Airwave Alpha – Debut Release
Written by: TheDevBird
Airwave is out (in Alpha)! You can download and try it out right now on Itch.io. If you encounter any issues, want to make suggestions, or are just in it for the ride, please check out our Discord server!
A quick look into the past
Airwave started from an idea back in August of 2024. While playing an ATC game on my phone (Endless ATC), I was surprised that given modern speech-to-text engines like Whisper and the potential of LLMs, why wasn't there an ATC game that let you control aircraft with your voice? I constructed a prototype that same day using Whisper and OpenAI's gpt-4o-mini model. Whisper would handle transcribing what you said and the LLM would turn that into instructions for the aircraft.
![the very first version of airwave]()
However, this version was primitive at best. I copied Endless ATC's concept of spawning aircraft outside of your airspace, where you'd sequence them for landing once they cross over. Despite being a prototype, it proved it's worth. The gameplay was very fun. I could use real ATC terminology to inceract with my aircraft. I felt like I was actually controlling them, instead of running commands or pushing buttons to control a game. They felt real, in a way.
The present
![airwave now]()
Fast forward to now, we've finally hit a point where Airwave is ready to release as an alpha. Right now, you can sequence approaches and departures in the air, and manage incoming arrivals for parking and departures for takeoff on the ground. It supports multiplayer out of the box, so bring your friends!
A glimpse of the future
![intentionally blurred screenshot of our Asana board]()
This is, of course, just the beginning. We have so much planned and are excited to get these features and improvements out over the next few months. Many of these features don't have a fixed date or release schedule, but we'll do our best to keep some sort of cadence. We'll also be posting more devlogs to the blog so you're in the loop on what's coming next and when.
For now, have fun and fly safe!
For questions or feedback, feel free to reach out on our Discord server, Bluesky, or via email: [email protected].
Check out our website.