Airport Master Public Alpha Bug-fix Update v. 0.3.7.3a RELEASED!

Airport Master Public Alpha Bug-fix Update v. 0.3.7.3a RELEASED!

This is a bug-fix release, addressing issues found by Airport Master Players in versions 0.3.7.1a and 0.3.7.2a as a part of our continuing bug-hunt. This is by far our biggest focused bug-fix release ever. Your saved games from alpha versions 0.3.7.x will work with this update. The Major Update v.0.4.0a is coming soon, and we really wanted to iron-out 0.3.x-specific bugs before the release of 0.4.x.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2020!

Changelog follows:

Game workflow

• Fixed serious bug with aircraft requesting STAR/SID (instead of visual arrival/departure) while flying actually under VFR but having return flight scheduled as IFR, which in turn may have resulted in Aircraft/Helicopter flying out of bounds of game world and throwing an exception, which in turn may have prevented adequate processing of data when re-loading any saved game that had been created after such occurrence; fixed

• Added protection for any kind of out-of-game world boundaries flights that may have happened due to any bug with approach departure type mismatch, the affected aircraft is removed from game world silently without affecting Player's rating with owner Airline; added

• Fixed bug with Airport Administration HR division processing Service Hangars request to hire new staff incorrectly which caused hiring additional 65 personnel for hangars H4 and H5 each time a saved game is loaded; additionally a correction mechanism was introduced that catches this kind of incorrect behavior (per each individual institution requesting HR division to hire and fire personnel), then checks against number of required specialists and either tries to determine which are duplicate hires and fires those or if data is big, simply fires everyone and re-hires correct number of positions; fixed

• Fixed bug with Aircraft waiting for ATC clearance indefinitely when game had been saved, while ATC had no indication that Aircraft is (still) awaiting clearance; thou previous behavior is more natural (ATC calls 'standby for clearance' and keeps track of who is waiting for clearance), in reality there are too many possibilities that error-correction algorithms or asynchronous processes may prevent ATC from calling back with clearance, especially on game saving and re-loading, especially for lengthy operations such as Service Hangars operations; fixed

• Added a version-specific fix-up for all of the Players whose airplanes burnt all the fuel while waiting to say leave the Hangar, due to bug(s) fixed in this release; this fix is purely cosmetic as it refills fuel tanks of such affected Aircraft to the value that had been there before a bug manifested, without actually spending Airport fuel or bringing profit, so just that you can continue playing without seeing zero or negative fuel in tanks; added

Flight scheduling

• Fixed numerous bugs with Flight Scheduling system that may have been caused by out-of-bounds and IFR instead of VFR bugs, described above; fixed

• AddedAdded the following Flight Schedule cleanupsa) flights that have departure flight plan without arrival operation finished (due to any sort of IFR/VFR nav-points bugs); b) any residual linked flight ops that may have been left from saving a flight schedule with bugged flight operations and then re-loading the game; c) orphaned flight operations, with either departure missing an arrival or vice versa; d) flight school airplanes not correctly reporting an operation (LOCAL FLIGHT) has ended upon instructor and student disembarking the airplane; added
• AdjustedChanged the procedure of initiating a new Flight Operationfrom now on any Delayed flights (for any reason, be that any bug or intentional delays due weather, routing or aircraft incapability to arrive at STAR initial fix on time, ground delays (both incurred by Player and again weather conditions, other factors like events and quest activities (e.g. Mayor delays his flight, a MedEvac flight is delayed waiting for patient to arrive etc.) are now processed in the same main thread as on-time flights, reserving half-minute separation slots for concurrent arrivals and reduced (or increased) priority on departure; changed
• AdjustedChanged how non-regular airlines schedule flightsthe algorithm (apart from probability of new flight plan filed based on time since last time a given airplane or helicopter been in Player's airport) has been changed completely: a) flight scheduling for non-regular airlines is now properly split for helicopters and airplanes (this tremendously hard-to-catch bug had sometimes caused TimeSkip function to lock on fade-to-black phase since a mixup was happening: a helicopter would try (and succeed) to file a flight plan as an airplane, which would cause an unrecoverable error prior to screen coming back from fade to normal (end of TimeSkip); b) helicopters now properly schedule VFR only flights from 0530Z to 1500Z with actual arrivals starting around 0730Z and latest actual departures complete by 1700Z (note: helicopters flying under SVFR - military, MedEvac, Police, Mayor would not be affected by this rule as SVFR heli flights have their own flight scheduling algorithm); c) airplanes can still properly plan flights as VFR (from 0730Z to 1800Z under VMC) as well as switch to IFR if departure flight is to happen at night time; fixed / changed

