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sviridovt

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Everything posted by sviridovt

  1. Loans are hard to get but leases are very manageable for smaller planes and a low quantity
  2. Also, just to clarify all Veterans and Staff Members get the same benefits as Patrons, so will be able to access the early releases and the exclusive graphical features. These features include everyone being able to update an airline livery, but Patrons will get to upload a livery per aircraft type, and get to further customize their 'My Airline' page with more exclusive features to come at a later time!
  3. Hi Folks! A lot of announcements today both minor and major so lets get the minor announcements out of the way, I have restored all the Veteran/Patreon roles from the old forum server crash, so that should be restored. If you use a different account now please reach out and I'll update it. I have now created an archive of the forum on https://archive.airsim.world/index0e5b.html?/forums/, so if you want to refer to the old forums for any reason its there should you need to for archive purposes. I have also fixed all the role badges and stuff. Forum Alliances are back! Now for the major announcements. As most of you have noted 0.3 has been taking a while, this is in large part because of the huge time commitments I have with grad school as well as just the scale of the update. To this end, I feel like the idea of having a bunch of major updates is just not working insofar as I am unable to produce updates as quickly as I would like. Another part of it is the fact that it has become a bit of a wish-wosh of different features in different stages of completion which is also largely due to the large time frame of the release (I dont feel like working on the same things all the time, keep in mind this is a project I do in my spare time that I actually lose money on). I like having major releases both because of the hype that it creates (its great to see people excited for an update, and probably is my single biggest inspiration for working on this) but also because it allows me to more easily keep track of features and allows me to group the various database changing features together (since live database changes are both the riskiest and most painful part of deploying a new version, because although there is always a backup that is ran to ensure the safety of the data, restoring the backup takes a while, and the preparation I go through to ensure that the update runs smoothly (basically doing a practice run on a local build) takes a while). That said, having one major update a year is pretty slow pace. And so to this end I think I will make a pretty significant change. First, probably tomorrow though no later than before A II resets, I will release 0.2.3, which will be mainly a maintenance update with bug fixes and auto-gate leasing (because that's the single biggest source of confusion for new players) as well as support for new parameters for the new demand model so that the data team could get cracking on those (those wont do anything until the new demand model update gets implemented). From there on out, we're going to switch to a rolling release type system, whereby rather than grouping a bunch of features together I will just work on what I can and try to get an update once a month, some months there will be major changes, some months very minor, some months there might not be an update and others there might be more than one, but thats the rough idea. Basically every month I will put out a Patreon test build, let it run for 1-2 weeks there to test it and the deploy it on the live server (BTW, if you want to help support ASW please feel free to support our Patreon here, I will be introducing Patreon only features into the sim (cosmetic non-game changing ones, so nothing that would give an unfair advantage) with the first rolling release as well). As for versioning we're going to move on to the calver versioning system, whereby the version will be YY.MM.Micro (so the first rolling release will be 20.11.0 Alpha) (ps, if you dont care for versioning schemes thats fine, I just always found them very interesting). This will probably need to change once we're out of Alpha/Beta but we'll deal with that when we get there. As such, the first rolling release will probably the November release whereby the Patreon early access will be released in late October/very early November, and then a full rollout a couple of weeks after. For that update it will have a bunch of UI updates, updates to maintenance and (maybe) the new demand model. The way that I will get these releases out is by continuing to work on 0.3 and then just merging finished features that get completed into the rolling release to ensure that no unfinished features break anything, which should allow me to also still keep track of progression and work on multiple features at the same time. BTW, if we get more Patrons and there is significant interest I am willing to put the in development version of 0.3 or whatever version I'm working on a test server but currently its just not worth my time, but if the Patrons are interested I would be ok with it. Either way, let me know what y'all think, I'm always looking for feedback and to see what you guys want to see. The support you guys have given me has been great and really keeps me going. Thanks!
