[HN Gopher] Auto Traffic Control - A gRPC Programming Air Traffi...
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       Auto Traffic Control - A gRPC Programming Air Traffic Control Game
        
       Author : nivenkos
       Score  : 87 points
       Date   : 2022-08-14 10:45 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (auto-traffic-control.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (auto-traffic-control.com)
        
       | sand500 wrote:
       | It would be cool to have an ATC game that uses real life
       | historical traffic to see how you would do. Pick an airport and
       | draw a bounding box around it, record when and where a plane
       | enters the box and replay it in the game. Difficulty can be based
       | on which airport you pick from small regionals to the big multi
       | airport Class-Bs
        
         | xuhu wrote:
         | Since planes go where your code tells them to go, is there a
         | way to combine old trajectories with the possibly different ATC
         | game's directions ?
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | sand500 wrote:
           | I'm not sure how realistic the airplanes' responsiveness and
           | agility are in this game. At maximum traffic, it will be one
           | plane per a grid point. Think of it like a game of snake but
           | the tail is static and you are directing the food to join in
           | at the end of the tail.
           | 
           | Things like rectangular holding patterns aren't feasible when
           | you are playing only in 2 dimensions
        
         | toast0 wrote:
         | Final Approach - 1982
         | 
         | https://www.mobygames.com/game/final-approach
        
       | sand500 wrote:
       | Ooh seems cool. Reminds me of the ATC game on iOS way back in the
       | early days of iPhone.
        
         | onlyusername wrote:
         | That game is probably Flight Control:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Control_(video_game)
        
         | jdno wrote:
         | "Flight Control" was one of the first games I ever played on
         | iOS, and one of the inspirations for Auto Traffic Control. I
         | like how engaging the game was, considering it had only a
         | single input and a very simple set of rules.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Control_(video_game)
         | 
         | The other game that influenced the design of ATC is "Sector
         | 33". In this game, players had to do a little bit of math using
         | the speeds and distances of planes to coordinate their approach
         | to an airport.
         | 
         | https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/Sector33/iOS/index.html
         | 
         | Ideally, I'd like to combine the colorful art style and casual
         | randomness of Flight Control with the simple arithmetic of
         | Sector 33. I want to make it interesting for players to watch
         | their creation play the game, and give them a sense of
         | accomplishment when multiple aircraft land in perfect intervals
         | one after the other.
         | 
         | Here is a little bit more background about the inspiration for
         | the game in case you want to know more:
         | https://www.jdno.dev/auto-traffic-control/
        
         | Rebelgecko wrote:
         | For Oculus owners, there's a really fun VR take on this concept
         | called Control Tower VR. It's not super polished, but the core
         | gameplay loop is fun enough that I don't care. Having a third
         | dimension to route aircraft is really fun, as well as just
         | walking around and watching them.
        
         | jafo wrote:
         | Or Kennedy Approach on the C64: "United three two six, say
         | heading and altitude" "This is United three two six on one
         | eight zero at four thousand feet"...even though I knew damn
         | well what his heading an altitude was.
        
           | blue1 wrote:
           | Some years ago a guy called Weps made a free remake for
           | Windows of Kennedy Approach (identical to the original, with
           | some optional improvements). It's still fun.
        
             | mdaniel wrote:
             | > Weps made a free remake for Windows of Kennedy Approach
             | 
             | There was quite a bit of SEO spam to work through as it
             | seems they let the domain lapse and it was bought up, but
             | this seems to be the general ballpark of when it was live: 
             | https://web.archive.org/web/20081223024015/http://www.kenne
             | d...
             | 
             | For some reason Wayback didn't hyperlink the actual
             | download, but updating the URL will return it: https://web.
             | archive.org/web/20081224105001/http://www.kenned...
        
       | ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
       | As someone who got into real flying from videogames, far and away
       | the thing that has surprised me the most is how much actual "ok
       | look out so you don't hit anyone" there actually exists around
       | decently busy airports in a metropolitan area. More than once
       | I've been flying around my local Class D airport and it was
       | abundantly clear to me just how stressful a job it is to work
       | traffic somewhere like that with all sort of VFR traffic. This
       | looks fun!
        
         | t0mas88 wrote:
         | Absolutely, even around JFK and LAX this is very much a thing.
         | 
         | Europe does it differently and keeps traffic on instrument
         | procedures and radar vectors even in good weather. But in the
         | US it's super common in nice weather to have jets into all
         | major airports fly visual approaches, where separation between
         | traffic is very much "look out the window at the plane ahead,
         | don't hit them."
        
           | krzyk wrote:
           | Sounds pretty scary, I was sure everyone uses instruments.
        
       | mdaniel wrote:
       | heh, I'm surprised it didn't include the automatic HN front-page
       | keyword "... in Rust" https://github.com/jdno/auto-traffic-
       | control/blob/main/Cargo...
       | 
       | but, seriously, I wondered if one needed to deal with waypoints,
       | but it seems that no, they are liberally available: https://auto-
       | traffic-control.com/docs/coordinates#routing-gr...
       | 
       | I like Zachtronics games as much as the next crazy person, but
       | the thought of having to implement this for a game gives me
       | anxiety
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-14 23:01 UTC)