Feature updates in v.1.11
This thread contains information about recent changes/fixes made and new features that have been included in the current version (1.11) of AirwaySim game engine. Consider this a "changelog" for the system.
This is a closed thread used only to preview the changes so please post any questions and comments to the General forum.
Information about previous updates can be found here: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,13811.0.html
New features:
- Updated Payload vs. Range chart layout a bit. And added possibility to convert the vertical axis weight into pax+bags, either by clicking on the chart or by the link. (see here (https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,11798.msg66481.html#msg66481)).
- Added "make B check start at the same time as A check" tickbox. (see here (https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,12546.msg66000.html#msg66000)).
- Added quick links to move forward and back between routes on "Route info" page. (see here (https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,12275.msg66483.html#msg66483)).
Minor updates:
- Extension of load factor / seats sold information from 2 to 3 weeks for each route.
- Added route planning links to Route Image pages, updated tooltips on that page too.
- Added direct link to route-pair marketing after route is opened.
- Incomesheet charts inverted for expenses.
Minor bugfixes:
- Value sorting in My aircraft page.
- Sometimes 0% LF (=no seats sold) information was not stored to route history, fixed.
- Fixed some airport data in Ukraine.
- Fixed false staff salary notification message.
New feature:
- Used aircraft pricing is now more dynamic.
* When aircraft are added to the used market by brokers the price is determined by the true value of the aircraft, and how many times the plane has been in sale before (broker has been trying to sell it before => now selling with lower price). Possible C/D checks increase the asking price.
* If aircraft is not sold within a week the brokers decrease the asking price on weekly basis as long as the plane is on the list, even up to -20%.
* After certain amount of days the broker takes the aircraft off the market if it's not sold. The plane will appear later to the market with a lowered price, and fresh maintenance if needed.
New feature:
- New aircraft pricing is now dynamic.
* Each aircraft model has a certain price set to the master database. Currently all the prices were only inflation adjusted (prices raise with the inflation) but now the pricing of new aircraft is dynamic based on the number of orders they receive.
* All changes to prices happen earliest 4 months after the launch of the model, before that the price is always the "standard".
* If the model has a long order queue (it depends on the max number of airlines allowed in the game world), the price will increase some 2-3% every month. And if there are only handful of orders the list price will drop 3-5% a month. And if the production line is about to be closed due to lack of orders the prices will be lowered even further.
* However there are always limits on how low or high the prices can go, it will always fluctuate between 70-130% of the original price set to the database. (and these all naturally concern only the list prices, so discounts are added on top of this. And does not affect orders made before the price change - I mean the price cannot change after the order is made...)
* Price changes are done 1x / month for each model.
Minor updates:
- New aircraft lease pre-payment is 5 months instead of 4 months. For used aircraft the pre-payment is the same as before (4 mnth).
- Minor adjustment to A330/A340 max production rates as the single line produces many different variants.
New feature:
- Largest ordering airlines for each fleet group are now shown at the production list page (in the full page, not in the popup). Also the short format of all aircraft models is improved ("Fokker 70" was previously shortened only as "70" but is now "F70" for example.
[attachment deleted by admin]
Minor update:
- The route information load factor history graph only shows the classes which have been actually sold on that route now. So in this example the airline offered only Y + C class seats, so the "0% F class" bars are hidden - to make the graph more readable as the route history data is now 1 week longer than before.
[attachment deleted by admin]
New feature:
- Airport slot prices are now dynamic.
* Price of the airport (takeoff) slot depends now on various different things, and it's not static and same for all airports anymore.
* Factors are the airport size (5 classes), geographical location of the airport (world area) and the number of available slots at the airport (% of the total).
* Slot fees are higher if the route is scheduled during normal peak hours 05.30-09.00 or 15.00-18.00.
* Also new airlines with recently started operations get discounts of the slots.
* Editing routes will have reduced slot prices, if the scheduled times change so much that new slots are needed.
* Further price systems may be added in the future to model the "slot negotiations" that are done in reality (modeling those is not possible here as those are months-years long processes in reality) - for example priority (=cheaper prices) on slots can be given to airlines with a low market share at the airport. In other words popular / crowded airports will be expensive to fly to, slotwise too.
