Airport Simulator
airport.apunen.comI was only thinking about Flight Control[0] the other day and how I wish there were more modern takes on it! There was Mini Metro[1], but that was released over a decade ago.
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In 2022 [0], Jan David Nose (jdno) released a game / programming challenge called _Auto Traffic Control_ [1]. Rather than controlling airplanes with UI interactions, the simulation is a GRPC server that expects the player to construct a game client that issues flight paths.
I tried to make a game client for jdno's ATC [2]. My client was deficient, as I tried to treat the movement as a fixed interval, by only submitting flight plans that moved in cartesian directions. Only by cheating, modifying the simulator, could my greedy algorithm land any planes [3]. I suspect I was supposed to continuously model and poll the future positions of airplanes when developing a flight plan.
I suspect that I won't have much competition on the leaderboard, despite the asterisk, as jdno eventually archived the project [4]. Originally, the project was self-publication while looking for work. The Rust Foundation hired him a little while afterward.
[0] https://jdno.dev/auto-traffic-control/
[1] https://auto-traffic-control.com/
[2] https://github.com/Nzen/hircine-anise-okkoz
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czsSjy1Uqyk 1.5 minutes
[4] https://github.com/jdno/auto-traffic-control/commit/b5972dfb...
I think about this game quite often and would love to eventually pick it up as a project again. I was only able to scratch the surface of what I had in mind, and I’m sure there’s so much to learn from players about what makes a good programming game.
Imagine how cool it would be if something like this was based on the actual FF-ICE / FIXM flight plan format.
I have to admit that I have exactly zero knowledge about actual flight plans or anything else related to air traffic control. Just loved playing Flight Control and used it as inspiration for this game.
Having said that, I think there are tons of interesting ways to build on the idea. :)
Flight Control was one of my favorite iOS games of all time. Simple, polished, quick to play. Sucks that there is no way to play it on iOS again, seems it is still available for purchase on Steam, but it was really well suited to the phone format, not really something I'd sit down to play at a desktop.
See this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48980062
Flight Control was very closely remade as "Planes Control" [1] and gets regular updates with new levels, etc. Not sure if the developer acquired the assets of the original, but it's very close to what I remember playing as a kid
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/planes-control/id1015114550
United Airlines offers the game for entertainment while you're flying.
https://liveandletsfly.com/united-airlines-air-traffic-contr...
Heathrow ATC (for the ZX Spectrum) was one that I played extensively back in the day: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/10530 I wonder if there are earlier examples of popular ATC games? They're simpler than flight simulators so you'd think there would be more of them.
Edit: playable version - https://archive.org/details/zx_Heathrow_International_Air_Tr...
The BSD Games collection has an ATC Simulator as well from around 1985:
Kennedy Approach was published around the same time.
Wikipedia search turns up this game from 1982: https://www.mobygames.com/game/52384/controller/ Quite graphically advanced for the time.
Mini Airways - ATC simulator comes close in base mechanics but adds some complexity
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2289650/Mini_Airways__ATC...
It's looks like they literally cloned the UI and graphics from the Mini Metro/Mini Motorways games (not just the map style).
Yes, they did, which is unfortunate, as the game is very good in itself. They gave a nice twist to the formula.
There’s an open source ATC sim called OpenScope that’s a bit more complex and is mostly keyboard based. I think HN would appreciate it.
Flight Control HD was one of the first iPad games I had. I under-appreciated how much easier this game was with a finger than a trackball.
I missed Flight Control so bad that I sent Claude on a wild goose chase to decompile the IPA in ghidra and rewrite it in Swift 6. Still working through it, obviously will never get released, but it's been cool to watch.
You should release it though.
OptiFlight is similar to mini metro for planes
I love both of those and actually only started playing Mini Metro this month. Such synchronicity(!), although mediated by whatever is probably happening on the Play Store, this is less surprising then it would have been 50 years ago.
There's a VR version called Final Approach that's quite fun
There's also the simpler 'atc' from BSD games. Text interface only.
