I've been thinking - yes I can be quite dangerous sometimes.
With all the new aircraft recently produced by Ian and the paint jobs done on them by Pascal and Rob, I'm thinking that IF - and it's a big if - Ian felt like producing just a few more aircraft types, then as a project, a full day's Heathrow operation correct to operator and aircraft type would be feasible in the long term and in the short term a realistic looking "first edition" model could be uploaded to the DLS - maybe as a game.
It would mean that I need continuing help with re-skins - even though I intend to try and do some myself, I will need time to achieve an acceptable standard for anything put onto DLS and in any event I would need to wipe the 300 or so aircraft I use and reuse now, and create the actual schedule of 513 individual aircraft as true to type and colours as possible and ensure they run without more signalling or programming problems.
These are the remaining aircraft types that would be needed for the final version along with suggested colours:-
Airbus 300-600 eg 9K-AMD Kuwait
Airbus 330-300 eg A4O-DE Oman
Airbus 340-500 eg A6-EHC Etihad
Boeing 757-200 eg TF-FIJ Icelandair
Embraer 145 eg G-RJXC British Airways
Embraer 190 eg SP-LNB Polish
Fokker 100 eg HB-JVC Swiss
Fokker 70 eg PH-KZP KLM Cityhopper
I feel that to give a visual impact to a first edition, these aircraft types would need some of these colours:-
Airbus 320 Alitalia British Airways Swiss TAP Portugal Tyrolean
Airbus 321 Finnair Iberia Agean
Airbus 330-200 Qatar South African
Beoing 777-200 British Airways American (old c/s)
Boeing 777-300 Jet Airways India
Boeing 767-400 Delta (old c/s)
Boeing 737-800 KLM standard colours
Airbus 340-600 Virgin Atlantic
Airbus 340-300 Virgin Atlantic
Looks a lot I know.
I've no idea how much interest there would be from trainzers but how do we feel about this as a project? Maybe the model could be - "Be Heathrow's Ground Control Supervisor for the day - watch those AI pilots do as the're told and sort out the mess if they don't" kind of game with a camera perched on top of the control tower.
In addition to Stagecoach, who produced the base model I started with, there are a lot of aircraft inherited with it from cj187, nzms and iced8383 who don't seem to be active on here since I started. Obviously full credit would be given to them and yourselves in the Route description on the start page - or "publish" it as a joint project - I really don't mind.
Just some thoughts - I understand if you don't want to commit or want to do other things. I'm thinking it really hinges on Ian at present because otherwise we can't achieve the 100% representation. My plan B is to wait a while until the older aircraft are phased out and the 787's and BA A380's come on stream. In the meantime I am quite happy pretending Silk Air 320's are actually Finnair and TAP 727's are actually 320's! The more time goes on though, the more boring it gets - Heathrow changing rapidly into a grid layout - aircraft types disappearing - airlines disappearing under mergers - things are not what they used to be !!!
Bob