Evolving the Airline
If you’ve noticed I’ve been rather quiet in recent days, there’s a good reason for that. I’m setting up and configuring the airline - preparing for it to become a little bit more fun.
If you’ve seen strangeness in the data (particularly in the last 24 hours), that was mostly me lifting the entire database into the air, giving it a good shake, and trying to figure out how to re-arrange it properly.
The rest of this update goes into the how, what and why of those changes.
Jonathan
The aircraft are now associated with the airlines
In reality, the aircraft were always associated with the various airlines - but we never really doubled down on what that means. We’re starting to do just that. As a summary, the airlines are as follows:
Virtual Flying Club - all of the GA aircraft (C152, C172, etc)
Virtual Flight Transport - all of the transport aircraft
Virtual Flight Historic - all of the historic aircraft
Virtual Flight Business - all of the business jets, and some of the turboprops
Virtual Flight Express - all of the mid-range commercial aircraft (B738, A320, etc)
Virtual Flight World - all of the long-range commercial aircraft (B77W, A350, etc)
You can find out more about the fleet aircraft on the Fleet page of the website, or the Fleet page in the airline.
What about new pilots?
For those of you that are new, and might not have filed many hours, the rank structure eases you into flight operations pretty quickly and easily:
You are a “Student Pilot” until you have filed 1 hour on ACARS (or via a manual PIREP).
While you’re a student pilot, you only have access to the C152, C172, and Robin aircraft. You can fly them on National Tours, and free flights.
After filing 1 hour of flight, you are “Private Pilot”, and can access the rest of the general aviation aircraft within the “Virtual Flying Club”.
From there on, the rank structure opens up the various fleets of aircraft. Each fleet is associated with a number of ranks. You can find out more on the Ranks and Fleet pages of the website.
Tours are now associated with airlines, and their respective fleets
The tour flights are now just like scheduled flights - tied to airlines and their fleets. Each tour is aligned to an airline, so the fleet of aircraft operated by that airline is available to fly on the legs of that tour.
As a reminder, the current tours are as follows:
National Tours
Legs ranging from 100 to 150 miles - associated with Virtual Flying Club (the GA aircraft).
UK and Republic of Ireland
France
Germany
Italy
Norway
Spain
Continental Tours
Legs ranging from 300 to 700 miles - associated with Virtual Flight Express (the medium range commercial jets)
Africa
Asia
Europe
North America
Oceania
South America
Regional Tours
Legs ranging from 200 to 400 miles - associated with Virtual Flight Business (the business jets, and some of the turbo-props)
Mediterranean
Australia
Canada
I’m still building out tours as and when I have time - so watch this space. I’m very aware we don’t have any Historic, Transport, or World tours yet.
The flight times have been corrected
Although still not perfect, the estimated flight times throughout the tours have been corrected - so the ballpark figures for the Continental and Regional Tours won’t be wildy out (continental are based on 400 knots cruise, regional on 350 knots cruise).
Passenger fairs are finally working properly
For reasons known only to the developers of PHPVMS, the fleets of aircraft default to passengers paying 100 euros for their seat, regardless of distance. I have now populated the database such that:
Economy seats cost 50 euros per hour of estimated flight time
Business class seats cost 100 euros per hour of estimated flight time
First class seats cost 200 euros per hour of estimated flight time
Business jet seats cost 10 x normal rates
Moral of the story - always fill your aircraft with passengers, and you’ll make money :)
Airline finances are up and running
Anybody that’s landed at a big airport recently will have seen a world of costs appear on their PIREP balance sheet. Like I said - make sure you carry enough passengers to make some money :)
You’ll now be seeing:
Cargo fares
Passenger fares
InFlight Sales (Duty Free, Cabin Bouffet)
Fuel Costs
Block Time Cost
Air Traffic Services
Pilot Payments
Ground Handling Fees
Terminal Service Fees
Catering Fees
Landing Fees
Fuel Service Fees
Parking Fees
Airport Authority Fees
They are not flat rates - they vary according to a number of factors.
The marketplace is coming
Once I have all the tours sorted out, I’m going to turn my attention to the marketplace. You know the pretend money you’ve been amassing? I’m going to start implementing a number of things that will be able to be purchased:
Pilot Type Ratings (to unlock aircraft types)
Tours (to unlock special tours)
At the moment I’m thinking the “Historic” aircraft will be a perfect use-case - where pilots will need not only to hold an appropriate rank (i.e. filed enough hours) to qualify for an aircraft - they will also need to purchase the type rating for the aircraft.
Alongside that, the historic tours may well be associated with tokens to unlock them too - that will be available via the marketplace.
It’s going to be fun :)
When I get to it, I may enlist some helpers to test it. Watch this space.
Have you visited the Discord server recently?
The admins and moderators that run the VirtualFlight.Online group flights continue to do an amazing job. If you would like to take part in a group flight, go take a look!
https://virtualflight.online/community/discord
A slight change to the forum(s)
The forums are off to a slow start - especially after I realised it would be better if they lived on the forums subdomain, rather than forum, which required more tinkering than I’m goint to admit.
Do go take a look if you’ve not done so already :)
https://forums.virtualflight.online
One more thing…
I’ve been working on Transmitter. I’ve improved the server software so that it doesn’t need a MySQL database any more. The source code is already on GitHub. If all goes well, I may stand up a server for it, and bring it back to life.
The new version has a radar display, labels on the aircraft, and the labels can be dragged around - it remembers where they are, and they move with the aircraft. Oh - and you can click on the aircraft to find out about them.
I’m thinking about adding multiple server functionality to the Transmitter client software - to allow people to add several servers, and switch between them quickly and easily. Watch this space.
Help support VirtualFlight.Online
Hosting the airline, the website, transmitter, and the forums, isn’t free. If you would like to contribute a small amount (absolutely not required but much appreciated), head over to Patreon:
https://patreon.com/virtualflightonline
Alternatively you can drop in to ko-fi and buy me a virtual cup of coffee :)
Every penny helps!
Massive work Jonathan Sir. Question is : do you ever sleep ? Congratulations on an fascinating project consolidating already. Greetings.