Yes so long Flight Control : Look at this recording : the proximity alert and the music
On Android there is Endless ATC. It also appears to be on Steam.
I'm quite surprised it's available on Android, this specific take on air traffic control games doesn't really strike me as mobile-friendly game. Good to know - I played it a lot on Steam back in the days.
I was reminded Mini Metro too. It has a fun sequel on PC, mini motorways.
Oh, it's from an ATC point of view. I was expecting simulations of actual airports, for example to simulate Heathrow you wander around a construction site, to simulate LAX you stand in an endless queue that never moves, and to simulate Munich you get something like the backrooms but with more glass and less pits.
After trying this one, I'd agree it seems mechanically identical to Flight Control but with a sort of stylistic low-res pixellated 3d look.
Gameplay from 2011:
Did planes take off in Flight Control? I don’t remember.
That was one of my most played games of all time. SO PERFECT for the iPhone and on the go play.
I... don't think so but it's probably been over a decade since I last played it. Completely agree that game was tailor-made for touchscreen interfaces.
The pilots in this game are complete dum-dums and not following 14 CFR § 91.113 (b):
When weather conditions permit, regardless of whether an operation is conducted under instrument flight rules or visual flight rules1, vigilance shall be maintained by each person operating an aircraft so as to see and avoid other aircraft.
I had some aircraft pop in from off-screen and just run into another one that just took off.
This game would also be better if I could actually decide when to clear departures.
Also, altitudes matter after about 5 mins here.
This was really fun to play with, I have a few suggestions: - As the airspace gets more congested, it becomes difficult to click the airplanes as you can also grab an existing path, messing everything up.
- The big stats table on the top left completely obscures a good portion of the map, making it harder than necessary. A togglable or semi-transparent option would be nice.
-The possibility of zooming or moving around could be nice
Speaking of congested airspace…
Yesterday’s 50-mile line of planes coming to Oshkosh is something to behold: https://youtu.be/9IHbO0tzpMc
why was this, some event?
"Oshkosh", aka "EAA Airventure"
ctrl-shift-<minus> until the stats table is as small as you like
added a button to hide the scoreboard on desktop! was originally only available on mobile viewports
On phones the cramped view is particularly pronounced. The “pointing device” is fat and the edges of the screen are usually reserved for swiping the tab or back/fwd. This leaves even less of the screen available for acting on a plane.
I played a few runs and every crash happened on the edge of the screen where I couldn’t route the planes or I was dragging the tab as I dragged the flight path (iOS, Safari). That’s the only time the view moves and I can see outside the initial border.
Anyway, really cool game!
Nice! But whatever happened to "Show HN"? I see more and more people posting their own projects here (which is completely ok!) but avoiding (or unaware of?) the "Show" option.
About the game (sorry, sim) itself: it was really fun once I realized that I have to drag the airplanes to the runway threshold matching their color. You can draw a straight line from the plane to the runway, and it will land even if it has to do an instant ~360° turn directly before touching down, which is a liiiitle bit unrealistic :) Also, while landing the planes just float with constant speed right until the end of the runway and then taxi away. A nicer animation would be if they would touch down somewhere in the middle of the runway and then decelerate gradually before taxiing away. Same in reverse for take-offs.
Maybe it's by design, but Show HN posts seem to just get completely buried, whereas posting stuff directly is more successful
I've spoke to other people who've had the same experience, maybe just a coincidence but could be why people avoid it?
Show hn was overrun by ai slop for a while so I and presumably many others filtered it out of our feeds. That would have resulted in show hn getting much less interaction and potentially led to people not wanting to use the feature.
Took me far too long to work how to get a plane to land, was drawing lines along the runway rather than dropping them on the coloured spot at the end and they were overflying. Was thinking the paths weren't straight enough, once I figured it out was quite funny to find the planes can do 180° turns mid air to land.
Yeah to be more realistic they should be able to land from either end of the runway. Mayve depending on wind.
Landing either way is not realistic. Even with no wind airports have a designated runway open. For example a straight North and South "runway" has runway 0 and runway 18, and only one will be open at any given time regardless of windspeed.
