Aircraft unification
This week we deployed the aircraft unification feature, the last step of the Aircraft Moderation Phase.
When a player buys an aircraft, they will not buy a sim/addon specific aircraft anymore, but rather they will buy an aircraft type that will be compatible with several add-ons and sims. This will greatly ease the sharing of aircraft between partners and inside of a VA.
In order to be included in the same generic type, 2 add-ons will have to have similar specifications. By default, we will use an automated batch process to unify all aircraft with less than 5% difference in core characteristics (Fuel Tanks, Empty Weight, Max Gross Weight, etc.) into being considered the same type. Any aircraft can also be moderated manually to attach it to a type. We will try to attach new imported aircraft to an existing type if one is available.
This means that all similar aircraft will share most of the data (range, max payload, seats, cruise speed, etc.)
In the aircraft detail page, you can display all the compatible add-ons (of the same type):
The Fuel Compatibility factor indicates how far the aircraft add-on is from the Generic Aircraft.
Several add-ons of the same type could have different fuel tanks and payloads. OnAir translates the fuel value when synchronizing to the sim at the start of the flight to reach the same % level in the add-on tanks that was set in the OnAir prepare page.
There is a tooltip on the fuel factor to indicate how we compute this value.
If the fuel tanks of an add-on are too different from the generic aircraft type, we cannot therefore reasonably group it in the same type and it will not be compatible. As the add-ons are generally relatively close to the real aircraft specifications, this should be somewhat rare.
The specifications and the name of the aircraft types are kept from of the most used add-on. This means that your aircraft may have a new name, but it will still be compatible with the add-on type you originally purchased it for.
The coming weeks, the names of the aircraft types will be reviewed to be more generic and not keep the default add-on name.
What’s Next
We will now concentrate on the next step of the road map, the Main Feature Requests.
This will include:
- Items from the In Game Main Feature Requests list
- Integrating VA in Cumulus, Clear Sky and Stratus
- Implementing APIs for VAs, allowing to get data via WebServices to include in our own website or application