Airport Master Early Access Public v. 0.2.5a RELEASED!

Airport Master Early Access Public v. 0.2.5a RELEASED! Changelog follows:

Game workflow

• Added helicopters game mechanics, including flight dynamics, helicopter-specific flight-scheduling, helicopter-specific ground service vehicle operations, helicopter-specific ATC; added

• Added weather-dependent pendulum-type micro-rotations of helicopters when hovering; the intensity is still being tweaked, not final; added

• Fixed discrepancy of relation of vertical speed to current pitch of an airplane, this should result in smoother vertical speed adjustment when changing pitch in climbs and descents; fixed

• Added new type and range definitions to Object View camera for support of Helicopters and Large Airplanes; added

• Added Helicopters initial visual departure and final visual approach routes; added

• Added Helicopters air-taxi routes to and from ground parking stands F1 through F8; added

• Added new airline MedEvac (Air Ambulance and Medical Evacuation) - code MED; all MedEvac aircraft that previously been treated as Private are now correctly related to actual airline; added

• Changed how MedEvac flights are scheduled; changed

• Added Intercomm communication channel (VHF radio), to be used by various facilities, services and personnel of the Airport to communicate directly to Player; Added

• Added 34 new ground vehicles routes for Airport Vehicles in Heliport area for a total number of 164 vehicle routes around the Airport; added

• Added 10 new helicopter-specific VFR routes (DEP and ARR) to and from existing VFR points; routes are arranged in such a way so that they do not interfere with airplanes flying visual departures and arrivals and cross glide paths of runways 17 and 35 at safe altitudes; added

• Fixed bug with PAPI lights on inactive runway being still on even after command from ATC to switch them off; fixed

• Fixed very well hidden bug with ATC assigning Ground Service Vehicles jobs identifiers may have occasionally assigned non-unique identifier causing two vehicles share same job and thus first reporting ground service job completion causing the other one to hang dead; fixed

Visual enhancements

• Added Large Factory building near ILS 35 glideslope entry point; added

• Added 3 new city buildings types, currently can be seen in various static locations around Appleton city, in later versions will be used for auto-generated procedural blocks of City buildings; added

Aircraft

• Added new aircraft [J358] Finelad-Durniere 358 JET (real-world prototype Fairchild-Dornier 328JET) an aircraft with amazing history and amazing fate, whose production (and production ownership rights changed several times throughout last 30 years, including transferring production to different countries - but it still flies and remains in demand for short runway twin-jet operation - aircraft with following registration numbers were added: RK-DBS (Aster), RK-LOB (Aster), N313L (Private), TDHQE (Private), HV-SSA (MedEvac)

• Added new helicopter [B409] Bull 409 (real-world prototype Bell 407) - one of the most massively produced and popular modern helicopters in the World with very efficient design becomes the first helicopter type in the game - helicopters with following registration numbers were added: N101M, RK-OZM, FL-TRE, SQ-RTW (Private), HV-LAF (MedEvac)

ATC

• Added 2 new Airports: Wellmerton City (JAWL/WLM) and Roulent Municipal (JART/RLN); Both serviced by Aster.

• Added full ATC service for Foxtrot (heliport) ground parkings; added

• Added new VFR points for Helicopters final approach PT-HA (HeliAlpha) and initial departure PT-HD (HeliDelta); added

• AdjustedChanged Squawk codes issuing guidelines, from now onVFR: Airplanes: ARR: 7200-7277; DEP: 7300-7377; Helicopters: ARR: 7100-7177; DEP: 7400-7477; IFR: RWY 17: ARR: 5200-5277; DEP: 2300-2377; RWY 35: ARR: 3500-3577; DEP: 1400-1477; changed

• Added proper ground communications of Service Vehicles to ATC(GND), including permission to cross taxiway, reports of taxiway vacated, starts and ends of Fire and Rescue and ATC shifts; added

Cameras

• Changed behavior of Object Cam when switching from one object to another (but Object Cam remains active camera) - from now on, the change of Info Window information will be immediate and precise; changed

• Changed default back to camera action for Object Cam - it now defaults to returning to overview camera (by pressing [Backspace] key at any time, while using Object Cam); changed

Sound

• Added new engine sounds for J358 aircraft, recorded from a real PW engine; thank you, Tony!