If an airport is uncontrolled, planes can land in either direction. Whether the pilots choose to do so is a different matter.
At airports with towers, the controllers can allow landings in either direction. That they usually don't is more of a function of existing traffic.
Runway 36
When playing for the first time, a simple pop up tutorial would be nice, explaining what to do. Figuring out how to land and how to drag the planes takes a second, but it is fine. However, I still haven't figured out what to do with starting planes? I can't change their route, so how do I prevent two starting planes from crashing?
Edit: I would also add some “crash margin” around the border of the screen. A plane coming from the top right corner and crashing into a plane leaving just to the right of the top right corner is frustrating.
yeah, not being able to vector departing planes is also a pain. Kinda makes sense I guess, but still annoying
Not enough of you played Flight Control in 2008 and it shows.
I was 3 years old
I’m gonna need you to explain yourself. What a strange choice
They did it to dodge taxes.
Babby.
Fun take on the ATC type genre but for some reason ATC style games have never really hooked me.
I'd love to see a modern take on Airport Tycoon where you layout runways and terminals etc.
I also fondly remember an airline management simulator while in college. I started playing with IdleFlightManager on iOS but it was just insanely easy so I lost interest quickly. The software I used while in college had you manually set fares and fare pool size in addition to buying aircraft, dealing with maintenance expenses, and choosing routes.
This is super fun! Really gets your heart rate going. I tried various tactics borrowed from actual ATC/tower techniques (drawing common approach paths; throwing in some 360 degree turns) but it never seemed to be enough as the traffic picked up :P I'm curious if anyone figured out any good strategies.
At some point I started to send incoming planes away like no airport for you!
Had a crash happen super far from the airport after I did this, found it funny do to how unlikely it seemed
Think it needs just a little zoom out on my phone but had a fun time. Both my games ended off screen
Android makes this a chore with all its gestures too!
But I'm not sure it could (or that I'd want) it to supress gestures like back and close application
Super fun game! Minor modifications that would be fun: * As you draw a path, at the same rate gradually bold/pulse all other planes' existing drawn paths from their current location forward so I can visually see if two future lines will not just overlap, but overlap at the same time * A slider to control game speed * A clearer arrow over the landing zone. It took me quite a while to realize how to land a plane * A timer over each runway to next takeoff
Strange. Can’t write “e” in the top scorer input box. Anyone else have this problem?
I just noticed that myself. It seems to wiggle the map or something instead of input the letter e.
Interestingly a lot of high score names contain e. BR, rsëndv :)
R-ally? It s--ms to work fin- for m-.
Long ago I played this game called Airport Mania.
In it you’re an ATC. There’s like 10 stages (airports), with several levels in each stage in increasing difficulty. There are different capabilities to add to the airport (such as de-icing, defogging, upgraded terminals, upgraded fuel pumps, layover spaces, additional runways etc). Different types of planes had different patience levels (for example, Concordes needed quick service) etc. Very sophisticated. It was fun.
About 5 years ago a slightly watered down version of it was available on Android. I think it’s gone now. Even as an adult I found it engaging. It may look childish in the screenshots but it’s really fun.
It’s the only game I have bought online. They sent me the CD from Portland Oregon to my home on the opposite side of the Earth.
A few months ago I built a piloting harness for LLMs[1] in X-Plane. You can give the AI pilot instructions as though you are ATC, and I imagined what it might be like to scale it up and make an ATC game out of it, talking to dozens of AI pilots. The most open-ended ATC sim ever…
Should the leader board be cleared of the folks with 10,000 landings in 1 second?
It looks like the true leader right now is 90 landings in 7:29.
Yes, that would be good! I got to 86, and on a macbook trackpad, and those fake scores are making my RSI flare up.
done!
Play this for a few minutes and you start to realize why sequencing and published flight paths are so important!
Really fun, thank you!
And traffic patterns.