• Fixed very randomly manifesting bug with Service Contract Airplane receiving taxi instructions to taxi to apron A instead of hangar, which in turn may have caused further havoc with Time Tables; from now on, such mishandled aircraft are automatically fixed on loading a savegame - yet the price is that we have to un-schedule all other flights for given aircraft for remaining days of the week, as there is no way to tell how bizarre may have the further scheduling for given aircraft be affected; once returned to proper Service Hangar and all potentially messed up flight plans for given aircraft are removed, it then again becomes available for flight planning and Owner Airline may re-schedule it; fixed

• Fixed Airlines not being notified when their aircraft are forcefully removed from game world, thou normal leaving TMA worked fine; from now on any forceful removal of aircraft from game world requires owner Airline to reset corresponding flags for such aircraft so to make it available for scheduling new flights to Player's airport sooner; fixed

ATC

• Added out-of-bounds check to every 10th radar sweep, that excludes local area flights; added

• Fixed Flight clearances and Taxi clearances issued during IFR/VFR bug mentioned above staying in ATC system as valid clearances and thus preventing further TimeSkips and reclaiming of taxiways previously marked as occupied (while the aircraft affected by the bug were actually taxing on those, but been removed after loading a savegame with erroneous data); from now on those invalid Flight and Taxi clearances are cleaned up on every game loading and also in the event that any Aircraft is forcefully removed from game world (without affecting Player ratings with owner airline); fixed

• Fixed phraseology when VFR arrival joins pattern before landing; fixed

• Fixed numerous minor typos in ATC readbacks of visual pattern legs; fixed

• Fixed Radar screen labels for Go-Arounds displaying SID or visual Arrival Route instead of 'GOAROUND'; fixed

• Fixed Radar relying on Flight identification instead of Aircraft unique ID to display last pulse readout when an aircraft had already left the game world or had been forcefully removed by any of error-correction routines, which may have caused a serious error in Radar system operation; fixed

• Changed STARs PAROM 4W and PAROM 2D to go deeper in Hon Valley, skipping the mountain range and allowing both for faster descent and not leaving Radar depiction area (especially 4W procedure for runway 16); changed

Graphics Engine

• Fixed detail draw distance manager incorrectly interpreting draw distance settings for some city-side and agricultural area buildings (city houses, rural area housing, greenhouses) which may resulted in those building not rendered at either very near or very far detail draw distance setting; fixed

• Fixed numerous bugs with semi-transparent shaders not utilizing dedicated semi-transparent render queue, which should result in slight to moderate performance improvement on slower machines, especially when switching from distant airplane view to one of the views at the airfield; this fix also ensures best performance for upcoming foliage, 3D-birds, trees and other objects that benefit from using dedicated semi-transparent render queue; fixed

• Changed how graphics sub-engine handles optimizations for narrow stretched shapes such as taxiway markings for long taxiways; the new routine allows for partial pre-render, conditional pre-render and detail draw distance influenced sequential render of such elongated shapes for much better view and smoother transitions; changed

• Changed minimal lights visibility range for Calvert approach lighting system installed on runways 16 and 34 for white lights of medium intensity from 800m to 1100m, for red lights and white lights of high intensity from 1100m to 1400m; this tweak is intended mainly for Players with very old GPUs who had lowered Detail Draw distance to lowest setting thus making older approach lights visibility values unrealistic causing a visual effect of approach lights 'kicking-in' very late on approach; this tweak does not affect the visibility of Calvert approach lights in fog and rain, only plain VMC value; also no tweaks were applied to MALS-R systems installed on runways 17 and 35, as Detail Draw distance setting there (even on minimal slider value) worked correctly - partly due to the fact that MALS-R model measures distance from its third bar and newer Calvert model does so from runway threshold; changed

User Interface

• FixedFixed switching to correct Tab in Airport Contracts basing on where a call happens fromso from a 'Service Contract complete' notification the Service Contracts tab will open, while clicking Fuel Contracts in FBO screen will open Fuel Contracts tab; fixed

• Fixed incorrect use of 'Show notifications when an Airline increases our rating' option, despite the name and correct usage elsewhere, Service Contract Complete Notification used incorrect value of 'show when decreased' which may have caused in unwanted notifications to appear regardless of the option setting in Administration/Airlines screen; fixed

• Fixed font size for Hangar field in Contract Information windows; fixed

• Fixed Service Hangars brief display (lower part of Service Contracts UI screen) may have become locked from being updated by some Service Contract related bugs; now it updates data independent of Service Contracts module; fixed