As we start the initial design of Airport Madness 4, I realize that we face exactly the same challenges as we did with the three previous versions of the the Airport Madness series.  Airport Madness 1, 2 and 3 all had something in common:  they were 2D, top-down games.  Airport Madness 4 however, will have 3D rendering.  That doesn’t mean you will need to wear the big ugly glasses, nor does it mean that the airplanes will jump out of the screen at you.  3D rendering means that you are no longer sitting up there in space, staring down at the airport.  You now have a seat in the control tower, watching airplanes scream by.

It’s not much, but this is technically the first official screenshot of Airport Madness 4.  Please be gentle with your feedback…we are still in the very early prototype stages of development. I promise to remove the green earth color that I stole from the 1992 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Our challenge here is to avoid creating a realistic simulation.  Huh?  In my opinion, realistic ATC simulations are only fun to the hardcore ATC simmers.  To appeal to the rest of the world you need to keep things simple, fast, and entertaining, with no instructions required.  That’s not an easy task with something as difficult and complex as air traffic control.  We should have another update for this project in January 2011.