If you enjoy this, you may also enjoy the `atc` binary that is shipped alongside tetris and other classics in Debian's bsdgames package. Also exists for Ubuntu (https://packages.ubuntu.com/noble/bsdgames) and probably other Debian derivatives. I enjoy the keyboard controls there, a lot more deterministic than trying to mouse around the screen!
The appeal of ATC-style games is that the entire difficulty curve comes from one mechanic: you're never doing anything hard, you're just doing too many easy things at once. Flight Control nailed that on touch screens. Curious how this one handles the difficulty ramp — more planes, faster planes, or tighter airspace?
thanks for playing! yes, over the first 5min the spawn rate ramps up from ~5s to ~1.5s and the aircraft cap goes from 3 to 12. also wanted to make things more interesting with the takeoff mechanic to add some predictable congestion
Fantastic game! I miss the old iOS version. My suggestions:
The predictable congestion gets a bit tedious and makes the game impossibly difficult quite quickly. It guarantees needing to keep readjusting almost every plane, otherwise a crash happens while trying to select the correct plane to move. It's a great mechanic earlier on and as a tutorial, because collisions happen rarely, but knowing that so many planes spawning or taking off on a calculated crash path when it's already chaotic seems to actually take skill out of the game as it progresses.
Planes that land should turn gray as it's confusing vs. planes taking off (especially consecutive takeoffs).
Volume slider rather than just on/off.
Drawing paths to the landing area should be more forgiving. If there's a short section of weird path at the end, it messes up timing for the planes landing and causes crashes.
I love this emerging "3D pixel art" trend. Stylized graphics always age better than realistic. And it definitely has more charm
High Score: 81 Succesful Landings in 6:53!
Video here so you can copy my sweet strats: https://youtu.be/7f1WgnAqckk
I'd love to watch a professional SC: Brood War player give this a try.
Great little game! Thanks for sharing!
Just two little niggles:
- I feel like I should be able to fly over a runway without crashing in a landing/taking-off airplane. The vertical separation would allow for that.
- It would be nice to have an (optional?) zoom-out level, to have a bit more space for routing.
But a lovely little game, thanks again.
If you like this I highly recommend the Air Traffic Controller series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Traffic_Controller_(series...
https://www.sonicpowered.co.jp/world/nsw/rjgg/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348390/I_am_an_Air_Traff...
There was a game for the C64 (or VIC20.. I forget) in which your were an ATC. I remember either the packaging for the game or the credits on screen saying something to the effect of "If you like this game, call us". "Us" being a number to contact the FAA for a potential job.
I love the airport style, bilingual interface. One of my favourite parts of flying is getting to see different combinations of languages on the signs!
Fun little game
However I notice people have realized they can set their own score with an HTTP request (I mean, it's Hacker News), maybe put in some sort of mitigation?
In my experience there is little you can do to "mitigate" that kind of thing outside of running the game completely server-side, which usually makes a tiny project into a much larger undertaking.
Recording the game start and end time server-side to perform a plausibility check of submitted score vs. time played would help, but this would require tracking individual users games, and still doesn't solve the problem entirely.
Absolutely delightful, just played a few rounds.
I really love ATC games and the "draw it by hand" aspect makes this kinda funny. Maybe I need to try with a real mouse, kinda slow on a trackpad. For a more serious entrant in this genre (with speeds, altitudes and radio navigation), check out Endless ATC on Steam.
I landed some 40 flights and made it near the top of the leaderboard.
The scoreboard is taking too much screen space and occluding the planes, would be better to have scores at the top or bottom.
added a button to hide the scoreboard on desktop!
First line of action was to crash two planes into each other. Mission successful
Looks like Kennedy Approach from mumble years ago!
When I was growing up, there were two airport simulator games that were pretty fun to play. One of them I remember playing on my Sega Genesis.
Aerobiz? I had forgotten about that one, such an awesome game. Rented it from Blockbuster many times.
Yes! That’s it. I forgot the name, but it was fun.
I expected a backrooms-style game where you are lost at an infinite airport...
I still miss flight control, seems wrong that such an important early iPhone OS game is just… gone.
