It's spring! At least here around simulogics HQ, the flowers are blooming, the birds are chirping and the outdoors is tempting. But be that as it may, we have been and are busy working on new stuff for AirlineSim, so today I want to give you a brief update on what's in the pipeline. But first things first...
Spring Sale and Otto XIII pre-announcement
Two important items to get out of the way before we talk development projects:
Firstly, credits will be 10% off over the long Easter weekend, meaning from today until Monday. No egg-hunting required!
Secondly, I will be more or less out-of-office next week, so I want to use this opportunity to remind everyone that Otto will relaunch on Monday the 21st. There won't be much fuzz about it on that day, so mark your calendars!
New features in the pipeline
If you are following my weekly development log, the following paragraphs will hardly be news to you. And if you aren't...you should! You can also click the little bell icon in the upper right corner to get notified about every issue.
A feature that is technically done and ready to go live is our v1.5 aircraft performance system. But you guessed it: While done in code, our team of volunteers stands merely at the beginning of researching the data required to feed the new formulas. So while this new system promises much more realistic fuel consumption and improved landing and takeoff performance, I have to ask for a bit more patience until we can flip the switch and enable it in new (and possibly existing) game worlds. We might also be able to pull off a "gradual release" once we feel like we've got the most important types covered. In that scenario, some types would use the new and some would use the old system. This is yet to be determined, though.
Another feature that's mostly done but not quite ready for primetime yet is the first part of the over-arching DS-ORS hybrid project, namely individual travel request generation in bulk. If that is all Greek to you, let me give you some context: The current system that distributes passengers and cargo among competing connections is called the ORS. It comes with several flaws, one of which being that it really only knows three types of passengers (plus one type of cargo) which all airlines have to compete for. This means that it is near impossible to employ different business models: All airlines end up looking and working the same. To address this fundamental issue, we applied for and received public funding several years ago which allowed us to build a prototype of the Distribution System, or DS for short. Contrary to the ORS, the DS generated individual, point-to-point, return travel requests between arbitrary locations and would then book each one of these requests based on a set of itineraries matching the respective request's criteria.
I barely got this "pure model" to work in the prototype, and it's very unlikely that I'd get it to work in current generation AirlineSim. So I opted for a compromise: Whatever components I can re-use from the prototype I'll graft onto current generation AirlineSim. And wherever I run into performance issues (or other show-stoppers), I try to find a best-effort solution that comes as close to the "pure model" as possible.
Case in point: Instead of generating and booking hundreds of return trips every second, the DS-ORS hybrid will initially employ the ORS' code to generate physical connections. This means each airport is processed once a day (as today) and all physical connections to each destination are computed at once. Then, for each destination, the DS' travel request generation generates the required amount of travel requests "in bulk" which are then matched to the connections.
This by itself should already bring a lot more depth to the game. But it's merely the first step: Bit by bit, more concepts from the DS will follow, like custom booking classes, fares and much more. So stay tuned!
Next steps
All of the above is nice and dandy, but I hear you asking: When will all of this actually ship? Well, technically, it already has. All of what I described is already live in all game worlds behind feature flags. But while the aircraft performance formulas are pending data, bulk travel request generation has to go through a few cycles of testing and tuning. To that end, I plan on launching a public (but premium-only) game world in the near future where everyone can (and will be invited to) build real airlines so we can get a feel for the new system.
Over the coming weeks, I will still be preoccupied with a few private matters (again, see the devlog). Despite that, my plan is to have this preview game world ready to go before the end of the quarter. What follows afterwards is yet to be determined and will naturally depend on the outcome of our public test run. But in either case, you can vote for what you'd like to see next in the roadmap category on the forums.
And with that, I wish you all Happy Easter! And if that's not your thing, a beautiful weekend!
Martin