• Added new gear operation and flaps motors sounds for J358 aircraft, recorded in hangar, cleaned and remastered to create the full audial immersion for this aircraft type; thanks Tony and our best regards to Heinrich for allowing us to place mics in hangar during maintenance!

• Added new engine sounds for B409 helicopter, recorded from actual engine; blades spins and blades sound fade out on engine shutdown were recorded from other helicopter rotors and then digitally remastered into blended sound effects of engine operation; this technique will be used for all helicopter engine sounds from now on as it gives good results rendering blended rotor+engine sound very similar to the real thing;

User Interface

• Completely reworked CommBox - the new CommBox design allows for comfortable Comms-system usage that will suit various Players' UI-styles preference: CommBox can work in one of the following modes: 1) Unpinned-Normal: when a new radio comm message is broadcast over VHF band, a text message appears in corresponding frequency display tab and the CommBox remains fully opaque while Player's mouse is within its boundaries, once mouse cursor leaves the boundaries of CommBox, it will slowly fade to fully transparent for less cluttered UI; 2) Pinned Mode - the CommBox window stays always visible and fully opaque regardless of whether Player's mouse cursor is within its boundaries or elsewhere; 3) Minimized mode - after Player presses Minimize button - CommBox stays minimized (even when a new message is broadcast over a comm channel) until Player clicks small COMM button in lower-left corner of the screen (CommBox restore button) - for convenience COMM button starts flashing if there are new messages in CommBox that Player has not yet seen due to CommBox been minimized; Changed

• Added timestamp and frequency as well as color-coding based on station transmitting to each message on CommBox; Added

• AdjustedChanged CommBox to tabbed layout for more convenient data managementthe following tabs were added - ALL FREQs (displays all messages on all frequencies from all stations); ATIS (for Automated Terminal Information System messages), DELIVERY (clearance delivery frequency), GROUND (ground taxing, air-taxing of helicopters in heliport maneuvering area, service vehicles comms, emergency services ground movements, ATC shift changes etc.), TOWER (takeoff and landing clearances, visual circuits); APPROACH (IFR approaches and departures, VFR flight following); INTERCOMM (Player's avatar's - Airport General Manager's personal VHF radio frequency - to be used in later versions for important comms from various Airport facilities to the Player); how tabs work: if a Player elects to keep ALL FREQs tab open - there are no flashing tabs, all messages are displayed in this tab (newest on top), color-coding and frequency are used to easily distinguish one station from another (this mode is default for a new game and resembles having VHF band scanner at your disposal; if Player switches to any other tab - say APPROACH - he or she will only see messages related to this frequency - however, when a new message is broadcast (say on TOWER frequency), the corresponding tab will start flashing, indicating that it contains new, unseen message(s) - upon switching to this tab (or ALL FREQs tab) - it will stop flashing; Changed

• Changed slightly location and size of Radar overlay in Main UI to look better with new CommBox; changed

• Changed slightly location of Time Skip control in Main UI to look better with new CommBox and shifted Radar overlay; changed

• Added logos for new airlines - Aster and MedEvac

• Fixed error in VFR arrival phase of flight description in Info Window for airplanes flying VFR arrivals; fixed

• Added gust component of wind display to Main UI status panel if gusts are at least 2 knots stronger than steady wind speed; added

• Added vehicles Info Window Display (standard Info Window as airplanes and helicopters show on mouse-over and statically in ObjectCam view); added

• Added color-coded differentiation to Info Window Display to help Player instantly understand what type of object information is shown about - traditional pale-yellow for airplanes, pale-orange for helicopters, light-gray for ground support vehicles, pale-green for airport facilities; added