#update

After a few weeks of development, the second update of Airwave (Alpha 2) is finally out!

What's inside?

This release contains many updates and improvements to Airwave since the last. Here's an outline of the largest changes and additions:

• Added controls to enable and disable runways for arrival and/or departure (changes the runways that auto ATC uses too)
• Revamped the Controls menu: moved debug info in a section at the bottom, renamed the window to “Controls” and separated major options into sections
• UI improvements to the chatbox such as: show all, colored callsigns, and removed NLP/LLM selector
• Added TTS
• Improved stability of voice mode
• Various fixes to ATC commands (clamping values, ensuring replies are correct, making sure Vosk has the right grammer for them, etc)
• Rewrote the culling system so all aircraft at your airport are always up to date, e.g. if you're in ground mode, your stripboard will always have the latest approaches
• Automatically tune aircraft to the frequencies you set up in the config (wasn't done before, which made custom ground or approach frequencies unusable)
• Added an overlay to indicate when the sim is paused

What's next?

Check our website for the full roadmap, but here's a condensed list of things planned for Alpha 3 (and beyond):

1. Dedicated launcher that automatically configures singleplayer and multiplayer instances for you
2. Customizable stripboard
3. Pushback
4. Callouts on approach, pushback, taxi, and landing
5. Pathfinder overhaul (revised algorithm, multi-segmented and double-letter taxiways, support for “cross runway” instructions, and more!)

Upcoming media

I plan to release a few devlogs both on the blog and likely as videos on the YouTube channel that go over some of these big features and the decisions that went into them. I don't have any of these really planned out yet, so there might not be any until Alpha 3 goes out. Do keep an eye out on our blog for any new posts, or join our Discord server to get pinged for updates (or just to hang out)!

See you in the next one.

For questions or feedback, feel free to reach out on our Discord server, Bluesky, or via email: contact@airwavegame.com.

Check out our website.

#update

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.

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

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

Note: I've redacted the task names so we're not publicly commiting to any specific task.

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 with alpha-1, and keep the traffic flowing!

For questions or feedback, feel free to reach out on our Discord server, Bluesky, or via email: contact@airwavegame.com.

Check out our website.