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[WIP] Air Traffic Control


skykooler

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This is a mod designed to add a bit of realism. It adds an ATC menu to the game, which has been largely inspired by the one in Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Still highly under development.

Usage:

  • Just flying around: Tune KSC Tower (or whatever tower is nearest to you) and request takeoff clearance.
  • Planned flight: Create a flight plan from one of the options shown. Select a destination airport; you can filter by name or by airport code. Then, contact tower to get takeoff clearance.

WARNING: If you take off without permission in career mode, you will be docked 50 reputation points.

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Features:

  • Over 20 ATC stations scattered around Kerbin
  • ATC handoffs: If you fly from one station's airspace into another, they will prompt you to switch stations
  • Flight plans: you can create low altitude flight plans, high altitude ones, suborbital flights, or orbital flight plans
  • KerbinSide integration: All landing sites are at KerbinSide airports
  • Repercussions: Disobeying ATC and taking off without clearance will cost you 50 rep in career mode

KNOWN BUGS:

  • ATC currently happens on all planets. They will hand you off between little Kerbin airports while you're landing on the Mun. This is silly and should be fixed.
  • Routing bugs: currently, controllers prefer to route you directly to a point in the air several kilometers above your destination, then expect you to land via dive-bombing. Ignore them and fly a sensible approach.
  • Space centers don't work properly: they should hand you back off to other controllers when you're coming in for a landing, but they seem to prefer keeping in contact all the way to the ground
  • Tower will always give takeoff clearance regardless of whether you are on the runway or not.
  • Flight plans don't complete automatically when you land, you have to cancel them yourself
  • There should probably be some way of sorting the airports by nearest to you
  • Destination list is not scrollable
  • You can't land at the reverse runways (e.g. runway 27 instead of runway 9)
  • And probably many more...

Source is at https://github.com/skykooler/KSP-ATC. Code is under the MIT license.

Download alpha 4 here.

Changelog:


v0.4-alpha:
- If you load a saved flight, whether in atmosphere or in orbit, you will be connected to the appropriate station instead of ground
- Don't run ATC to ships that have no Kerbals on them
- Added toolbar icon and ability to close the ATC window
- Fixed bug in sandbox mode where taking off without permission would cause ATC to stop working

v0.3-alpha:
- Flight plans automatically complete when you land (or reach orbit for orbital flight plans)
- Window title shows current station and status
- List of destinations is now scrollable
- Fixed bugs in whether you have clearance to takeoff/land after you've already done so once
- Added reverse runways, which you will now be routed to if you are closer to them

v0.2-alpha:
- Only show ATC dialog box on Kerbin
- Space Center behaves itself
- Shows a "Nearest airports" list when no flight plan is selected
- Controllers direct you to a proper glideslope when you have a flight plan instead of just expecting you to drop out of the sky

v0.1-alpha:
- Initial release

Edited by skykooler
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Issue: "Messages" window cannot be closed, taking up space on screen.

Issue: "Messages" window too small, causing messages to be cut-off. As a result: I can request a flight plan, but don't get heading, altitude or anything else vital. (Lines not breaking properly, I assume? Or am I missing the resize option somewhere?)

Issue: Only a few Kerbin-Side destinations are recognized. (Although this is less of an actual issue, and probably more due to the alpha status?)

Issue: Heading of incoming aircraft is not recognized. I came in for a landing at KSC at a 270° heading, heading for runway 27. Instead, was redirect to runway 9. (Again, probably less of an issue? I can imagine getting the tower to recognize the player properly is hassle enough...)

Other than those issues, I really like the idea of this.

Well done! Carry on, sir/madam!

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One small thing: have you resolved the list issue of available bases for the flightplan window?:

The button alingment shows that there are more bases available (i use kerbin side ) but the absent of a way to scroll through them makes it impossible to select other bases than the ones that are being displayed in the flightplan menu (i'm not shure if this is the case with other panels).

