To find real life routes, most people go on FR24, add filters then you’ll need to select each aircraft to see their route until you find a route that you are comfortable with. What issue does this have?
FR24 Only shows current aircraft, airlines, liveries and routes. however IF has a vast majority of aircraft that are mostly retired. Examples are the 747-400, MD-11 and DC-10.
Some users do not know which routes to fly, and how they will fly the route. Since FR24 is separate from Infinite flight.
The solution I propose:
In-app route database; each livery the user selects will have a list of the real life routes this aircraft, airline/livery have done.
Benefits:
The user will be more engaged to fly, since the routes are in-app instead of going to external sources untill they find a route they are comfortable with.
Aircraft and liveries that do not show/are not that shown on FR24 (ex 747, MD/DC, etc) would then receive a lot more attention in IF now that finding real routes is much easier.
Here is a concept I made:
Where do all the routes come from? Are they from a certain external database, or from player’s contribution?
If they’re from external database, then there’s high chance we still have current routes since most of them don’t record retro ones. Copyright could be another problem.
If they’re contributed by player, how can we ensure the validity of the routes? This is especially hard to check for retro liveries.
For retro liveries i like to check their old Timetables, like to find Varig’s old routes to Europe, North America, Africa and Asia a simple search can lead us to a site where all those routes are listed, both with all legs and callsign.
Some sites can record old routes down to the end of 2017, way before the ending of the Covid Pandemic that shut half the world down. Like yesterday i was looking for some routes done by Air Mauritius, and discovered that they used to flew to Wuhan, Hong Kong, Nairobi, Shanghai, Amsterdam and Chengdu only to name a few!
Here’s a point of discussion… at what point does a route flown by an aircraft become part of that list? Is it as soon there is one recorded instance of a route with one aircraft type it becomes part of such, or must it pass any threshold? What about ferry or delivery flights? Is BA flying a 777 from Heathrow to Gatwick necessary to include? They are realistic flights but are they necessary to add in the context of IF?
I think it can be divided between “Ferry/Delivery Flights” and “Scheduled Flights” based on their frequency.
Example: Fiji Airways once flew between Tel Aviv and Nadi via Hong Kong, and this flight can be put into the “Ferry/Delivery Flights” category once it only happened one time and its not a scheduled flight.
That’s actually a helpful source, once i flew a KC10 from Fairfield Travis Air Force Base (KSUU) in California all the way down to Al Udeid Air Base (OTBH) via Frankfurt Hahn (EDFH) just using the callsign and route provided by an Youtube video!
At that point however the system becomes complex and intricate enough for it to be a separate system in an external app at this point, condensing it into a menu like the aircraft selection leads to a mess of design I reckon.
This would really help with the realism! As of now, I think the best solution is to go on this link for up-to-date route information for multiple airlines:
Are you saying that there is only a limited amount of routes one can fly with a certain aircraft to reflect real life operations? Honestly, I’d support that, but it’d be pure delusion to assume something as authoritative as that would exist.
For old routes departing from a specific city worldwide i like to use this site: oagintro
(Note the “Worldwide Edition (International flights only)” for, obvioulsy, International Flights from cities around the world)
This site contains a lot of flights done by Varig, with their timetables from the 1940’s up to 2002: ::: | VARIG | ::: Time Table
And if i wanna be a hundred times more specific with flights in and out Brazil, i like to use the “Guia PANROTAS”, that list flights done to and from Brazil since November/1974
