New Maps

[capaz]

What is everyone's thoughts on the new map update?


IMHO I don't particularly like them, I used them to gauge tech stop locations on long routes.

[Tha_Ape]

Tech-stops were always best done on something like gcmap, but true, those are not really fancy.
However, better that than giving more money to the mob.
Plus, it might improve over time: city names are really useful for CBD, in order not to pull both ends of the same string (without having to always control distances between cities with another website)

[JumboShrimp]

I think the new maps are actually better for coming up with tech stop location.

The original maps tended to miss the upper part of the arch, where you would want to put the tech stop location...

The new ones are not ideal, but slightly better than the old maps.

[wilian.souza2]

It looks good, although they need a lot of work of course. I expect it to show the political division in the game era, routes with tech stops and perhaps allow a further development of the route planning map when CBD is implemented for passengers - in this case, instead of displaying a huge list of airports which we need to click on each to know its demand, a heat map would be shown with current and potential demands for pax and cargo. Something like this:

[gazzz0x2z]

Not sure this level of accuracy is available everywhere in the world.

[wilian.souza2]

Maybe the one I put above is too complex to implement, but one like below should be perfectly possible:

[Sami]

Are the geopolitical borders available in some compatible data format for all years from 1945? (I did not find such yet... But I suppose it is somewhere, but matter of the format really)

[wilian.souza2]

There's a YouTube video which shows the world's political map from the beginning of civilization until now (well... skip to 15:26 to show it from 1945 on). Well, it isn't something "compatible" for implementation in a data system, but can be a good starting point to build one.

[DiCH]

New maps are awful. I'm really sad about it. Google maps has a premium quality visual layout. I'm ok to pay more for not seeing this new low quality layout. Can you please include such option?

[Sami]

New maps are awful. I'm really sad about it. Google maps has a premium quality visual layout. I'm ok to pay more for not seeing this new low quality layout. Can you please include such option?

Not possible.

[yearofthecactus]

Because use of google maps (or any tool for that matter) has to be all or none. You can't have separate pay for extra content - one because that isn't what this game is about or run, and two because that's not how google decides what to charge. It's no good saying well pay an extra credit to use maps per week, when the reality is like 1% would only tick the box, and it wouldn't pay for itself.

Sami has decided, using the current cost base that the cost of using google maps going forward is not economical for the game, either for him or for us. We have to accept that as the right decision, and use productive input to improve the new system, or steer towards a different provider. That's non negoiable and your "why not" shows a very naive understanding of the whole business. I wouldn't pay a penny extra for a google map.

For what its worth, the new maps aren't google maps and they're not as good as google maps, and they don't pretend to be. But they're not bad, and they don't change gameplay at all. As for working out where planes go and best places to tech stop - I've only ever used external maps for that like great circle, and so nothing changes in that sense.

[APTamas]

I don't know what are you talking about... I have the same maps as before. Have I missed something?

[Tha_Ape]

Until yesterday the static mini-maps on "open new route" or "airport info" where from google maps. Now it's from AviaDesign (AWS-daddy).
However interactive maps (companies' route maps, alliance's maps, etc.) are still from Google.

[APTamas]

Oh.. I see. Thanks. I tought there was a bigger change. 

[Alberto]

It was really useful to have city names; also, having country names (even though not always historically accurate) was better than no names (btw, present-day borders are still here in the new maps). In general, for AWS a political map should be more useful than a geographic one, I think?

[wilian.souza2]

When the map was released it didn't even have political borders, so let's wait for the work be done and see how it goes

[JumboShrimp]

How about the catchment areas.  On both Airport and Route Planning pages.

And while cities (city names) would be nice, airports, which system already has in the database might be more useful.

[Tha_Ape]

How about the catchment areas.  On both Airport and Route Planning pages.

And while cities (city names) would be nice, airports, which system already has in the database might be more useful.

Agreed, with a nuance (but no solution yet, unfortunately): for dense areas it could become a real mess, completely impossible to read.

[JumboShrimp]

Agreed, with a nuance (but no solution yet, unfortunately): for dense areas it could become a real mess, completely impossible to read.

Yeah, on the Route planning, there would be potentially too many airports.

But on Airport screen showing catchment area and other airports (with smaller icons might be useful).

OTOH, I kind of like the clean look of the new maps...

[wilian.souza2]

How about the catchment areas.  On both Airport and Route Planning pages.

I propose this new route planning interface:

- The first change is, instead of searching for a destination aerodrome, we'd search for the cities we want to connect from our base. Lists of cities would be shown instead of airports. See the example below, for opening a route to Rio de Janeiro from SBSP:



By clicking on the green tick, a screen would show the route map zoomed in the route area. Both São Paulo and Rio's city centers are shown in yellow and their airports nearby (within 200 km of distance) shown in dark red (except our base which will be highlighted in red) with their respective catchment radius; right below the map, all airports within the Rio's area are shown with their respective infra and traffic levels, catch radius and other details. We click on the map to select the desired airport and it will be highlighted in red, and will also be highlited on the list:



Then we choose our desired airport by clicking on the green tick and the classic route planning page showing demand between airports will be shown (which will show potential and current demands for cargo AND pax):



The good point of it is that it will let players know which airport has the potential to attract (or are attracting) the most passengers and decide if it's worth it to create flights to different airports at the same city.