  4. Hey folks! One of the main issues that I'm trying to tackle with the sim long term is the progression, currently the progression (in my opinion) is too slow in the early game, and too fast in the late game. Thus one idea I had was to increase the number of planes that you get an instant delivery on from 1 to 5 (and increase the starting cash accordingly to allow you to take advantage of that). I have my qualms about this solution as I am afraid that it will just speed up the rate at which one can get into the crazy progression stage of the sim, but that happens exponentially anyway so maybe its not much of a change. Either way, I set up a poll to address this for the upcoming A III reset, so let me know what you think. The other change I was thinking (though one that wont be implemented for AIII) is to change how timing works in the sim, to have it run faster in the earlier years of the world (though still slow for the first 3 days to allow people to join), and then slow it down after 5-10 years or so. I would love to hear your feedback about both of those ideas so let me know!
  5. No, planes with no flights are free to store.
  6. Also there are flight restrictions and agreements that are missing, please let me know if you know of any and a source and I'll add them into the sim!
  7. Hey folks! As you all wait for 0.3 I have added into the database a host of open skies agreements and specialized political restrictions that should expand the game while you wait for 0.3. This was already implemented in the sim some time ago, though the data for these was never entered. The new changes are listed below, enjoy! Flight Restrictions US - Cuba, except exclusively between the following airports (there are others, but I lost the complete list, if you know which airports are missing please let me know): US: JFK, MIA CU: HAV US - DPRK (North Korea) Open Skies Agreements For these agreements, any airline based in one of the member nations can fly freely between or within any of the other members nations (an airline based in France may fly between Spain and Germany for example), for flights outside the agreement they still must originate or terminate in their home country. EU Open Skies Austria Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden US (Partial member, EU members can fly to/from US from any of the member countries but can't fly within the US) Australia - New Zealand Open Skies Australia New Zealand (duh) ASEAN Open Skies Myanmar Thailand Vietnam Laos Philippines Cambodia Brunei Malaysia Singapore Indonesia Another restriction that I was thinking of implementing but was doubtful on (which is why I didn't implement these sooner, and why I'm not implementing it here) is Israel. Israel is weird, it only allows international flights to specific airports, which to me seems almost too restrictive but might make for an interesting challenge. Not sure where I stand on it, but would like to hear your feedback.
  8. If you lease your own gate then you pay a per-month rate to use a gate (and therefore dont incur gate slot fees). Basically the slot system is designed for people to fly in, turn-around and fly out and the penalties are big on purpose to discourage people from hogging up gates (since they are not used exclusively by a single airline). To lease a gate either click "Lease Gate" in the top right in the airport page or on the flight research page under the airport to see the airports lease market which will give you your own gate for you to use as you wish. This a common issue and in the next version I have made it so that a gate is leased automatically if a turnaround is longer than 60 minutes (and a gate is available)
  9. Route buying only works for regulated markets (US pre 1970's for instance, or many international flights), however I feel like this is one of those things that while realistic, would take away from the game. This is an interesting mechanic that I want to explore at a later time, however it would probably be restricted to only a few special circumstances (flights between US and Cuba for instance), and/or be made a part of some sort of a special ultra-realistic game-mode if it is ever to be implemented.
