I really like games like this. Can't explain why. You just kind of do little jobs and feel like you're accomplishing something. Farming Simulator is my favorite: there are lots of different tasks you can do, lots of ways you can go about doing them, etc. And I learned quite a bit about agriculture along the way.
This game scratches the same itch, it's given me just a tiny understanding of how hard all the ground crews work to turn planes around at the airport. It does not have as much depth as FS and it's hard to play single player (you can't really parallel process anything) but with the right crew it would be fun co-op.
I'm excited to watch this game continue to develop.
I'm sort of reminded of the VR job simulator. (I can job!)
To someone, all this is job description stuff. But to others this is super fascinating. I've met lots of train people who would do train stuff for free just for fun.
Programming is a creative activity though. What are these?
> Welcoming passengers, offloading baggage, refuelling large aircraft, pushing aircraft back for departure and a further array of exciting tasks await you.
Euro Truck Simulator was the game that this finally click for me. I think under all different game mechanics -- games like OpenTTD, Factorio, RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, Farming Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator, Minecraft, Civilization etc -- all scratch the same itch of being able to set uour own goals and work towards them through an evolving but intuitive gameplay loop.
I wonder if it lets us simulate the baggage handlers; X-ray the bags.. find the wall-mounted sexessories.. open the bag / misplace luggage, etc.
Crazy feature request: It would be awesome if MS Flight Simulator let players fly to player controlled airports - maybe players can reclaim an abandoned airport. Or even go to airports where players must communicate with each other to coordinate landing / take-off.
I can see it being do-able with some kind of VATSIM-like integration, where you would just need to get the live plane movement data across, and then use that as the AirportSim plane traffic...
The line where people stop simulating and start roleplaying is realy blurry. Clearly the people taking flight sims seriously enough to be using VATsim actually desire a higher-fidelity simulation experience that includes having to talk to an ATC.
I had to squint a bit to decipher the writing on this airplane https://airportsim.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/1016.png, but it seems to be "Luftwaffles" - a nice mix between Luftwaffe (the German Air Force, which however doesn't operate any A320s AFAIK) and Lufthansa (which seems to have inspired the livery of the plane - Lufthansa also has a circle on the deep blue tail fin, but it contains a crane instead of waffles).
Is it just me, who spent few minutes on the website try to understand what you can actually do in the game? They make it super clear on steam - ground handler, but on the website - I keep on reading about weather.
Yes, the website is going out of its way to explain that it's very realistic and based on people who know, but doesn't want to tell you what the game actually does.
I came thinking this was an airport ticoon, and leave with the impression that it's a series of minigames themes around airports
I wish someone'd make a good SimCity-style airport/airline simulator. There've been a few attempts, including one looking a bit like Prison Architect, but none that have been super compelling to me.
Having played Prison Architect for ~200h spoiled me for this genre of games. I too wanted "more" but in a different setting, so I tried various airport sims, including Airport CEO and SimAirport (why don't they get sued by EA?) but refunded all of them.
I also tried "Another Brick in the Mall" but also made it only ~30 minutes in. I think I'm trying Timberborn next.
When Paradox bought Prison architect I hoped they were going to use the engine to build similar games with different settings. Instead they killed the game with buggy expansions and stopped to support it a few months ago. At least they (slightly) teased Prison Architect 2.
That is strange. The only thing I can think of is that EA isn't terribly motivated since they aren't trying to keep a broader "Sim" brand alive, just The Sims and SimCity (and it's not clear how invested they are in SimCity anymore).
Poking around U.S. trademark database, EA may not have a general "Sim" trademark— as Maxis' appears to have lapsed [0]—and maybe "SimAirport" is distinct enough from "The Sims" and "SimCity" trademarks EA has to not be worth suing over.
Prison Architect was such a fun game before Paradox, but don’t kid yourself its always been a buggy mess. I think my favorite was designing prisoner escape prisons, and I loved playing them too.