[attachment deleted by admin]
Minor update:
- Manual / New aircraft page updated with information about dynamic production lines, dynamic pricing, dynamic production rates and restrictions of order updates .. well, that's a lots of dynamics.. https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Manual/Aircraft/New/
- Manual / Routes - Airport slots page added. https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Manual/Routes/Slots/
New feature / Minor update:
- Added more Tu-204 series planes to the database, and corrected some data of the existing models (these do not affect current games).
- Minor bugfixes on various pages.
Minor updates (these do not affect current games):
- Fokker 50 data changed (range, runway req.)
- Fokker 100 data changed (range, runway req.)
- An-38 data updated & new variant added.
Minor bugfixes:
- In some cases a slot was not released back to public after editing a route. This is fixed and the slot tables have been reallocated - this means that there are more free slots at some airports as some double slots were removed.
Bugfixes:
- A300 aircraft performance was not correct in all cases which caused incorrect flight times for some models. This has been fixed but please be aware that this may affect the flight times / schedules to change from what they were when editing a route. (minor -5-10 min changes in flt times).
- Minor bugfix in aircraft production news (layout / wording fix).
Small new feature:
- Personnel Office / Pilots is now separated into three groups according to the aircraft size class. This will bring small savings to companies operating only small aircraft.
The staff levels and salaries have been automatically adjusted for all airlines to take into account this change.
New feature:
- Improvements to game area front page, formerly called Game Info page when logged in at a game world, now called Airline Dashboard page.
The news are now in a tab type listing to save some space. Features also a red "new" flag when some subpage has new news items.
I will add general AirwaySim news and probably alliance forum posts under this same tab system too. Also note - this feature is not fully tested yet (as it's not "mission critical") so please browse around and try to see if anything can be improved.
- Game dashboard page is different for mobile browsers as this tab thing does not work with all mobile units. The mobile browsers retain the old page with a different layout and some information taken out to fit a smaller screen better.
New feature:
- Dashboard news unit includes now the Alliance Forum and AirwaySim site news.
New feature:
- Dashboard news unit is updated even more .. minor tuning, and AirwaySim news are directly expandable to the news dashboard (= no need to leave the game area to read the news!).
Oh, and please reload (ctrl+f5) the dashboard/frontpage if the things are not loading up properly, as some files changed (again).
New feature:
- Airport slot cost system improved. The costs are now even more variable and dynamic.
* Slot cost is even more relative to airport size (larger = more expensive).
* Small airports are now slot-cost free (cost $0 always!). Aim is to make flying to these airports more attractive.
* Slot cost is now relative to % of available slots at the airport in given day. The higher utilization the higher the cost.
* Slot cost is relative to YOUR airline's slot usage at the airport. If you use a high % of the total slots on a given day extra fees may apply to control monopolistic airlines. This is to allow more competition on the airport...
* Slot cost is relative to % of slots available at given hour too. If you fly in at a rush hour with little free slots the cost is higher than flying in at less crowded hours.
* Cost is greatly reduced when opening a new route to a new destination (or adding more frequencies to a destination with only a few daily routes). The reduction is higher at big very airports to enhance competition and new entrants to the market.
* Also a 'new airline' discount is still valid = you get a considerable discount on all slot costs during the first months of airline operation.
Please note that the slot costs do not represent real life that well but the aim here is to model the possible slot auctions happened in reality and the time and efforts for airline staff to negotiate the slots with airport authorities by just making direct costs to the airlines from getting the slots.
Minor improvement:
- Adjustments to minimum prices allowed on routes. The system now differentiates different types of routes in the minimum price check. In other words while you can sell a domestic flight tickets with $20 one-way, you cannot anymore sell longhaul tickets with that price (but there the price has to be higher).
There are often no price controls in the reality and airlines can offer any price they want. But to avoid cut-throat price wars (since the players cannot lose any real money here...) AWS has implemented this minimum pricing feature since the simulations begun already, this is only a minor improvement to the system. But the min. prices are low enough so players can still run effective discount campaigns if needed but feature is in place to avoid the possible ridiculously low $1 fares. (saying that keep in mind that while in reality some LCC's may advertise such $1 fares, the true ticket cost is always higher as different fees are added to that, and in AWS the price you set is fees-inclusive)
New feature:
- Prev/Next buttons to aircraft view added. (sorts by the default style, model name & reg #)
New feature:
- Manual / Seat config page is completed. https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Manual/Aircraft/Config/
New feature:
- Quarterly view added to Income statement pages.
New feature:
- Airline Statistics page is updated.
