I’m still ranting about the Tower / Runway Priority changes in 2.0, but until the planned Tower function is implemented, I’ve been staring at my (TAKING FOREVER) Prague airport looking for why the airport is so empty and the Departures are so backed up. Today I found it - Taxi speeds exiting the runway.
Watching the Smalls land, they generally brake right up to the exit. However watching Mediums and Large, they finish decelerating quite a ways away from the [high-speed] exit and then stroll at normal taxi speeds down the runway and slowly exit the runway.
In this example, this A319 finishes braking at 16 seconds in the video, and 16 seconds later he finally exits the runway enough to trigger the next possible landing…
These exiting taxiways were designed at 30-degrees-or-less on purpose - to keep the speed up. If I bring a Cessna or my (soon) Super Viking into a busy Class B or C, they want me to (safely) keep the speed up as long as I can so that 737 on final doesn’t roll up my tail feathers. If normal taxi speeds for airliners about the airport is about 20 kts and 10 kts in turning, there’s got to be a way to get these planes to get off the **** runway faster… Departures wouldn’t stack up quite so much, parking spots would fill faster, airports would operate more closely to the ‘realistic’ that the devs kept claiming at the 2.0 reveal.
I’m not ignorant on the complexities of coding, i know some situations can be tough, but I’m completely confident that this can be done right.
Here’s to crossed-fingers that the Tower update will address this…
//end rant.
I totally agree with you…MCT has so many stands and enough crew but can never actually fill the airport and never have more than 10 planes been in handling simultaneously.
Added to that the stupid runway system with 2 runways for takeoff and one runway to land. I am how in the world will I have soo many aircraft to take off if I cant land em.
And nevermind the stupid runway crossing system for the cargo planes and larger planes taking off. Its just…
I agree with you to a point, but what I will say is unless you had a large own fleet and could sit them on stands, you couldn’t fill the airport in 1.0 either particularly and even if you could the departure lines would be huge.
Dare I say that the slow runway vacating times as mentioned is also the cause of empty airports in 1.0 and 2.0.
Additionally L and X planes should also really exit the runway earlier especially at PRG, MCT, and X at IAD. There is really no need to use that much runway as virtually every airport wants you to vacate as quickly as possible.
Yea and we are just asking for a fix for this problem which has been in game since 1.0 and not even acknowledged yet. [Unless its done on purpose to slow down the game]
The timing in 1.0 was always slow starting with the plane exiting the stand. The timer for a new inbound didn’t start until the stand was open, then after waiting for so long we got to pick which plane to bring in (even though it was only EVER one new plane…)
In the beginning airports, INN and whatever came before Prague, the Boost button was pretty handy for filling up the airport, and then the Runway Priority button was pretty useful at causing the stands to SLOWLY empty down before the boost button ‘refueled’ to fill the airport again…
This was the hardest part for me when 2.0 released bc I had JUST opened PRA and then 2.0 took away my boost button and runway priority function….
Real airports stack up some heavy traffic. THIS VIDEO, even though it’s sped up, shows how tight these planes are coming in. But none of that works if the plane that just landed is spending another 1/2 of his braking time in additional taxi time before clearing the runway.
I recorded 4 landings of medium planes coming into PRG. No departures, no playing around with luggage, just landing after landing after landing after landing.
B738 - B38M - E190 - and B738
All of them carried roughly the same time with only about a second or two of difference in total times. Here’s what I ended up with :
Clear-to-Land to Touchdown - 16sec
Touchdown to Braking - 30-34sec
Taxi to Exit - 16sec
It may not sound like a lot, but if we add in the Departures will eventually clog up the taxiways, we’re processing planes faster than we can fill the stands, thus constantly having an empty airport - so what was the point of buying 73 stands if they’ll never even get to 20% capacity? To further complicate it, the Large and Extra-Large spend extra time on the runway just braking, and THEN they still roll at slow taxi speeds to finish down the runway before turning off. The ‘realistic’ airport sim will never look like a real airport because it can’t land enough planes before they all empty out.
This capture from the recording shows how far apart those 4 Mediums are spaced. It doesn’t look like much, but that is a lot of dead space. I propose that developers use these high-speed taxiways as they were meant to be used - If you’re not going to code the individual plane to finish its braking at the exit point, similar to what real pilots try to do, can we at least get 60 knot groundspeed through that long taxi down the runway?