I tried it years ago - I think even before Prison Architect and Rimworld (another great game, that spoils you for other games mechanicswise) - but could not get into it, because I felt very "disoriented". And a feel of disorientation is difficult for me to work through in games.
Never tried Steam version, I think it wasn't available on Mac or something, but I tried the old ASCII version and it's super cool. My main problem is paralysis of choice.
I have really enjoyed AirportCEO on steam. I would check it out, might be exactly what you’re looking for. Another option would be to get the mods for MS Flight Simulator that allow you to create an airline and make money and grow your business, etc.
I tried Airport CEO but never really got into it. Too much focus on running the business and designing the interior of the terminal building, and not enough detail/control on designing runways, taxiways, hangars, lighting, and performing various airport ops. It's pretty nice if you're interested in a business sim though.
Blaze your glory! Work after work for cool crypto swag might sound appealing to some, but I'd just be crashing fueling trucks into airplanes and tipping cows over all night.
Unruly passengers are the least of your worries in this game. If you can manage to get the plane fueled, boarded, and the bags in the hold on time you are are an airport god lol.
The passenger who wouldn’t sit was on my flight home to LA. The flight attendant asked him to sit or we would miss our pushback deadline. He took his sweet time and finally sat. After like two minutes he’s getting this attitude like why aren’t we moving.
The flight attendant comes on the intercom and says there will be a delay until the tower clears us for pushback. 90 minutes later we are pushed back. Apparently in that scenario, your plane goes to the end of the line. So every other jet that was fueled up and loaded went before us.
I downloaded the demo, and it seems to just be two different tutorials - chocks and cones (handling an existing parked plane at a gate) as well as GPU (ground power unit, also on a parked plane).
Really didn't get a good feel for the game, which is a shame because I usually really love these mundane simulators.
> sometimes it will accept all [...] cookie categories
That's a shame, I like the idea of explicitly indicating that I don't want anything more than what's necessary (or at least not indicating that I don't care about them).
From a technical perspective, if you actually care about cookies, then blame your client for not maintaining your privacy, because that is where your real complaint is.. Not with the site.
The client has a hard time telling useful and tracking cookies apart. The popups do a good job at this, since they don't affect cookies that provide actual functionality. I just don't like having to navigate them.
I'm not ever buying anything on Steam ever again. Not after they started deleting games of my machine. I feel like someone came into my house and robbed me.
I'm betting it's their recent CS2 rollout, where instead of adding it as a new listing they released it as an update to CS:Go. This meant the next time you logged in, it downloaded the new game and removed the old. The goal was to funnel people over to the new game.
Upsides: CS2 should immediately have the full player base.
Downsides: CS:Go is no longer available. CS2 is not a drop-in replacement, it has higher system requirements and no longer supports Mac. No opportunity for CS:Go to live on through custom servers.
It's definately an odd situation, but it's very much not the norm. Steam tends to be ridiculously good at leaving your library intact. I still play Rocket League through steam even though it's been Epic exclusive (and free) for years.
That said, Valve isn't running any servers for the game anymore, so matchmaking will no longer work. But you can relatively easily download the game and play on community/private servers.
A recent possibility could be Valve releasing Counter Strike 2 by replacing Counter Strike: Global Offensive entirely. Technically you can still play CS:GO by selecting the version in the Betas drop down (for now at least) but there are plenty of people who purchased CS:GO years ago before it was free and are upset because their "paid" game was replaced by a "free" game.
Paid game replaced by a free game replaced by a different game entirely. That’s an anti-trust lawsuit waiting to happen. At the very least consumer protection law.
I believe Overwatch was originally a paid game, went free-to-play, and then was "upgraded" to Overwatch 2 in a similar way to CS:GO>CS2 did, but I don't remember there being as much anger over it.
Still wish everyone involved the best of luck! Licensed vehicle models, upcoming DLC, hope it all works out!