This is both a technical and a feature update. Technical in the way that the whole page is rewritten and it's now pre-loaded in different way that makes the stats data more usable (stats can be put to other pages too), and it's also much faster for user. Two bugfixes at the same time too.
New features include moving the stats into separate tabs to avoid making the page too long. And also inclusion of some new stats, such as:
* Airline CEO stats include airline name player controls, and also links to profile & airline.
* Pre-tax income, previous financial quarter (change of time period)
* Total sales revenue, previous financial quarter
* Profit margin, previous financial quarter (change of time..)
* Number of aircraft on order
* Average total weekly fuel burn (kg/lbs x1000)
* Number of airports served
* Number of route pairs
More stats will be added later (page is partly still "in progress" status).
Improved feature:
- The 'tabs' functionality has been improved.
The tabs what you see on Dashboard, Airline stats and Aircraft on order pages have been improved a bit to handle back button presses, bookmarking and deep linking.
You can link to https://www.airwaysim.com/game/#/NewsAws (https://www.airwaysim.com/game/#/NewsAws) for example and the correct tab opens, or the same if you had that tab open, click link to another page, and pressed back then the previously open tab is visible automatically.
Improved feature:
- Dashboard aircraft news are now directly expandable on the front page. (some technical changes to the news engine too, to prepare for other new features)
New feature:
- Incomesheet subtotal lines can now be clicked to open a graph too. (click the pie icon)
New feature:
- Ability to give a nickname to your planes.
* Change from the registration number page.
* Many planes can have the same nick name.
* Max length 25 characters, numbers and letters allowed.
New feature:
- Company notepad popup added. (find it at the left-hand menu, in your airline info box).
(please press ctrl+f5 on the Dashboard page or clear browser cache to make sure it is working 100%)
New feature:
- Aircraft size class groups and staff groups are updated further.
* Planes are now divided into 4 different size classes. These affect maintenance times, and staff requirements.
* There are 4 different staff groups for pilots now too. Operating smaller planes becomes cheaper and larger ones more expensive. All pilot staff groups have been automatically reassigned.
* Maintenance times (C/D) and seat config times for the groups have been also adjusted.
New feature:
- Tooltips on scheduling page improved. (aircraft info tooltips, route info tooltips will be made later!)
Minor update:
- LF history on Routes front page now extends to 3 weeks instead of 2 (in route pages the history was already extended).
New feature:
- User online status is now shown at the game pages, and with forum posts too.
New feature:
- Airline CEO name and online status is now also at the 'view airlines' listing.
New feature:
- Dropdown menus on main navigation for quicker movement to subpages. (only active on game pages, not elsewhere on the site)
New feature:
- Airline news on Dashboard. (this includes only new airline and bankruptcies so far, more later)
For information:
- Some minor bugfixes have been made recently that affect staff numbers, staff morale, aircraft seat config and dashboard news tabs. For the staff things there shouldn't be any manual actions needed to be done by players but you may see a slight change in staff numbers if your airline is a small one..
New features:
- Notepad (the popup) is now set to save & close automatically when you press 'Change game world' link at dashboard. This is to avoid mixing notepads of two game worlds.
If the notepad is not open when you logout from a game world you will see a small flash at the screen (window opening & closing) as the system tries to look for the open notepad window - but this is normal.
If the function doesn't work please clear the browser cache as the feature was added to existing script files.
(the last few small things to v.1.11)New features:
- "Close and save" button added to Notepad (eliminates one extra click - may require clearing browser cache first to work).
- Local dep/arr times appear with bolded font in route open/edit menus (user req).
- Ability to filter airports in new game worlds by airport size, for example to include airports only with sizeclass 5.
Bugfixes:
- Various minor bugfixes on different features (not affecting the game play, or requiring any user changes/info).
New feature:
- Dynamic forum signature banners.
Please see more from here: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,709.0.html
And from Dashboard - Airline Settings page.
The image also includes your alliance name and icon if you are a member of an alliance, but in this example the airline is not...
(https://www.airwaysim.com/content/images/BannerDyn_450x90.png) (https://www.airwaysim.com/)
Bugfix:
- Company notepad saved some information as 'double' in some cases.
While fixing this I had to reset part of the notepad data, so if you see old/changed notepad data, that is not a bug but just unfortunately the only way to fix it.
Minor tweak:
- Fleet commonality costs for airlines with lots of planes and many fleet types adjusted. Please let me know if there are problems.