I’ve seen several comments in the forum concerning processing times while the planes are at their stands, taxi routes, and some other timing issues there, but for the moment, I’m only focusing on one issue that is clearly affecting our gameplay. Once this has been addressed, then I’ll either jump on somebody else’s war wagon or create my own. Either way, I’m still gonna play the game and enjoy it, but the RL pilot in me is still screaming “GET OFF THE ****ING RUNWAY SO I CAN LAND!!!”
I haven’t seen anyone mention this tiny detail, so I don’t know that it’s being argued by anyone as a defense for still being a problem. We’ve seen decades of games that sometimes the devs or the testers never noticed “why exactly does my airport never fill up?”
Personally I’m just trying to name one thing that definitely clogs up the gameplay so we can have a better game. Getting out of Prague has been a pain with the new XP system and 70+ slots that only fill 7 at any time isn’t helping…
Obviously the thing that actually causes the empty airports is the real-time landings but short handling time. However most of us would hate spending an hour plus just handling one A380… i don’t know of any other real solutions. Highspeed exits would help a bit tho…. Just looking forward to Delhi, four runways will hopefully double the number of flights we can handle at any given moment, and tower manger could boost that amount substantially.
On a separate note, in 1.5 I remember having 25 or 30 aircraft on the ground in IAD at any given time, whereas now there are never more than ten or so LX and an M or two. The real time runway feature was a huge turning point in the game, one of the main things that made 2.0 so grindy. I think it was overall a good addition but the devs should have balanced it probably
Ideas:
High-speed exits: -16 sec of the 64 second or so total time
Tower manager- indeterminate
Delhi airport - no speed changes but added more runways to help fill up airport
Taxi times once off the runway could be reduced (while recognizing that the runway is the main bottleneck, and this should be part of tower manager)
Start approach before plane is actually clear of the runway so that could shave maybe 8 or 16 seconds off
Calibrate landing distance to match aircraft, not size class, to help reduce on-runway taxi times
Landing planning, so stacking up multiple aircraft in the immediate queue, to remove the 2-5 second delay in clearing an aircraft to land
I just keep wishing that all 4 airports in delhi are used for landing as well as take off. If its screwed and just 2 runways are used for landing and maybe 3 out of 4 also facilitate take offs then that airport is also going to be as empty as PRG.
I would agree with this. I’ve had a bit more luck of having 16-20 planes on the ground at a time, but that’s if I only land the largest plane available and use minimum handling crew to stay on time.
I think we’d all be okay with longer handling times since we’d be able to do more small and medium planes and they wouldn’t be viewed as a waste of runway capacity as they are by some now.
I agree with augmenting the handling times.
I’ve tried to deliberately handle an A380 for 45mins and trust me with the other planes that you have to handle, the time flies by. Even handling multiple medium planes each taking 20-25mins went by pretty swiftly, which in turn gave me at least 15 planes on the ground at PRG. The only thing is have them give better rewards like it did before 2.0 that compensate for them taking longer to handle.
But if you want realism, that’s the price of having it handle like something real world. The day in itself also goes by quite quick in relation to how the planes are handled/move
mark up to 5 planes for landing and don’t worry about them.
Good idea
But with the possibility of changing the order in the queue.
I don’t like the real handling time of 45 minutes. I don’t have much time to play. Then I would very slowly unlock another airport. But that’s my problem.
I didn’t really mean each plane has to take 45mins, that’s more for like A380’s and 748’s
But I do think increasing the times would make the game look more realistic having the airport have traffic buildup
But also a game mode option for that could be an option
At MCT specially, the runway exits seems entirely based on gate location, rather than aircraft type and I think this is the mechanic to change. The only reason I can think they’ve done that is to ensure taxiways are unidirectional.
T1 south-east apron exit at E4 but same aircraft will roll to the exit at N if parking north side of T1 and exit at E3 if parking SW side of T1. Any aircraft at north cargo apron exits E3. There’s no consistency - surely same aircraft should exit at the first available opportunity depending on speed. That’s what high speed exits are designed for.
Ultimately this hinders the amount of arrivals you can squeeze in. I’ve specifically avoided using the south apron so that can focus arrivals on 26L and departures 26R but even this doesn’t seem balanced.
Solution to improve flow would be updating the algorithm so that aircraft exit at next available opportunity depending on speed, not based on gate location and shortest taxi path based on available taxi routes. Seems like both G and H are same direction so even flipping a section of one of these the other direction may likely solve this?
