The SimplePlanes Archipelago has a number of major locations to visit, each of them packed with way more love, detail, and interactivity than any of the locations in SimplePlanes 1 have. These are created by various people in the team, but for right now we’re going to focus on what Kevin and Pedro have been working on. We’ll start with one of Kevin’s brainchildren:

Cochran Airport

Located on the coast of New Yoke Island, Cochran Airport is probably the first place you’ll be greeted with when you play the game for the first time. I asked Kevin to provide some insight into the creative vision behind it, so I’m gonna take a moment to quote him here:

“Cochran was one of our largest and most ambitious airport projects. Inspired by the sleek, futuristic design of Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Cochran Airport blends realism with some unique gameplay twists—including destructible buildings and A380-friendly infrastructure.”

Cochran represents the very modern design language of New Yoke Island, with the futuristic-looking wavey roof on the terminal (lovingly borrowed from Pudong Airport), the sprawling layout that’s been hyper-optimized for the heaviest of air traffic, and more.

A major design goal here was to be able to accommodate the largest passenger aircraft the real world has to offer: the Airbus A380. This turned out to not be a trivial undertaking, with several parts of the airport needing to be redesigned early in development because they were simply too small for this behemoth of a plane. But it has been done, which means this airport is probably also perfectly equipped to handle whatever you can throw at it (provided it isn’t much more ludicrous in size than an A380).

Beyond that, Cochran has a number of fun playspaces including plenty of hangars (big and small, complete with animated doors), a fire station you can hang out inside of, and an oversized parking lot with a multi-story parking garage! We set out to make a believable space that also doesn’t compromise on fun gameplay opportunities, and we believe we’ve achieved that.

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Shepard Airport

Sitting on the opposite side of the archipelago to Cochran by a little forest on Vetusta Island, Shepard Airport is another of Kevin's creations. As with Cochran, I'll quote Kevin here:

“Shepard Airport, our love letter to the mid-century charm of Amon Carter Field (now part of Dallas/Fort Worth International). Unlike Cochran's sprawling modern hubs, Shepard is a compact, retro-inspired airport that captures the spirit of aviation’s golden era of prop liners and early jets. Before DFW existed, Amon Carter Field (later renamed Greater Southwest International) was Fort Worth’s premier airport, opening in 1953 with a sleek, Space Age-inspired terminal.”

In contrast to Cochran, our goal with Shepard was to create a nostalgic space that still functioned as an airport. When you visit, you'll soon notice through its architecture that it seems to be stuck in a different era. Shepard's neon signage, glass walls, distinct mixture of rectangular and curved shapes, and beige colouring define its aesthetic to create a cozy symbol of the past.

Functionally, you will find Shepard to not be as versatile as Cochran. Being designed for the propeller airliners and early jet airliners of the 1950's and early 1960's, its relatively narrow taxiways, smaller hangars, singular main runway (with a smaller crosswind runway too), and lack of Cochran's huge concourses make it impractical for anything much larger than an A320. This more compact layout lends Shepard its own charm though. Fun things to do besides flying include hanging out in the old-timey hangars with your friends, or if you're feeling confident about your skill behind a wheel you can try and drive fast through the little support beams holding up the big hallways sticking out of the terminal.

Shepard is a labour of love to a forgotten chapter in aviation history, one with a lot of wonder to it that we wanted to give the love and respect it deserves.

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Airports aren’t the only major locations of interest in the archipelago. After all, if you’re taking a flight to a regional airport you’re probably going there for a reason. Follow the main road south from Shepard Airport and you’ll find yourself in…

Vetusta City

Those of you who’ve played Juno: New Origins after its 1.0 release may be familiar with Juno Village, a quaint little village high in the mountains. This was our first ever foray into making an actual settlement in one of our games rather than just strictly functional spaces like airports or aircraft carriers. Now take Juno Village, scale it up by about an order of magnitude, and you have Vetusta City :)

With a total area of approximately 1.5 square kilometers and over 1000 buildings (each of them manually placed), Vetusta is our first ever full-fledged city. At its longest axis, the city spans 2.5 kilometers in length, full of roads, alleys, and buildings. It’s a really fun and atmospheric space that helps the world feel truly alive.

Some of you may have already noticed that Cochran Airport and Shepard Airport are named after significant figures in aviation history that each pushed the boundaries of what was possible in their time: Jacqueline Cochran, the first woman to break the sound barrier; and Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space. Our islands, too, have meaning to their names. They represent the cultural divide between them, with one embracing tradition and the other looking to modernity.

Vetusta Island, and by extension Vetusta City, represents the former of those two; Vetusta is an archaic Spanish word for “very old”, with the city’s design reflecting that. Set at the foot of a castle, Vetusta City takes heavy inspiration from those old European cities that ooze with centuries of history, bringing elements of the past with them everywhere rather than abandoning them. I’m curious: what do you imagine the history of this city being like?

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In order to make a city that meets our goals for scale, visuals, and performance, we had to step back and think outside the box a little.

Buildings with a lot of detail look good, but they're computationally expensive to render which means if you have a lot of them you'll leave a large dent in the player's framerate, which goes against our goal of making a game that can be played on relatively modest hardware. On the other hand, low detail buildings impact framerates much less which means you can use more of them, but they have the drawback of being low detail so they may not feel very immersive.

Our approach for SimplePlanes 2 is much closer to the low detail end, but we've come up with some tricks to keep things looking believable while maximizing performance.

Our city buildings are procedurally generated to allow for easy setup and control when we're placing them down. They use very simple geometry to save performance; to achieve the appearance of higher detail we cheat by using some fun tricks with shaders and textures. Building colours get randomized based on where they are so you're not always looking at identical ones, individual windows have their lights turn on and off based on the time of day and whether they're facing the sun, and more.

For the textures, we've been working with an Argentinian woman named Sol (fun fact, we've worked with her before — if you listen closely, you may hear her in Juno: New Origins). These textures utilize normal mapping and physically based rendering (PBR) techniques to achieve a sense of depth and higher detail, despite the buildings being extremely simplistic behind the scenes. This allows each building to punch above its weight a bit in terms of detail vs performance cost, thus allowing us to make a nice looking city without sacrificing too many of your precious frames.

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Vestusta Castle

Like many of its real-world inspirations, at the heart of Vetusta City lies a large medieval-style castle set atop a hill. Our primary source of inspiration for the design of Vetusta Castle was the numerous medieval castles scattered throughout France, with their highly functional yet beautiful gothic designs that are so iconic they inspired an entire genre of fiction.

Our castle is made up of numerous modular sections we created, allowing us to streamline the creation of castles and forts with a mix and match system we can bend to our will. Gatehouses, towers of multiple shapes and sizes, destructible bridges, and more are all in our little box of castle-flavoured goodies.

Vetusta Castle itself is a sprawling complex with multiple large buildings, split by a river cutting through the hill and meeting with the sea. Thick stone walls adorned with guard towers protect much of the castle from would-be invaders, the difficult terrain surrounding it serving as an additional line of defense. Large bridges connect the buildings across the river, conveniently being wide enough for you to sneak a vehicle onto. This castle is a lovingly created space designed to enhance the game’s atmosphere and create fun gameplay opportunities.

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If you can believe it, we still have more of the map to show off on a later date! If you like what you're seeing, please consider wishlisting SimplePlanes 2 on Steam. If you'd like to see bits of these blogs early, consider joining our Discord Server!