The assigned runway is being displayed in the data tag beside the aircraft marker on radar screen. And it can be used in the chat alias messages as <assigned-runway> (see
http://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/ope ... .java#l155) but as much as I know, this feature is not active. Additional, this information is transferred to all other ATCs in range of the contact for information purposes. This can be useful, if two ATCs work at the same airport.
I understand your post, that you use the contact flightplan dialog to take over control. I think you know, that you can simply pull your contacts flightstrip from right or middle column to left column. (Handover is done by dragging the flightstrip onto the radar map, by the way...)
If I imagine your way to do it, I see myself having potential problems keeping the overview, because the dialog is hiding the radar map...
Assigning a runway can be done via the flighplan dialog, the alias messages and via double click on a runway. We discusses automatic assignment, but at the end I did not implement it. Our reasons have been:
=> We want it to be a conscious decision of the ATC
=> There is often more than one runway active
=> We cannot identify the aircrafts that are incomming, if they have no flightplan filed or until they call in. In many cases, aircraft will want to pass by.
We discussed more sophisticated logic, but in flightgear ATCs real live, it creates more complexity, it is hard to behave correct in all cases and it takes away some of the fun of being an ATC.
This does not mean, that the current features cannot be improved. The assigned runway feature came in, as a nice to have feature, mainly to remember the assigned runway over time. I made it more useful as I added the easy assignment by double click and the assignment as side effect of some chat alias.
IMHO, the ATC should always tell the pilot about the assignment. I wonder in which phase of the approach the pilot cares about final runway. I guess, that he will get a STAR assigned first, in some cases together with the runway to expect, but I guess if there are multiple possible runways, and there is a lot of traffic, the runway assignment will be done a bit later, when it is clear, how everything will be handled...
I might be wrong.
Anyway, I will care about, what you need in OpenRadar, but it must be valid for all (most) users, airports and situations. I don't want to develop OpenRadar into a niche. And a new user shall be able to use it after less hours of training. It shall not become too complex...
For now,I keep your thought about the warning in case of an unassigned runway in my mind. I would propose the following features:
* Main switch to disable it
* Visible but not disturbing in busy situations (no warning dialog popping up => to be be defined)
* Landing: (Aircraft close to the airport (<10NM), between (>) airport alt and transition altitude) OR (contact has a flightplan and it so it is known, that it will land here and he is close to the airport <10NM?)
* Starting: Aircraft is nearby (<5NM), close to airport altitude and it is too slow to fly
My main question here is, how the highlighting of the missing runway assignment should be done.
PS: I have added the proposed key for activeStartingRunways to my OpenRadar code yesterday, but it is not published yet.