And a small request: can you allow the mod to the latest directions the ATC gave to you:

Like: <maintain 16000 heading 311°>

and also display with wich ATC you are connected with like: <KSC Approach>

Edited by MK3424
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Issue: "Messages" window cannot be closed, taking up space on screen.

Will fix. What should it do when closed - toolbar icon or summon via hotkey?

Issue: "Messages" window too small, causing messages to be cut-off. As a result: I can request a flight plan, but don't get heading, altitude or anything else vital. (Lines not breaking properly, I assume? Or am I missing the resize option somewhere?)

Duly noted. I'm still learning how to do GUI stuff, I will add resizing the window when I figure it out.

Issue: Only a few Kerbin-Side destinations are recognized. (Although this is less of an actual issue, and probably more due to the alpha status?)

All of the KerbinSide runways are recognized, along with several helipads. However, they have different names on ATC; when I first started this I made stations for all the companies in the game, and when I added KerbinSide I simply mapped them to the closest KerbinSide airfield.

Issue: Heading of incoming aircraft is not recognized. I came in for a landing at KSC at a 270° heading, heading for runway 27. Instead, was redirect to runway 9. (Again, probably less of an issue? I can imagine getting the tower to recognize the player properly is hassle enough...)

Runway heading is a planned feature, but currently for each airport it only has the runway you spawn on.

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Version 0.3-alpha released!

It seems that resizing windows in Unity is really difficult. So, instead, I added a scrollbar to the destination selection menu.

I added reverse runways; now airports will take your heading into consideration, and direct you to whichever runway is closer.

I added your current station and status to the title of the window.

Ly04cTw.jpg

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Will fix. What should it do when closed - toolbar icon or summon via hotkey?

Personally, I am okay with either solution.

Keep in mind that you would need to make the hotkey configurable to avoid any conflicts with other mods or if the player has remapped the controls.

All of the KerbinSide runways are recognized, along with several helipads. However, they have different names on ATC; when I first started this I made stations for all the companies in the game, and when I added KerbinSide I simply mapped them to the closest KerbinSide airfield.

Ah, okay! That's something I wasn't aware of then. I've found the config, so if I wanted to change that to their KerbinSide name, that should be possible. Just gotta figure out what's-what.

Runway heading is a planned feature, but currently for each airport it only has the runway you spawn on.

It looks like you added this in the new version. Noice.

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Version 0.3-alpha released!

It seems that resizing windows in Unity is really difficult. So, instead, I added a scrollbar to the destination selection menu.

I added reverse runways; now airports will take your heading into consideration, and direct you to whichever runway is closer.

I added your current station and status to the title of the window.

http://i.imgur.com/Ly04cTw.jpg

Thanks for the cool update!

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skykooler, wonderful mod. If I could rep you more right now I would. Expect a hook-up in KerbinSide's OP and with your permission, I'd be happy to release this packed up with KerbinSide. Your call chap.

I'll scrap KK's ATC feature. This is way better and saves me some work. One feature request: audio.

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skykooler, wonderful mod. If I could rep you more right now I would. Expect a hook-up in KerbinSide's OP and with your permission, I'd be happy to release this packed up with KerbinSide. Your call chap.

I'll scrap KK's ATC feature. This is way better and saves me some work. One feature request: audio.

Sure! But ideally I'd make the company airports separate from the KerbinSide ones.

As for audio: it's planned. I'm currently in the process of finding voice actors.

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It'd be a lot more characterful if the audio was actually reversed, so you don't really need to get any voice talent, just do it yourself :). No need to worry about whether it's remotely understandable if you do it as well as text, not instead of.

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No. That only works on Windows. As I only have Mac OS X and Linux available to me, that is something I do not plan to do.

It'd be a lot more characterful if the audio was actually reversed, so you don't really need to get any voice talent, just do it yourself :). No need to worry about whether it's remotely understandable if you do it as well as text, not instead of.

But, if it's reversed, you can't hear what it's saying. That kind of defeats the point of ATC. I might add some sort of hook-in with Chatterer for people who just want Kerbal sounds instead of intelligible directions.

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