Author Topic: Airports  (Read 318 times)

Channel Airways

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Airports
« on: December 10, 2020, 01:33:09 pm »
First of all let me start by saying I'm mad that the airport scale still exists in V2. I thought you promised to get rid of it, but when looking at the airport details it still shows. And it still shows incorrect in many cases. This causes a lot of smaller airports with a way too high scale to show up early upon zooming in, while others with a much longer runway show up much later because they have been given a far too low scale.

So I think that's something that needs to be fixed first. Get rid of the airport scales entirely and let the color in which the airports show on the map be determined by the runway length only.

Then of course there are a lot of airports missing in the game, the method for getting the airport data into the game is not reliable and needs to be reworked. I feel like it makes no sense making a list of missing airports as the airport database will need to be redone anyway.

I also noticed that runway information is missing for some airports, such as Quito (Ecuador) and Lima (Peru). They show to have a 750 meter runway, which is incorrect. In the airport details no runways are being shown.

It is nice to see V2 is being worked on, but a lot of work still needs to be done. So far most of the annoyances from V1 are still present.

Edoebzd

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Re: Airports
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2020, 05:33:39 pm »
Hi, I am Air Italy
I would like to say that the data hasn't been checked or searched manually [please note that both runways and airports databases have been updated to the latest version available], and as the source is a huge database, there might be errors or missing data. The purpose of Alpha and Beta version is also to find and correct these mistakes. At the current stage (less than 1 day old) I believe that Patson is focusing more on fixing game bugs, rather than finding incorrect data. You can always report in the forum all missing or wrong values that you find, and we will try to fix them as soon as possible.

Regarding the airport scale, I understand your frustration, I don't know what Patson is planning to do with it, but he would certainly find a way to solve the situation.

Thanks for your suggestion,
Edoebzd [Air Italy]

patson

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Re: Airports
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2020, 12:25:02 am »
Thanks for telling us your concerns.

Airport data are driven from https://ourairports.com/data/

As Air Italy commented, having accurate data to reflect real world situation is not of the first priority of Alpha testing, especially if it requires manual patching.

The code that generated the airports (and corresponding scales) have been adjusted and I have run the new scripts. Please check and see if the airports make a bit more sense now.

As for missing airports, there are 2 cause:
1. Either the data does not exist in https://ourairports.com/data/ OR
2. The airport cover too little population that we don't want to display (and they will likely get no traffic anyway) - take note that due to current coding limitation we are only showing the top X airports to reduce workload on the browser

I will create a new board so people can report discrepancy for airport data

hollywoodswa

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Re: Airports
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2020, 06:00:59 am »
Regarding that data, some airports, like KMSN (Madison, WI), are showing in that spreadsheet and are larger airports than many in-game.

Loving v2, by the way!

Channel Airways

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Re: Airports
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2020, 12:14:41 pm »
Thanks for telling us your concerns.

Airport data are driven from https://ourairports.com/data/

As Air Italy commented, having accurate data to reflect real world situation is not of the first priority of Alpha testing, especially if it requires manual patching.

The code that generated the airports (and corresponding scales) have been adjusted and I have run the new scripts. Please check and see if the airports make a bit more sense now.

As for missing airports, there are 2 cause:
1. Either the data does not exist in https://ourairports.com/data/ OR
2. The airport cover too little population that we don't want to display (and they will likely get no traffic anyway) - take note that due to current coding limitation we are only showing the top X airports to reduce workload on the browser

I will create a new board so people can report discrepancy for airport data

It's still not much better. Some airports have changed scale, but not always for the better. Some airports even changed for the worse.

Maybe population coverage isn't the best criteria to use for generating airport data, actual passenger numbers make a much better criteria and of course runway length. If you ask me, population coverage should be totally ignored when generating airports. It flaws the airport generation process.

To exclude smaller airports from the game you could of course set a minimum runway length, any airport with a runway shorter than that is to be skipped. That way you prevent all those way too small general aviation airfields being included.

Maybe you should find the cause why Dallas Love Field, which is a busy airport right in the heart of the city (and thus a large population coverage) is being skipped while Addison Airport, which is a general aviation airfield without any airline traffic, is included. Fort Worth Alliance airport, also a general aviation airfield, even gets a scale 6. Why does the airport generation script do that?

I get that you only include the top X airports, but the way that top X is generated is flawed. If necessary, maybe it should be generated manually. Just make a list with X IATA-codes, those are the airports to be included in the game. All the rest should be skipped. I'm willing to make such a list.

patson

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Re: Airports
« Reply #5 on: December 11, 2020, 01:15:34 pm »
>It's still not much better. Some airports have changed scale, but not always for the better. Some airports even changed for the worse.
Again, it's a script, automated, we can try our best to adjust but with universal rules, this is bound to happend


>Maybe population coverage isn't the best criteria to use for generating airport data, actual passenger numbers make a much better criteria and of course runway length. If you ask me, population coverage should be totally ignored when generating airports. It flaws the airport generation process.
No. We do NOT rely on population coverage to generate airport data. It's the other way around, we first get what openairport tell us which one is smaller/medium/big airport, and then we adjust the size according the runway data -> if an airport has more longer lighted runways, we increase the size. Population coverage is generated AFTER the size of the airport is determined by scanning the cities in the surrounding area based on the size of the airport, which is already determined.

>To exclude smaller airports from the game you could of course set a minimum runway length, any airport with a runway shorter than that is to be skipped. That way you prevent all those way too small general aviation airfields being included.

