Departure, Holdings and 100 % DFS Data

Version 0.2.0 expands the radar side of the game considerably. The new Departure position picks up aircraft after take-off and hands them to the right Center sektor. Approach gains holdings, runway changes and pilots who speak up when they are forgotten. Under the hood, the game now runs entirely on official aeronautical data form the DFS, including ground layouts from the aerodrome mapping. With that, Stuttgart is playable as a second airport, and Frankfurt has its own ground and tower areas. The top bar, settings and loading screens have a new design, and there are many fixes to taxiing, pushback and speech recognition.

New

• Departure Position (Frankfurt North / South and combined): departures call in after take-off (“passing 1900 feet, climbing 5000 feet, MARUN 8F”), fly their SID and climb only when told. Hand them off to the next Center sector along their route.
• Real control seectors in 3D: the DFS airspace boundaries and level bands define where your airspace ends and who is next. Your own airspace border is drawn on the radar (switchable in Settings - Gameplay).
• New HO column: in the approach / departure list: where each flight goes next, with the frequency (tower or Center sector).
• Holdings: “hold at ROLIS as published” or with inbound track, turn direction, leg time and “expect further clearance”. The entry (direct, parallel, teardrop) follows the heading at the fix. Right-click shows the racetrack. Command line: HOLD ROLIS [123] [L|R] [1.5M] [EFC1435].
• Runway change on the approach: the tower announces the change in the chat 10 minutes ahead. You re-plan your arrivals yourself (“expect ILS approach 07R”); if needed, the pilot requests vectors. THe last arrivals on the old direction still land.
• Forgotten pilots: unanswered calls are repeated. Arrivals kept high for too long ask “request lower”; departures ask “request higher”.
• Claude fallback for Approach and Departure: unclear transmissions are interpreted using the traffic picture.
• New approach phrases: “maintain 160 knots until 4 miles final” (S160/4), “continue present heading”, “report established on the localizer / glide path” (RE / REG / REC).
• Stuttgart (EDDS) playable: SIDs and STARs from the AIP, ground layout, positions and areas of responsibility, start-up approval by Stuttgart Delivery.
• Frankfurt with its own positions: Ground West / East and Tower South / North with their own taxi areas, plus bundles for every layer.
• Pushback in intermediate directions: “facing south east”, “tail north west”, command line PB SE.
• New map layer “Stand names”: stand names appear when zoomed in.
• Hand-over remark in the strip: when a simulated station hands an aircraft to you, the strip shows where it is going and its route (“V145 via N7, N”).

Data

• All aeronautical data now comes from the DFS (CC BY 4.0): airports, runways, navaids, waypoints, SIDs/STARs, approaches, holdings, airspaces, minimum vectoring altitudes and airways. The attribution is shown in the main menu and under Settings → Data.
• Ground layout from the DFS aerodrome mapping: runway, taxiway and apron surfaces, buildings and holding lines. Frankfurt now has 107 holding points, including one per branch in front of the runway.
• Missing Frankfurt SIDs (MARUN, OBOKA, TOBAK – Hotel / Mike) added from the AIP charts.
• Airports without a published SID / STAR for the runway in use still get traffic: departures climb straight ahead to an airway fix, and arrivals are vectored onto the final.
• Cruising levels follow the distance to the destination (semicircular rule).
• A fresh computer starts straight into the main menu: the data ships with the game, so no setup is needed.
• Removed: rivers and motorways on the map, and waypoints and airways outside Germany. Traffic now starts and ends at the border.

Ground, Tower and Delivery

• Aircraft no longer park inside each other: stands are allocated by the actual space needed (ICAO code letter B–F, wingspan, neighbouring stands).
• Pushbacks follow a curve instead of turning on the spot, and end straight on the taxiway centreline. At Frankfurt and Stuttgart they are drawn by hand.
• Arrivals park exactly where departures stand, with the same heading.
• Authority: a missed hand-off no longer stops the aircraft at the boundary. The pilot taxis on into the next area, which counts as an incident. Any further instruction given there also counts as an incident.
• Line-up, take-off and runway crossing clearances may only be given by that runway’s tower. Otherwise the shift ends immediately with grade F.
• Simulated ground stations hand departures to the tower at the holding point, no longer in the middle of the taxiway.
• The chat now lists only the stations you actually exchange aircraft with.
• Taxiway names appear at every junction, and more densely when zoomed in. Names such as N-ORANGE, N7-BLUE and L-NORTH are shown as published and understood when spoken.
• The cleared taxi route of the selected aircraft is a learning aid that can be switched off (Settings → Gameplay “CLEARED ROUTE (GROUND)”). It is shown only for aircraft on your frequency.
• The frequencies window lists only the airport’s staffed positions.

Interface

• New top bar for every position: on the left the clock, pause and 1× / 2× / 4×; in the centre the station and frequency with RWY, DEP, ARR, ATIS, QNH, WIND and INC; on the right the tools and the music controls. The seed has moved to the pause menu.
• Settings redesigned in the card style of the free play screen, with a new “Display” page.
• Loading screen shows the airport, the position and each loading step.
• Radio log with seconds and TX / RX tags. Your own transmissions are highlighted.
• Map layer list in groups, with a colour swatch and a “ZOOM IN” hint. Your selection is kept after a restart.
• Help (F1): a sidebar for all positions and topics, and a new Departure page.

Speech recognition

• Garbled frequencies are matched against the region’s frequencies (“119 Desmond 905”, “1199905”).
• “Delta P1” / “D P 1” = DP1, “link 4” = LINK4, “tolling point” = holding point.
• Direct-to fixes can be spelled out or said in a similar-sounding way (“D F 636” → DF636, “spacer” → SPESA).
• “heading 2 to 0” = 220, “heading 1 for 0” = 140; “0905” / “0.95” as a heading = 095.
• Instruction words are no longer mistaken for airline callsigns (“reduce speed 180” became Speedbird 180).
• “Break” now also splits several instructions in one transmission on the approach.

Fixes

• Arrivals were handed over up to 30 NM too early. They now come 5 NM before the arrival airspace, at the latest 20 NM from the threshold.
• An incident at the very start of a session when two handed-over aircraft were already too close. Such pairs now get two minutes to be separated.
• “standby, expect pushback in 5 minutes” was read as a pushback clearance.
• Newer callers could overtake a pilot who had been waiting a long time to call. Now whoever calls first is answered first.
• A pilot spoken to before his first call no longer makes that call after his readback.
• The simulated tower cleared aircraft across a runway with no room beyond it. At Frankfurt this blocked all departures after a runway change.
• Some stands had no way onto a taxiway after pushback (Frankfurt C13, C15B, E9, A22, A54 and others).
• Generated arrivals got STARs ending far away from the final.
• Generated departures got SIDs that are flown only on the controller’s instruction.
• Speeds above 250 kt below FL100 are now refused and count as an incident. Simulated flights slow down in time before FL100.
• ATIS on the approach command line was read as a callsign.