Seeking airports

Does anyone know of any airports or runways on the main grid besides Gray and Abbotts?

I am working on setting up automated flights between various airports and am noticing there is a severe lack of flying-related builds in the world.

That's a good question. I don't recall any others at the moment... hmmm... that's really cool idea though. I suppose country field out somewhere could be turned into a nice rural strip. And, a YUGE airport, complete with snack bar, mini-hotel and luggage turntable thing (don't know what they're called) would be sooo cool. Airports are magical places to me, and to be able to take a flight in a 747 from one sim to another would be awesome.

There are currently Boeing 737 flights departing Abbotts every 20 minutes bound for Gray Field. Soon they will return as well. Cubey and I are also working on an hour-long airship tour flight.

All flights are free of course.

How much runway do you need/want to consider as "airport status"?

AS for airports/runways I know of..
Hawk Statosky - Tan 108,156

The place where the Airstream trailers used to be sold, though I am not sure it is there anymore. I think it might have been turned in to a club.
(edited---it was Maxim Sky Center.. apparently now up for sale.. no longer has a runway)

There was an airstrip at Clara 57,26

Alexander Martov had a strip when he first made his A3 Barracuda. I lost that landmark.

I know there are a number of short strips that people have made... again, length is an issue in answering this question... if you are going for reality... A number of people have helicopters squares out... but I wouldn't consider them "runways"/airports.

Just my $.02L

And of course, there is the Amazon Nations air port in Freelon 137,167...runway height 225.6 or so.

I really like this place... and ran into it by accident while just tooling around.

It's definitely big enough to land the 737 if the runway is kept clear... which is not alwayws the case as the owner seems to use it as a build/construction site.

WHOA!!! DUDE!!! 737... okay... not 747s... but still very cool... I didn't notice this before! Nor Terrabucks! Ahhhhhh!

I think there is an airport at like 300m (?) in one corner of Dacia. At least I think its an airport. It has runways and what looks like an air traffics control tower. But it might be the start of a maul. hehe

-Ghoti

OMG!!! Apotheus Silverman!!! GOOD STUFF!!!

DUDE! I AM NOW A PLANESPOTTER!!!

I waited over half an hour for the 737 to come by -- the first time, I missed it (it was behind me but my camera angle was all muxed so it zoomed off again)... whoa, it came by QUICKLY. I thought it was gonna pause for a bit, so I quickly right-clicked on it and caught a ride through the sims. That was SO cool. You gotta do more of this!

I laughed so hard that the plane was called an "AI 737" or something, and it actually put me inside the plane or something, but I couldn't see inside of the cockpit (or whether I was eating peanuts in a bag or anything).

One thing though: why does it suddenly drop and disappear in Gray? That was a bit disconcerting, as I thought it was going to fly through everywhere else too. Do planes take off from Gray and go even further?

Um, in mouselook you should be able to see out the front windows. There are not enough prims available to include the full interior like the 737 that is sitting on the tarmac at the Aerodrome.


I just got the flights back from Gray working today so if you did this in the last 3 hours or so, the plane should not have disappeared after landing there. It should have taken off and flown back to Abbotts.

Cubey and I have also gotten the airship tours working. They depart runway 9 every 10 minutes, 5 minutes before and after the 737 departs. The airship flies a large circle through many, many sims.

OMG!!! WHAT A TRIP!!! Soooooo cool, Apotheus. Okay, I totally forgot about mouselook. I tend to forget about the obvious -- I'll try that on my next flight.

My flight ending at Gray was last night.

Airships too! Wow. Okay. This sounds to me like the trappings of a new novel, Around the metaverse in 80 minutes

Skynet in Baku has a runway.

Cornelius Bach has a heliport at Metis 59, 123. If you are using the blimp for the airship tours, it should be a good stop.

The airship visits both the Metis Heliport and the floating airport in Miru.

