Online aviation simulation AirlineSim is pleased to be able to present, from the 16th of August 2010, its third international game world. Known as “Tempelhof”, it will provide up to 1200 users with the opportunity to manage their own virtual airlines in a detailed and realistic global economic environment. The new game world will run the latest version of AirlineSim’s server software, currently at version 1.5, which provides a greatly improved player-oriented interface, an expanded range of statistical data and improvements to the economic, flight planning and management systems. “Our simulated passenger and freight distribution system has been made significantly more detailed and transparent”, says Martin Simons, lead developer of AirlineSim; “These improvements, combined with real traffic data from airports all over the world, give players a realistic backdrop to airline management that you won’t find in any other browser-based multiplayer online game.”
While the hardware and software are state of the art, the game world’s name looks back to the history of aviation. Tempelhof is the name of the famous inner-city airport in Berlin, one of the icons of 20th century aviation even after its 2008 closure. “There was never any doubt that we would name a game world after Tempelhof”, says Sascha Kunert; “Since we name all our game worlds after former airports, it was only a matter of time. We had perhaps expected to use the name for a German-speaking game world, however.”
Instead, Tempelhof is expected to become the first AirlineSim game world to operate in a truly multilingual environment, with players given the ability to change the game’s display language. “Up to now, because of the way the servers are set up, we’ve been restricted to one language per game world”, says Martin Simons; “With the lifting of that restriction, we have plans to add support for a variety of languages. While we’re not in a position to make any official announcements as to which languages are expected yet, our very international community, now over 2000 strong, is helping us with the translations.”