  10. Hey Folks! Lately I've been working a lot on the new demand formula and all of the linear algebra involved with it (I guess @KJS607can take solace in my misery given how much work he'll have with all the new data parameters for different airports, cities and nations). With this, I can release a little bit more information about this algorithm. First, as mentioned in an earlier dev blog (which I will archive somewhere later, I was able to recover the old server HD, so I do have the pre-crash forums and I intend to archive the data from that forum somewhere, watch this space) there are now 7 different types of passengers that all have different requirements, and each route will have certain demand for each of those categories of travelers. The distribution of these parameters will depend on the city/nation attributes of the arrival/departure cities as well as of course normal things like population, distance whether the flight is international etc. So for example, JFK-LAX will have more business travel demand than OKC-TUL for instance. Of course, it would take some time after 0.3 is released for this to be modeled properly as it will take the data team some time to update everything (by default all the attributes are set as average for everything), inquire with @KJS607if you're interested in helping out. That said, there are a couple of other new things with the model. City Based Demand Model Currently the way that population served is generated is by looking at all the populations within the 50 nm radius of the airport, and saying that thats the population served. For the most part this works but does run into issues with airports that are very far away from the cities that they service, it also means that each of the airports is for all intents and purposes its own city. Flights into JFK do not effect EWR, FLL does not siphon passengers from MIA etc. This of course is not realistic, someone flying out of ORD can just as well fly out of MDW so even though Southwest might not fly out of ORD, they still compete with United's hub at ORD. 0.3 will model this by having a city-based demand model. The way that this model works is by first clustering a number of cities into a single metro area, then for every airport is assigned to serve a single metro area. Demand is calculated entirely using the metro area rather than the airport (the airport still matters as it effects the preferences of different passengers, as airports too now have attributes that make it either attractive or not attractive to certain passengers). Dynamic Distribution Currently every flight has a reputation value attached to it, this reputation is a combined value of different flight grading metric including things like legroom, IFS, IFE etc. with an additional value grading metric that gives an advantage to flights offering a better deal for passengers given what they are offering (this is not necessarily the cheapest flight, a cheap business class ticket that offers a lot of amenities might have the highest value without being the cheapest flight, though the value metric is primarily designed to benefit LCC's that offer very low cost flights). Each passenger has a maximum price they are willing to pay which is dictated by a Poisson distribution. Every passengers will purchase a ticket on the highest reputation flight that is still within their budget. If no flight is within the budget, the pax dont fly with anyone. This system works but is very simple and very easy to game and figure out. It also creates the unfortunate effect where in especially contentious routes a flight that is only slightly better than a competing flight will see a significant boost in the number of passengers. This is changing. Rather than having a list of preferences, each passengers now has a probability of selecting any given flight, and then thats how a passenger is placed into a flight which should provide a more realistic distribution. Fuzzy Preferences Passengers in real life are not scientific in their selection of flights, if two flights are exactly the same except one offers 0.01 inches of legroom, no one is going to really take that into consideration except the most pedantic. As such, rather than using the very percise reputation metrics that are currently in game for ranking flights, the reputation attributes are fuzzied and rounded to make very similar flights get treated more or less the same. This means that for one flight to be ranked above another there must be a noticeable difference between them (either in price, or quality). Artificial Demand When Ryan Air adds a flight to the middle of nowhere for 1 pound, the demand comes, and so it will in 0.3. If a particular flight offers a very good value, then low cost tourist demand will artificially increase. This demand will have diminishing returns, and will never be a significant increase (you wont get to sustain 20 daily flights to GEG (unless its a major connecting hub, but more on that at a later time)), and of course you should consider profitability when pursuing this tactic since you need to provide a very cheap ticket. But it is there for you to try. I hope that this update provides a little bit more of an insight into the behind the scenes changes coming to 0.3! PS: I was able to recover the old forums and will be archiving it for y'all to have access to old posts, as well as restoring all the proper roles for veterans etc.
  11. Check those routes and see if your planes are out of cycles, if they are you will need to replace those planes.
  12. Finances take some time to update, is this a problem that persists over several days?
  13. It takes a few years to establish your credit rating, I would recommend leasing aircraft for the first few years.
  14. Alright folks, World B I has been reset. Due to the server issues experienced earlier, there wont be awards for B I, however you will still get credit for your achievements in that world as your accomplishments will be reflected in the leaderboards that come out with 0.3 later this year. There will not be any changes for B II, so all the same settings apply. World B II: Timeframe: 1950-2010 World Speed: 10 Minutes/day (45 minutes/day until Tuesday, August 11th to give people time to join and set up their airlines) Starting Money: 1,000,000 Rules/Difficulty: Normal Have fun!
  15. @handude123 that might be a bug, please start a bug report here: https://airsim.world/index.php?/forums/forum/6-bug-reports/ Thanks!
  16. Employees are hired at the start of every quarter automatically. Before then salaries for pilots and flight attendants are still paid as those are charged per flight hour which is what you're seeing in the financial report.