This is super fun! Could be neat to add keyboard controls for auto routing (i.e. select plane number n and auto route it to strip x or have it fly a go-around to wait). Would also be sick if you added models of real world airports to play.
That said I love this as is and will definitely be playing & sharing it.
Reminds me of C64 Kennedy Approach. Of course Kennedy Approach is 10x more stressful as you need to stack the planes at VOR towers and designate their elevation.
Just playing right now inside airport waiting for a delayed flight, such an irony
Very fun. Got a few minutes in. Is there a strategy for avoiding hitting the planes driving slowly across the runway for takeoff? It seems very hard to also pay attention to them when they have so little lead time.
First thing I did was crash 2 planes, I should be in ISIS.
Fire emoji - nice touch
Nice homage to Flight Control (2009)
every single one of those pilots is getting a number to copy.
Losing because some collision off screen seems a bit unfair.
I think the landing box could be a bit easier to hit
Fun to play, I like it puts a close by airport on the high-score board.
It's surprisingly fun! You've inspired me to finish something aviation related I'm working on and post it soon. Cheers.
pretty nice, the click targets are a bit awkward but otherwise really fun!
Very satisfying to play! I made airpordle.com a bit ago when the dle craze happened, where the goal is to guess the airport you are controlling and the ATC score you get allows you to buy hints. https://airpordle.com
Very fun. My only gripe is that you should be able to overfly taxiing aircraft, without crashing.
Fun how quickly i developed my own rules.
Yellow planes always get rerouted this way.
Put red in this circle to stay out of the way.
Thank you for sharing and thank you maker for makign!
Just a green background and some text on Firefox.
Not with mine. Are you blocking your JS?
Addictive
This is cool. What is it built with?
Fun. But the ATC has a different UI I think?
Can I ask what programming language you uesd? Good game
Perfect kind of intuitive. It was a joy to figure it out, and just "learn by doing".
Super fun! Gets very complicated with congestion, good work!!
Both me and my friend have been racing eachother to create airport simulators. Wildly on-topic for me.
How do you plan to release them? Free? Mobile? And are you using AI to help deliver?
I got a slight flashback to Blue Max, just because of the graphics.
Even if simple, it is quite appealing and fun, spend quite a while playing it.
Nice and fun, but I'd like that the fame enforces a minimal turning radius.
Imagine modified version of this game having local AI voice recognition and you would have to give instructions to the air traffic over "radio" using callsigns and everything. Just like the real tower.
4 successful landings before disaster struck, not a bad first day as ATC
Very fun game. Helps my mind relax
This is nice. And yeah, I've crashed after 33 sec ;)
the hitbox on the landing strip is kinda odd, not sure why sometimes my planes don't enter into the landing state when entering the runway
The touch controls, at least on iOS, leave a lot to be desired.
this is awesome, thank you for making this. Such a neat little package - I love that there are no instructions. And the graphics are so simple and neat
The real simulator feature is discovering how quickly one delayed plane becomes everyone’s problem.
Add some color blind option, please.
I cannot distinguish the two reds/browns/greens or whatever hehe.
This is addictive. Enjoyed it thoroughly
Brought back fun memories! Thank you
Is this based on WebAssembly?
sveltekit and pocketbase!
very sticky game, love it! my record is 18 landings
Very cool!
the graphics reminded me OpenTTD
I'm kind of disappointed that this isn't a simulator for managing what happens inside the airport rather than ATC.
I'm also unsure why I feel that way as it sounds like a nightmare
Nice work!
Open up https://www.liveatc.net/ in another tab and you have a complete experience. Really fun!
Addictive! Made it to #16 but now got some serious PTSD about flying lol
Now I see why ATC is such a stressful job!
A bit better in real life since the world isn't 2D.
Sweet
Cool. But, yeah, no, too stressful.
Give me a relaxing game. (I'm getting old.)
Have you tried getting younger?
The departures kind of subtract from the "flow state" feeling you get when lining things up. Sure, that's an additional challenge, but it's not that fun.