Airport Simulator

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• Hacker News
• I love this emerging "3D pixel art" trend. Stylized graphics always age better than realistic. And it definitely has more charm
  by hexator
• Super fun game! Minor modifications that would be fun: * As you draw a path, at the same rate gradually bold/pulse all other planes' existing drawn paths from their current location forward so I can visually see if two future lines will not just overlap, but overlap at the same time * A slider to control game speed * A clearer arrow over the landing zone. It took me quite a while to realize how to land a plane * A timer over each runway to next takeoff
  by micah_chatt
• This is super fun! Really gets your heart rate going. I tried various tactics borrowed from actual ATC/tower techniques (drawing common approach paths; throwing in some 360 degree turns) but it never seemed to be enough as the traffic picked up :P I'm curious if anyone figured out any good strategies.
  by keito
• At some point I started to send incoming planes away like no airport for you!
  by tom2948329494
• Think it needs just a little zoom out on my phone but had a fun time. Both my games ended off screen
  by bakies
• Android makes this a chore with all its gestures too!

  But I'm not sure it could (or that I'd want) it to supress gestures like back and close application

  by rustyhancock
• This is an amazing game that I'm still playing after a week, no request for changes! Thanks a lot.
  by treszkai
• Not enough of you played Flight Control in 2008 and it shows.
  by paxys
• I was 3 years old
  by istoleabread
• When playing for the first time, a simple pop up tutorial would be nice, explaining what to do. Figuring out how to land and how to drag the planes takes a second, but it is fine. However, I still haven't figured out what to do with starting planes? I can't change their route, so how do I prevent two starting planes from crashing?

  Edit: I would also add some “crash margin” around the border of the screen. A plane coming from the top right corner and crashing into a plane leaving just to the right of the top right corner is frustrating.

  by V__
• yeah, not being able to vector departing planes is also a pain. Kinda makes sense I guess, but still annoying
  by tenacious_tuna
• Took me far too long to work how to get a plane to land, was drawing lines along the runway rather than dropping them on the coloured spot at the end and they were overflying. Was thinking the paths weren't straight enough, once I figured it out was quite funny to find the planes can do 180° turns mid air to land.
  by wjdp
• Yeah to be more realistic they should be able to land from either end of the runway. Mayve depending on wind.
  by paxys
• The pilots in this game are complete dum-dums and not following 14 CFR § 91.113 (b):

  When weather conditions permit, regardless of whether an operation is conducted under instrument flight rules or visual flight rules1, vigilance shall be maintained by each person operating an aircraft so as to see and avoid other aircraft.

  I had some aircraft pop in from off-screen and just run into another one that just took off.

  by DarmokJalad1701
• This game would also be better if I could actually decide when to clear departures.
  by foo4u
• Nice! But whatever happened to "Show HN"? I see more and more people posting their own projects here (which is completely ok!) but avoiding (or unaware of?) the "Show" option.

  About the game (sorry, sim) itself: it was really fun once I realized that I have to drag the airplanes to the runway threshold matching their color. You can draw a straight line from the plane to the runway, and it will land even if it has to do an instant ~360° turn directly before touching down, which is a liiiitle bit unrealistic :) Also, while landing the planes just float with constant speed right until the end of the runway and then taxi away. A nicer animation would be if they would touch down somewhere in the middle of the runway and then decelerate gradually before taxiing away. Same in reverse for take-offs.

  by rob74
• Show hn was overrun by ai slop for a while so I and presumably many others filtered it out of our feeds. That would have resulted in show hn getting much less interaction and potentially led to people not wanting to use the feature.
  by cure_42
• Maybe it's by design, but Show HN posts seem to just get completely buried, whereas posting stuff directly is more successful

  I've spoke to other people who've had the same experience, maybe just a coincidence but could be why people avoid it?

  by jmkni
• This was really fun to play with, I have a few suggestions: - As the airspace gets more congested, it becomes difficult to click the airplanes as you can also grab an existing path, messing everything up.

  - The big stats table on the top left completely obscures a good portion of the map, making it harder than necessary. A togglable or semi-transparent option would be nice.

  -The possibility of zooming or moving around could be nice

  by thanzex
• ctrl-shift-<minus> until the stats table is as small as you like
  by kronk
• Speaking of congested airspace…

  Yesterday’s 50-mile line of planes coming to Oshkosh is something to behold: https://youtu.be/9IHbO0tzpMc

  by nativeit
• I was only thinking about Flight Control[0] the other day and how I wish there were more modern takes on it! There was Mini Metro[1], but that was released over a decade ago.

  --

  [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Control

  [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Metro_(video_game)

  by sarreph
• Flight Control HD was one of the first iPad games I had. I under-appreciated how much easier this game was with a finger than a trackball.
  by eddieroger
• There’s an open source ATC sim called OpenScope that’s a bit more complex and is mostly keyboard based. I think HN would appreciate it.

  https://github.com/openscope/openscope

  by iron_albatross
• United Airlines offers the game for entertainment while you're flying.

  https://liveandletsfly.com/united-airlines-air-traffic-contr...

  by Telemakhos
• Mini Airways - ATC simulator comes close in base mechanics but adds some complexity

  https://store.steampowered.com/app/2289650/Mini_Airways__ATC...

  by jstummbillig
• Heathrow ATC (for the ZX Spectrum) was one that I played extensively back in the day: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/10530 I wonder if there are earlier examples of popular ATC games? They're simpler than flight simulators so you'd think there would be more of them.

  Edit: playable version - https://archive.org/details/zx_Heathrow_International_Air_Tr...

  by rwmj
• Flight Control was very closely remade as "Planes Control" [1] and gets regular updates with new levels, etc. Not sure if the developer acquired the assets of the original, but it's very close to what I remember playing as a kid

  [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/planes-control/id1015114550

  by bnc319
• Flight Control was one of my favorite iOS games of all time. Simple, polished, quick to play. Sucks that there is no way to play it on iOS again, seems it is still available for purchase on Steam, but it was really well suited to the phone format, not really something I'd sit down to play at a desktop.
  by jclardy
• In 2022 [0], Jan David Nose (jdno) released a game / programming challenge called _Auto Traffic Control_ [1]. Rather than controlling airplanes with UI interactions, the simulation is a GRPC server that expects the player to construct a game client that issues flight paths.

  I tried to make a game client for jdno's ATC [2]. My client was deficient, as I tried to treat the movement as a fixed interval, by only submitting flight plans that moved in cartesian directions. Only by cheating, modifying the simulator, could my greedy algorithm land any planes [3]. I suspect I was supposed to continuously model and poll the future positions of airplanes when developing a flight plan.

  I suspect that I won't have much competition on the leaderboard, despite the asterisk, as jdno eventually archived the project [4]. Originally, the project was self-publication while looking for work. The Rust Foundation hired him a little while afterward.

  [0] https://jdno.dev/auto-traffic-control/

  [1] https://auto-traffic-control.com/

  [2] https://github.com/Nzen/hircine-anise-okkoz

  [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czsSjy1Uqyk 1.5 minutes

  [4] https://github.com/jdno/auto-traffic-control/commit/b5972dfb...

  by Nzen