  17. Bookmarking flights is planned, as for finished worlds I just haven't gotten around to closing OC III as I have been a bit AWOL, though I will do it in the coming days. Also I should mention that the flight research page is getting redone from scratch for 0.3 (hence why it's taking a while, getting motivated to do anything front-end related is not easy when you're a back-end dev)
  18. Hey Folks! We're back and running on AWS after a hard drive failure on my main server. I apologize for the inconvenience. While I had the backups of both the database and the files of the sim and the forum, the forum database backup was corrupted and couldn't be recovered. I was able to find a (really) old backup but it unfortunately means that the vast majority of your forum accounts are lost. That said, YOUR AIRLINES ARE SAFE. Here is how to get them back! First, you will need to recreate your account on the forum. USE THE SAME USERNAME AS YOUR ORIGINAL USERNAME ON THE FORUMS, if you changed your name use the original name you registered with. This is important so that I can find your sim account, you can change your display name once you create your account, but your actual account name must be the same. Second, once you have done that, please GO TO OUR DISCORD: https://discord.gg/qudNez3 In the discord, go to the channel #account-relink and post a link to your forum account, this can be found by clicking your username at the top and then profile, for example, my profile link is: https://airsim.world/index.php?/profile/1-sviridovt/ Third, WAIT. Do not create any airlines in the meanwhile as they will be lost. Once I have re-linked your account, I will post on the #account-relink channel and thumbs up your comment. Please avoid making any extranious comments on the #account-relink channel to make this process as quick and easy as possible. If you want to ask questions or leave comments use the #general or #game-chat channel instead. If for whatever reason you prefer to not use discord, you may also PM me on here. That said, it would be much easier and quicker if you use the #account-relink channel. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for sticking with us over this challenging time. We are now running on AWS and should hopefully not have these issues again (and the sim should run a little bit faster as well). Thanks!
  19. Hey Y'all! Just wanted to give you a bit of an update on 0.2 as well as give you all a bit of a roadmap regarding what to expect in future releases of the game as we go through the Alpha development stage. 0.2 is going to have a lot of new features and I hope that you will agree with me that these features are worth the wait. AirSimWorld 0.2 Alpha (Release mid to late June): More details on your airlines finances (including breakdowns of how each of your cabins, aircraft and configurations are performing as a whole, more detailed flight financials etc.) Credit Ratings, Loans and Leases Ability to Bankrupt your airline/go into Bankruptcy Protection Airport Gates and Terminals Alliances Airline Reputation and Reach Staff options (setting salaries, dealing with unions, employee morale etc.) Logos, graphics and branding options Better mail system (aircraft deliveries split from general mail, mail reserved for important information Various bug fixes AirSimWorld 0.3 Alpha (Release mid July): This update will primarily be a UI update, that wont add many features but will be a significant overhaul of the UI. This will include things like making all the tables sortable (currently only flights and aircraft pages have those), add ability to add other columns to tables as well as have the ability to customize the UI to your own needs (One such feature is the ability to customize what is shown on the dashboard). This update wont do too much in terms of new features except bug fixes and tweaking of some game mechanics. AirSimWorld 0.4 Alpha (Release early August): This update will primarily add depth to existing ingame features, examples include adding aircraft options (winglets, extra fuel tanks etc.), more maintenance options, have aircraft maintenance actually take aircraft out of service (currently it only charges your airline money), more facilities upgrades (lounges, maintenance facilities etc.), better alliance options, realistic flight delays (cascading flight delays) etc. AirSimWorld 0.5 Beta (Release late August/Early September): This update will primarily overhaul the way you interact with agents in game (aircraft manufactures, banks, airports) by adding contracts and negotiations to the game, so you'll be able to negotiate with an aircraft manufacturer or an airport to get a certain price on things etc. This will also add more complicated things like aircraft options, termination fees etc. This contract system will also be used for player interactions for things such as inter-lining agreements (potentially but probably not in this update) codeshare agreements, and leases between airlines. Its also worth noting that minor bug fixes will be released between updates similar to 0.1. I would love to also hear your feedback and thoughts. Thanks!
  20. I'll definitely look to add something like that following 0.2 update or maybe 0.3
  21. AirSimWorld 0.1.6 Alpha Database Optimizations in Event Manager Database Optimizations in route management Night Mode (leaked in from early 0.2 build) Better Logging Support
  22. They should be different countries in game, however, currently the way that countries are assigned to airports is a bit screwed up. This will be fixed at some point soon
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