February 2025 Update
🕑 Added 2025-02-03 19:06:41 +0000 UTCGreetings Everyone,
I took a week off to clean my house. To call it a pig sty would be an insult to pigs. I'll probably take the next week off to work on the outside. There is a chance folks walking on my staircase might fall through. 
FBS Fundraising
The FBS system will resume in June. I expect to set the goal to $2000 with an additional $1000 from the leftover money from the failed artwork in Milestone #2.
GearCity: 2nd Gear
As mentioned above, the FBS system is paused until June. The few bugs submitted for v2.5.0.0 will be addressed in June when I reopen the FBS system.
AeroMogul
I've been working on cleaning up the code implemented the last few times I worked on the game. That mostly means fixing bugs, edge cases, and making AI improvements in route creation, aircraft selection, and aircraft purchasing systems. The only new major functionality recently added was related to aircraft production. Manufacturers are now properly producing ordered aircraft. My next step is to make the AI look toward the used market if too many aircraft are in the order queue. After that, I will tackle bugs/issues in the slots systems. Then AI model replacements. (Aging out old aircraft)
There is still a lot of work going forward, but the AI is now making logical^ and expansive moves, and the manufacturers are a time sink to their progress. So, we're making good progress toward having a real game in the backend system. (^Although, I have limited their logic to doing the same thing every time for testing and bug fixing.)
On the data side of things, I've begun cleaning up the Airport data. The game currently has just over 7700 airports. My goal is to make sure the data in the game is correct. I am removing non-viable, private, or military airports and adding missing historical/closed airports where I can find the information. I'm also throwing in historical events, such as name changes, runway resizing, and more as I find the information. I hope to get the number of airports under 7000, but anywhere between 6000-8000 is good. Although, I think I will need some filtering tools on the world map for crowded areas like the United States and Western Europe.
It is a delicate balancing act, as the game will let you grow airports beyond what they are now. At the same time, I can't add the 80,000 or so airports, strips, helipads, and so forth that exist. While IATA shows past, current, or potential commercial use, some poorer countries tend not to register their airports. Likewise, while some may have IATA codes, there is very little chance that a dirt strip with no surrounding buildings could support commercial traffic.
So, during my downtime, I'm manually combing through airports for this data. I'm approximately 0.85% done. I've completed Afghanistan, Albania, and about 80% of Algeria. At my current pace, I should be done with this process in about 2-3 years.
Anyway, I hope to give some nice visuals in my mid-month update.
Until then.
Comments
Eric Jones
The downsides of having two young kids and being the "flex" parent is that I have a lot time in which I can't be on a computer or a laptop or doing anything more than menial house work. That's where my data entry time is. I expect as the kids get older and I get more data entry on my todo list, that's when it will reach the point I'll either hire or ask the community to help out. (On the flip side, kids get older, they can't start cleaning the house and doing yard work. So, I might even have more work time... I can dream, right!)
Arya Karnik
Thats fair - just trying to find ways to make your life easier so you can focus on the true development and let the data entry process get taken care of. For verification purposes as well, there should be ways to handle that. Either by assigning people regions to manage etc. seen other aviation communities tackle this issue, all in all happy to help in anyway!
Eric Jones
I have thought about it. As of right now, no. In the future, likely. The file format is not 100% finalized, and I'm doing most of the data entry in my "downtime" watching kids using my uconsole. That said, as formats get more finalized, and I get more data entry to do (aircraft, engines, etc.) I will probably open up the Airports files to the community if anyone wants to help out. Everything is done in spread sheets, so it wouldn't be too hard for community contributions. The problem becomes verifying what the community adds. Anyway, after the first FBS prototype and I get some feedback, I should be able to finalize the Airport format, and then i'll reassess.
Arya Karnik
Are you looking for any help with the data clean up process? Could make things go faster if you’d be open to having Patreons help with the data processing.
