

Yes, fine. I like the look of the small one you've done. Certainly worth looking at as a time-replacement for the original airport in later years.

[MarkyParky]

I was playing around lately with NewGRF Airports stuff. I am writing this post, to start discusion about general airports scale, before people starts to code new airports from all around the world.

Original TTD scale is somewhere between 0,3m and 0,5m per pixel. One tile is 20 - 30 meters diagonaly and its side is aproximately 15 to 20 meters long. This works pretty fine with buildings, rainway stations, trains, trucks. Planes use different scale - they would be to big to fit into a tile using 0,3 or 0,5m scale, so they are aproximately 1m per pixel (tile 45x45m). This is not much disturbing and it is working pretty well.

And now we are coming to airports. Both original TTD airports and your RealWorldAirports use completly different scale - tile is aproximately 400x400 meters in size, making one pixel about 8m. (Your La Guardia has a 2100m runway only 5 tiles long).
This is (in my point of view) causing two problems:

a) If airport buildings fits scale of planes or other stuff in OpenTTD, like today, they are too big compared with airport itself (tower is as tall as runway is long). This looks ugly.
b) Airports have big advantages over railway stations - an airport 6x6 tiles wide is capable to handle much more traffic than pure 6x6 tiles station.

On the other hand, it is absolutely unpossible to use same scale as is used for aircrafts. If we would use 1m per pixel, La guardia would have runway 47 tiles long. Noone would build such a big airports. So it would be nice to figure out something in between. I have been playing with this some time, and figured out, that about 200m-250m per tile is pretty reasonable. Most of the world airports would have runways betwen 10-15 tiles long and using empty tiles, it allows to build more realistic shapes of airports than just square ones. Also building at original 0,3 or 0,5m per pixel scale look much beter compared to long runways than before. Your La guardia have now 5 and 6 tiles long runways, and consumes 28 tiles. In a 200m per tile scale, it would have 10tiles long runways and it would consume aproximately 50 tiles. In my opinion, this is good compromise between realistic scale and original scale, and it is also good for gameplay (it is not as easy as before to build large efective hubs, if they are twice as big ase before).

I welcome any comments about airport scaling

Finaly I would like to ask one question - I noticed, that it is not possible to code an airport with more than 256 tiles. You can build 16x16 or even 15x17, but as soon as you go over 256, game crashes. This is feature or bug?

Thank for any comments..

[athanasios]

We have discussed this in the past. I prefer correct scaling. As we need far more bigger maps for it, I agree with your suggestion for ~15 tiles lenght for our current state.

[skidd13]

The good thing with NewGRF stuff is that you are able to choose yourself which GRF's you want to use. So IMO the scale discussion is needless.
I think that the ariports form the orignial TTD airports and the ones form the current OpenTTD should be supported/shiped with OpenTTD (compatibility reasons).
If someone prefers more realistic ones he will be able to write a GRF and use it.

The reason for the new graphics is that the devs prefer free graphics for this opensource game.

That's my 2 ct.

[m4rek]

When I asked for comments, I did mean comments on the graphics we have changed...

Hmmm, I really don't like those hangars, I think they are really really ugly. That's not too helpful? How do you improve them? You don't. Start again.

I'd suggest my own hangars, but they are yet to be finished, and Lt_Gable's hangars are good too, though I'm not sure how finished they are.

[skidd13]

When I asked for comments, I did mean comments on the graphics we have changed...

Hmmm, I really don't like those hangars, I think they are really really ugly. That's not too helpful? How do you improve them? You don't. Start again.

I'd suggest my own hangars, but they are yet to be finished, and Lt_Gable's hangars are good too, though I'm not sure how finished they are.

I'm the one who drew them. And they are WIP. I'm already at a rework. If you don't like them create a sprite replacement GRF. And yes the comment is not helpfull. You don't tell us why you don't like them!

[Born Acorn]

To me, the Hangars seem a bit flimsy. Like a tent. The original hangars give the effect of a thicker wall with a lighter vertical row of pixels at the ends. (Zoom in on em and you'll see what I mean) It'd help to try and implement this method.

[Alberth]

I already posted this idea here but I'll post it here again since this thread seems to be dead:

I just had an idea about how to achieve in game modularity without having to use a fancy editor:
use construction blocks like runway+taxiway of different lengths and terminal areas with their own state machines and interface them at certain points.
This way the user could "design" its own airport without the trouble of having to code it from scratch.
Each block might only have one entrance and one exit point to interface with another block and you might have to build connectors (taxiways without intersections) to interface them.

Yesterday I had a go at computing a state machine from a given airport layout, and got nowhere. It is possible to specify a airport layout, and compute the paths without much problems. The major obstacle however is preventing collisions. When one plane wants to go from A to B and another from B to A, and between A and B only a single lane exists, then

1. the computer must deduce that having two plane on the lane going in opposite directions means trouble, and
2. the computer must deduce that only one plane can be at the entire lane (independant of how many blocks the lane is made of).

I am currently quite stuck at the first item. It is like you have a number of routes (lists of street names in a city) from one place to another, and you have to find out whether two people using the lists will collide.
Just the same streetname is not enough, if both go in the same direction, there is no problem...

The best that I can do is to have the user specify which blocks belong together, then verify that no accidents will happen.

Albert

[Aydan]

You could forward reserve all blocks up to the next intersection and free blocks behind you. This would prevent oncoming traffic. The other plane wanting to enter from the other side would only have to check if it can pass through the intersection without stopping.

Code: Select all

     V              |
     |              |
-----A++++++++<xx<--A

- free block
A intersection
+ reservation one
x reservation two
< plane moving left
V plane moving down

If the downwards moving plane wanted to go right it would notice that the block right of the intersection is reserved and would not enter the intersection.