Skynet; http://www.s.camelo.btinternet.co.uk/skynet_001.jpg

Baku 154, 117

alt 711

Came back from the blimp ride, it was MOST EXCELLENT. Good to talk to you, Apotheus.

I just posted my memories on my website.

Hey, nice photos on your website, Torley. And kudos to Apotheus, who's created the best autopilot script in SL.

Cyrus Apollo and I are in the process of trying to acquire additional land in Stillman and if we are able to would be interested in having an airstrip there.

I'll put the word out if/when we are able to get more land, as I may need some guidance in building a nice air strip.

Most excelent work on what you guys have done so far. Would love to see more airports.

I'm not having a dig at anyone here, but lately my partner and I have seen planes flying through the sim Mesede (N of DeHaro and E of Tan) where he lives. I'm not sure that these are the planes you are talking about, but the only reason we saw them was that randomly the sim would lag to a stop, and we started looking for the cause.

I can't describe the planes in detail but I think they are white and they leave a particle trail of smoke behind them, and fly pretty fast through the sim (too fast to follow). I love the idea of flying in a plane around SL but not if it is causing lag this bad. The sim usually has a fps of 1200 but in these lag spikes gets down to <100.

Have you guys tested the impact these planes are having on sims in their flightpath? again I'm NOT saying that the planes I have seen are the ones this thread refers to, but just thought this would be a good place to mention it.

The planes you have seen is the 737 flight from Abbotts to Gray and back.

I have personally done pretty extensive testing of how much the scripts impact a sim and still have not found reason to stop any flights. In Abbotts where they originate, there are often multiple aircraft flying around using the autopilot system I have made and I have not seen the sim FPS drop more than 50 or so starting from around 700 in Abbotts.

Here are a few facts about the aircraft so they are out in the open, as this is not the first time someone has asked about impact on sims:

1. The aircraft are phantom so the servers do not waste time looking for and calculating collisions except with land.
   
2. Each aircraft has 2 active scripts.
   The first script is a stripped-bare physical vehicle script with no extras whatsoever. It sets the vehicle parameters, then accepts control input via linkmessages.
   The second script is the autopilot, which performs some relatively simple trig calculations twice per second and if any control updates are necessary, sends them via linkmessage (to one prim for efficiency) to the vehicle script.
   

There could be potential performance problems on border crossings, but LL would have to chime in on this one as I have no way of knowing for sure whether this is possible. I believe the automated aircraft do not cross sim borders quite the same way as avatars do as they are local to the sims themselves and are not negatively affected by lag.

I'm not sure if this will help at all, but I notice quite often in Abbotts if there is a sudden large dip in sim FPS the cause usually appears to be an av or two with a whole bunch of stuff attached which accept voice commands, give status updates every minute, etc. Oh and "shields" with like 50 different sensor scripts running on timers every 0.001 second. Ugh.

Cool. well it sounds like you guys sure have done your homework and made these planes as lag free as possible. I'll have to go for a ride asap hehe.

I have a "shuttle platform" at 250m above my build in Miramare.

I'd be happy to adapt it for airship use.

Just let me know.

lol, I have a helipad in Sami. Which I were rich enough to have a full blown runway. Think I'm going to make it my mission to map out all marina's/runways/helipads in sl and put them on a searcheable webpage. Could even make it useable in game for autopilot scripts and the like. ::ponders::

The Amazon Nations airport in Freelon is open to all air traffic. There are two crossed runways to allow for wind changes and a lower hanger deck. However, only the main North/South runway has VFR landing lights though these can be added on request to the other runway.

There is another Amazon Airport in Kishijoten (sp) of the same general design, but near ground level, and there will soon be another way down in Skari. The Skari airport opening up access to the southern edge of the snow continent which is currently devoide of any telehubs...


The Freelon airport gets used for aircraft developement and testing of other 'ideas' and so there are sometines 'obstructions' on the runway.... A flypast to check for obstuctions could be prudent before landing. We don't want any accidents.

The new USL MegaTower Aiport has opened SE corner of BonnyDoon, next to the MegaTower.