Again we use data from openairport, small airport will start off with a smaller size, and if it has no runway length, it will likely stuck with size 1. IF there's no big city around it, it will likely get a very small pop coverage hence be excluded in the UI

>Maybe you should find the cause why Dallas Love Field, which is a busy airport right in the heart of the city (and thus a large population coverage) is being skipped while Addison Airport, which is a general aviation airfield without any airline traffic, is included. Fort Worth Alliance airport, also a general aviation airfield, even gets a scale 6. Why does the airport generation script do that?
It's the algorithm. I really do not have time to make this realistic, many more things i need to take care of. This will require manual patching. If you want to figure out why Fort Worth Alliance airport get 6. Go through the data in openairport

>I get that you only include the top X airports, but the way that top X is generated is flawed. If necessary, maybe it should be generated manually. Just make a list with X IATA-codes, those are the airports to be included in the game. All the rest should be skipped. I'm willing to make such a list.

It's the maintenance issue, if there are airports added/removed we would need to maintain such a list. Right now it's all automated.

Please understand this is a SANDBOX game. Even if an airport in real life does not have much traffic, if some ambitious airline in this game want to develop it, they can. The world is initialized based on SOME real life data, but it's dynamic after this point, we do NOT fit our simulation to generate data we observe in real life airport traffic. Rather, we initialize the sandbox world with SOME real life data, and we let the simulation to generate the result.

Aquantis

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Re: Airports
« Reply #6 on: December 12, 2020, 02:44:31 am »
Please understand this is a SANDBOX game. Even if an airport in real life does not have much traffic, if some ambitious airline in this game want to develop it, they can. The world is initialized based on SOME real life data, but it's dynamic after this point, we do NOT fit our simulation to generate data we observe in real life airport traffic. Rather, we initialize the sandbox world with SOME real life data, and we let the simulation to generate the result.
Interesting point, so if I try really hard I can, theoretically, turn a small town in the middle of Arkansas or Iowa into a major city/airport/international hub if say I were to route tons of traffic through it?
aka Caerion Airlines

Channel Airways

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Re: Airports
« Reply #7 on: December 12, 2020, 11:20:09 am »
Please understand this is a SANDBOX game. Even if an airport in real life does not have much traffic, if some ambitious airline in this game want to develop it, they can. The world is initialized based on SOME real life data, but it's dynamic after this point, we do NOT fit our simulation to generate data we observe in real life airport traffic. Rather, we initialize the sandbox world with SOME real life data, and we let the simulation to generate the result.
Interesting point, so if I try really hard I can, theoretically, turn a small town in the middle of Arkansas or Iowa into a major city/airport/international hub if say I were to route tons of traffic through it?

That's how I understand it.

And if that's true, then what role would population coverage even play? As long as the runway is long enough for the aircraft being used, any airport can be turned into a hub. It doesn't need any population coverage at all.

In V1, one of my alliance members has a hub in Nuuk, Greenland. A tiny airport, but conveniently located in between Europe and North America. Nearly all traffic is transfer traffic, there is hardly any O/D traffic. But it works! You don't need population coverage to route demand through an airport, that's why it's silly to use it as a criteria.

And again I stick to my point that no airport should have any scale as a scale can only act as an unrealistic limiting factor. Runway length is the only critical factor as that determines which aircraft can be used on that airport. Scale should be entirely removed from the game.

Edoebzd

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Re: Airports
« Reply #8 on: December 12, 2020, 01:50:19 pm »
And if that's true, then what role would population coverage even play? As long as the runway is long enough for the aircraft being used, any airport can be turned into a hub. It doesn't need any population coverage at all.

And again I stick to my point that no airport should have any scale as a scale can only act as an unrealistic limiting factor. Runway length is the only critical factor as that determines which aircraft can be used on that airport. Scale should be entirely removed from the game.

For V2, only the longest runway length is used to determine if an airplane can fly to an airport, the airport scale remains only to calculate base update/maintenance cost (higher the scale, higher the costs).

Channel Airways

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Re: Airports
« Reply #9 on: December 13, 2020, 09:05:13 am »
For V2, only the longest runway length is used to determine if an airplane can fly to an airport, the airport scale remains only to calculate base update/maintenance cost (higher the scale, higher the costs).

Then why not just give all airports the same scale? It would instantly fix all problems.

patson

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Re: Airports
« Reply #10 on: December 14, 2020, 11:23:29 am »
Airport scale also affect the coverage radius and how much of a share of population it will draw from a town if a town can be reached by multiple airports

That's why airport with higher scale will usually have much bigger airport pop

Morb

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Re: Airports
« Reply #11 on: December 14, 2020, 11:40:40 am »
How did you actually calculate the population numbers? (You can just point me to the code if its in there)

Cause looking at Germany there are quite a few cities with kinda odd numbers.

patson

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Re: Airports
« Reply #12 on: December 14, 2020, 11:44:21 am »
Some code I wrote many years ago https://github.com/patsonluk/airline/blob/master/airline-data/src/main/scala/com/patson/init/GeoDataGenerator.scala#L227

Quite arbitrary :P

It might also has something with the city data that I downloaded. We know that it's a bit off so we patched some cities into the game manually https://github.com/patsonluk/airline/blob/master/airline-data/cities1000.txt

O and an easy way to find out pop composition - go into air view and just click on those towns in the radius, it should give u the breakdown